“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:11-13 NLT
In the context of the verses we are considering today, we find that love is the essential quality required to enable the spiritual gifts to function. Paul started 1 Corinthians 13 with the thought that no matter how effective a person was in their Holy Spirit gifting, unless they loved others, anything they did, even in God’s name, would be ineffective and pointless. Love of others, true agape love, is the foundation upon which the spiritual gifts are able to function. It is the “glue” that binds believers together and enables God to bring Heaven into our earthly lives. But take away love and the whole Christian faith becomes pointless, indeed no more than a clanging bell peeling from a church tower on a Sunday morning, calling the believers to an empty void in a loveless building. There will come a day, Paul reminded the Corinthians, when the spiritual gifts they enjoyed so much would no longer be required, because once in Heaven there would be no need for them. In Heaven will be found Perfection, and Jesus Himself would eclipse any partial or incomplete experiences of the gifts. Sadly, there are some who believe the Perfect has already come in the form of the Bible, God’s Word, but how can that be possible? There is only One who is Perfect, and He is Jesus Himself. A man-made object, the Bible, even if it contains writings produced under the influence of the Holy Spirit, can never be totally perfect because it, too, only reflects God’s message in a way that is sometimes puzzling and dark.
Faith, Hope, and Love
There are three eternal qualities that will last forever, even surviving the journey across the Great Divide, death itself. They are faith, hope and love, Paul wrote, and although essential to us pilgrims, they are qualities despised and ridiculed by the secular people around us, who have been prevented from seeing the truth that emanates from Jesus Himself. The devil hates these three qualities, and he will do everything he can to destroy and disrupt, because he knows that once a believer applies them in their lives, he has lost them forever.
Faith we know everything about, because it is through faith that we have become believers. “A biblical definition of faith reaches beyond mere belief—the simple acknowledgement that God exists—into the realm of trust. Genuine faith involves abandoning all human reliance on self-efforts and placing total dependence upon God’s character, His actions, and His promises, as revealed in His Word” (quote from Gotquestions.org). We all know the verse in Hebrews 11:6, “And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him”. We pilgrims have that faith, I know, because we are believers in Jesus, who died in our place as a punishment for our sins. How can we ever thank Him for that? But our faith extends further as we apply God’s promises in our lives. This world will throw us many situations that threaten to overwhelm us, but through our faith in God, we are overcomers, applying it and affirming that He is who He said He is.
Dear Father God. Many will ridicule and even attempt to turn us away from You, but we thank You that through Jesus, we have the strength and determination to be overcomers and stay faithful to You. We declare that we have the faith we need to know that You are who You say You are, and we stand on that foundation today and every day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 