FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE
1 Thessalonians 5: 4-11; 1: 2, 3
You will notice in each of these passages there is a reference to faith, hope and love. These three things are basic characteristics, we might even say principles, of the Christian position. They would be what would mark a Christian however dark and difficult the days may be. We can increase in our faith, hope and love. They are also capable of being suppressed. Faith may become dulled, we may lose our hope and joy, and we may be lacking in love. These things each of us would know something of in our varied histories. I believe the Lord may encourage us now that they may increase with us as using them. Each believer has been given a measure of faith, and hope, and love. The gospel has brought that to us. Once we had no hope. May the sense that we were once without God, without Christ and without hope in the world, enhance the glad tidings to us in all its wealth and blessedness that our faith and hope should be in God, 1 Pet 1: 21. How God has come on to the view of the believer, changing his outlook on this world and his circumstances. Peter was writing to people who would have much to discourage them. We think we are in difficult times, but I think they were in even more difficult times, chased out of their country into foreign soil. Peter was writing to encourage them, that their faith and their hope might be in God. He is the great spring and source of these three things. They flow from God’s heart of love and He has given them to us richly. Faith really reacts to divine light. Light comes into the soul and faith answers to the light. Growth and prosperity flow from that. “Abraham, being called, obeyed” (Heb 11: 8), and you see what a great line of things he came into. He moved in answer to the call of God, and he came into great wealth, and God loved to speak to him. Abraham’s faith was nourished by divine speaking. God spoke to him again and called to him a second time, Gen 22: 15.
In Thessalonians Paul rejoiced as seeing the evidences of faith, hope and love among them. So here I would use this passage to speak about our individual enjoyment and expression of these features. Paul would say that we have all been given it. How are we using it? There were with the Thessalonians certain doubts and fears, and they may come into our minds too. The enemy is ever active to sow tares among the wheat, bringing in doubts as to the truth, doubts as to the verity of Christ’s place above, and doubts as to the truth of the assembly working here in a broken day. Paul is bringing home to them the need for using faith, he says, “putting on the breastplate of faith and love”, put it on to guard our affections. You cannot speak about the breastplate without thinking of Exodus 28. There the breastplate of judgment was on the heart of the great high priest, set with the names of the children of Israel. What a strength to faith that is, to think of our place on the heart of Christ; we have a place in the heart of Christ that is unchanging. Those stones were set there never to be removed, nor to lose their shining. Faith would connect very quickly with that, that we have a place in the heart of Jesus above. Think of Him saying to His disciples, “I go to prepare you a place ... I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”, John 14: 2, 3.
That is a great armour against what may be coming in to deflect our affections. He says, “putting on the breastplate of faith and love”. It means you have it within your power to put it on. How beautifully these things are bound together so often in the Scriptures, “faith and love”, the one leads into the other. Faith is a very fine thing. In Romans it says, “the righteousness of faith speaks thus” (Rom 10: 6); it does not entertain doubts nor does it spread anything among the saints that would discourage them. It directs the heart to another Source and another world altogether. Look at the language of faith in Hebrews 11, in those persons as they looked for a city. It says about those persons that they died in faith. What a fine way to finish! It is very instructive that there is a whole chapter given to each of these two things. Hebrews 11 given over to faith, 1 Corinthians 13 given over to love, that we may appreciate those features, that we may enshrine them, that we may use them as a breastplate. A breastplate or shield, as it speaks of it elsewhere, can quench the wicked darts of the devil, Eph 6: 16. Faith would not entertain things that would divert our affections from Christ. It would immediately rise up like a weapon the believer has against doubts, or what would come in to discourage and spoil our affections for Christ, the heavenly, glorious Man. Paul is encouraging them to use it.
