We chose matching Mother-Daughter necklaces the Summer before she got married. It was my pre-wedding gift to her, as a token of our special relationship through the years: a silver heart with Faith, Hope, Love engraved on it. I liked it because it captured the faith-storms we had weathered together, and the closeness we shared because of it. She liked it because she said it expressed the essence of the gospel that could transcend any cultural boundaries. Faith in Christ Jesus for salvation; the Hope of the resurrection; Love lived out to others. It surprised me at the time, because I had never thought of those three qualities in such a way, but the idea slowly took root.
I always thought it curious how Paul plucks those particular qualities out of thin air and establishes them as eternal bedrock (although he, of all people, should be qualified to see them in the Spirit’s light): “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) There are many worthwhile qualities to cultivate, and while these three are admirable, why are they the best? But my daughter’s observation about the gospel stirred my curiosity; what if that were the reason Paul chose those three concepts? What if he were distilling the basic principles of their faith in Christ into an easily remembered creed for the young churches? His insistence to the Galatians that since Christ has come all their debating about the merits of circumcision mean nothing, leaps off the page: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6) Faith in Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life is the only way to salvation, and love is the proof and tangible manifestation of a person saved from sin and death. Hope for the future is implied as the motivation for their transformation. Everything else is just details.
I began to pay attention to how often Faith, Hope, and Love show up as related themes, especially in Paul’s writing, and the scrap paper I was using soon filled up. To Paul, this was clearly the essence of Christianity, and a well-recognized message in the early church. Scholars in the modern world often call these the theological virtues (as opposed to moral virtues which any man can cultivate and exercise) because they come only from God. Faith, hope, and love are purely a gift of God’s grace. To the early church they were the new guidelines for living as Christ-followers, in sharp contrast to the Law the Jews had followed for centuries.
From a practical perspective, Paul’s repeated theme reminds me of the values we often repeat in our own Church Family, the familiar phrases that call us back into focus, reinforce why we are here, help us do the hard things. We put our trust in a real and powerful God, and live out that faith with our choices in the everyday, even when it is hard and lonely. We build relationships as real people who refuse to wear masks, willing to lay up grace and kindness because God first loved us. We do this because of our hope– in the Christ who promised to come back for us, in the eternal Home that waits for us, in the resurrection of this faltering clay body. All of us wear Faith, Hope, Love around our necks and bind them to our hearts– it is what makes us who we are.
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“Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.”
(Ephesians 4:2-6)
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“You can do this thing — because you were made to do hard and holy things.
You are always enough — because You have Jesus and He is always enough.
You don’t have to get it perfect — you just have to get back up and keep going.”
(Ann VosKamo)