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Faith Hope and Love - 1Thessalonians 1:3
Faith Hope and Love - 1Thessalonians 1:3
“2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father” (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3).
Faith . . . love . . . hope. These are a common Pauline triad (cf. 1Thess. 5:8; Rom. 5:2–5; 1 Cor. 13:13; Gal. 5:5–6; Eph. 4:2–5). They provide a sure foundation for our life.
Love –
God LOVED us – Romans 5:8-9
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
We THEN love God - our ‘labor of love’ –
1 John 4:19 19 We love, because He first loved us.
1 John 4:9-10 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 3:1 1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Faith –
In loving us, God ‘gave His son’ –
This includes the incarnation, DBR, and glorification / priesthood / mediator. We have been saved by His death, burial, and resurrection, but we ARE BEING saved by His life – His resurrected life in heaven where he is our high priest and mediator.
Thus we TRUST that through HIM we will live with God forever
Here our WORK of faith – for it is a faith that walks with God, obeys God.
Hope –
A common explanation of hope is that it includes both Desire + Expectation. Some things are desired but there is no expectation of ever having them. Some things are expected but there is no desire for such to come about. Then, there are things that we hope for. For these, we have both desire and expectation.
Such is our ‘anchor for the soul’ – it makes the difficult easier, it comforts during trials.
Hebrews 6:18-19 18 so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. 19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil,
Here the STEADFASTNESS OF HOPE
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness –
Are these three the foundation of your life?
Hugh DeLong