Then he says, “and as helmet the hope of salvation”. Hope is always looking ahead and faith makes it real. Scripture says that “faith is the substantiating of things hoped for”, Heb 11: 1. The hope that we are speaking of is not like the hope that men may have, of hoping something will happen. The hope that we are speaking of is something that is centred in Christ above, “Christ Jesus our hope”, 1 Tim 1: 1. It is in a Person. The Spirit would direct our hearts to what is centred firmly in the Man who has been exalted above. Hope would find nothing here. What we hope for is future, and yet faith gives us the present enjoyment of it. We hope soon to be with Christ, but by faith we know something of the experience of Him being with us in our present circumstances. Hope is nourished as room is made for the Spirit. Mr Darby says—
O bright and blessed hope!
When shall it be
That we His face, long loved,
Revealed shall see? (Hymn 160)
What a hope the believer has! It is not that things will get better here; but everything is secured there, and our portion is secured in Him where He is. We are waiting the time when we shall be in the fulness and blessedness of what that hope is. So there is a helmet to put on to guard our minds and thoughts from anything that would becloud that hope. Peter speaks of some saying that the Lord is delaying, 2 Pet 3: 9. Now hope would put a helmet on against that. We do not say the Lord is delaying as men account of delaying, but He is long-suffering. Hope already in the heart of the believer links us with a fixed condition centred in Christ above where He is. Now Paul is showing us here how this is to affect us individually. Each of us is to be exercising what has been given us in the way of faith, and hope, and love.
Now it speaks in these other passages of how it works out in the local position. Paul, in speaking about it in chapter 1 of 1 Thessalonians, refers to their “work of faith, and labour of love, and enduring constancy of hope”. What a fine atmosphere in the local meeting. As difficulties arise, they are met by the work of faith. We serve one another in faith. Souls may get discouraged, but we are not to lose sight of them. You may say, There are not many there tonight, it is hardly worth going to the meeting. The work of faith would be that you would be there, bringing your own contribution to enrich the local position, where we have persons working together in faith, hope and love. See how these things work together! Faith enables a labour of love to go on. You may say there is not much encouragement; you may feel there is not much appreciation for what you do. Well, “the work of faith, and labour of love” does not cease because there is not much response to it.
Paul’s service to Corinth was a great “work of faith, and labour of love, and enduring constancy of hope”. You can see these things blending in the apostle’s labour, indeed to the Thessalonians, but to Corinth especially when there was not much to encourage. You think of him labouring there among them those eighteen months. The Lord had told him there was much people in that city. He might have said many nights, I wonder where they are, I am not seeing them, but he went on working in faith. That is how we would carry one another, working in faith, so that what is there will be nurtured and grow by the labour of love. So may we be encouraged to work in faith. Work without faith will not stand, but the work of faith will bear fruits. So Paul was rejoicing in seeing it among these Thessalonians, young Christians, but their work was in faith and their labour was in love and enduring constancy of hope.
I think faith looks at things in a way that would allow the Spirit to come in and bring clarity in our judgments, and give us power in the resolving of difficult matters. In Galatia, the liberty of the Spirit was hindered through the lack of faith. They were beginning to fall back on themselves and how men would do things. Paul has to bring them up to their true position, “ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”, Gal 3: 26. So here he is encouraging them as it says, “For we, by the Spirit, on the principle of faith, await the hope of righteousness”. How the Spirit delights in the midst of difficult conditions to bring home to us in a real and living way the light and blessedness of another day, to sustain the saints through this whole dispensation; “the hope of righteousness”, alluding, no doubt, to the hour when all things will be put right, looking on to the time when He who should be reigning now will reign in all the glory and blessedness of His person. Unrighteousness prevails here, but the hope of righteousness looks on to His kingdom, when He will shine in His glory, and He will not shine alone. As He appears, the saints will be with Him. Hope would make that day very real to our hearts amidst these difficult times that we are in. It includes the thought that those who have been persecuted here will then be reigning with Him in that day. The measure in which “the hope of righteousness” is embraced in our affections means it will prevail in the local company today, as we give place to the Spirit. He is a divine Person here to sustain faith, hope and love, and to maintain us in relation to another world of which Christ is the centre. May we value the Spirit’s service to maintain in the hearts of believers now what will prevail in that day to come when Christ will reign, and reign with His saints.
May these things operating in the local company help us so that no elements that would bring the saints into bondage are allowed, but that there may be in all our gatherings, in the exercise by the Spirit of faith, hope and love, an increase in the enjoyment of our true position as sons, to enjoy the liberty that divine grace has called us into, “faith working through love”. The great spring of all these things is love, which the Spirit has shed abroad in the heart of the believer. The question used to be often raised. What is your stock of love? I believe it can be raised about each of these things. What is your stock of faith, of hope, and of love? There should be a supply of it, a reservoir of it, as it were, in the heart of the believer, but too in the local company. So that as questions come up there is someone able to bring in a word of faith, a word of hope and love that would meet every situation. I believe they are part of the divine furnishings that have been given to us.
In Colossians Paul says, “having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus”, not faith in themselves, but faith in the exalted Man, the Man who has been rejected, disowned, disallowed in this world. As Peter says, “the stone which the builders cast away as worthless, this is become head of the corner”, 1 Pet 2: 7. That is where our faith is, in Him, where He is, the anointed Man, “faith in Christ Jesus”. We may be in circumstances where we are feeling the reproach, but our faith is in Christ Jesus. As God has exalted Him the saints too will be honoured in bodies of glory. Difficulties that come in are met in this fine way by “faith in Christ Jesus”. And then he says, “the love which ye have towards all the saints”. Think of these expanded affections, not only love for God and love for Christ, but love for the brethren. That is how these things operate, they operate in the circle of the local company. We would embrace all in our hearts. There is nothing sectarian or parochial about that, “the love which ye have towards all the saints”.
You can see the believers in Colossians were being expanded into the wealth and glory of the inheritance. They were overcomers, they had overcome the pressures and sorrows of the wilderness and the trials of the desert. Their life was hid with the Christ in God (Col 3: 3), and from that realm, having enjoyed divine affections, they themselves were coming out in love towards all the saints, “on account of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens”. Things are passing here, but the hope of our eternal home gives us to be active now in faith and love. It brings you back to Hebrews 11, where you can see faith substantiating the hope that was before them and enabling them to endure. It is a sure blessed hope indeed that nothing of time or man or breakdown can ever alter. May the blessedness of it be increasingly in our affections, to enable us to labour in faith and love on account of the great Centre in which our faith is placed, “faith in Christ Jesus, and the love which ye have towards all the saints”.
Well Paul says, “Follow after love”, follow after it, as if it is the great leader in the believer’s life, that he has come to know love. In the coming day, when hope is realised, faith and hope shall cease, but then love will be enjoyed without alloy. There will be nothing to divert or discourage it. In the meantime we are to, “Follow after love, and be emulous of spiritual manifestations, but rather that ye may prophesy”. I believe the working of faith and hope and love would make room for greater spiritual manifestations among us, enabling our hearts to expand into the glory and blessedness of our heavenly position making room for the prophetic word.
You think of Caleb and Joshua in Numbers 13 and 14, when the people were despising the good land, and you can see there something of faith, and hope, and love in these two men; it enabled them to bring in a word of prophecy. Amidst all the confusion and voices that were being raised Caleb says, “If Jehovah delight in us, he will bring us into this land”, Num 14: 8. Think of the people wanting to go back to Egypt, but Caleb says, it “is a very, very good land” Num 14: 7. There was a man of faith, and hope, and love, encouraging the saints to go forward. So as these things are made room for by us individually and collectively, I believe the prophetic speaking will be more marked as linking our hearts with the glory and blessedness of our heavenly calling, encouraging us through the days of darkness until that day when we see Him in His glory. Then we shall see, no longer through a dark glass obscurely, but face to face, 1 Cor 13: 12. Then we shall know in fulness what faith, hope, and love give us some foretaste of now. May it increase with us in its preciousness, for His Name’s sake.
ROTHERHAM
4th March 1995
