Faith, Hope, and Love
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Big Idea
Big Idea
Tension: What is the benefit of studying faith, hope, and love at Advent?
Resolution: Because doing so has the potential to refresh our motivation in the Christian life.
Theological Idea: By studying faith, hope, and love at Advent, we can refresh our motivation to serve Christ.
Homiletical Idea: The birth of Christ can refresh our faith, hope, and love for Jesus and, therefore, strengthen our Christian walk.
Introduction - A long time agl, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a man named Augustine. And Augustine was probalby one of teh smartest poeple who ahs ever lived, and if you were to ask me what one book should I try to read in the next year, I would tell you you should read Augustine’s autobiography, his Confessions. But I digress. A man named Lawrence, or “Laurentius”, wrote an email, er, letter to Augustine to ask him for some wisdom. He wanted a handbook from Augustine detailing all the ins and outs of Christian faith, and helping him to fight against heresies. So if you and I were to write to R.C. Sproul, or TIm Keller, or John Piper and ask them, “Okay, send me everything I need to know about the CHristian faith,” we probably would expect that they would write us back like whole bookshelves. But instead, Augustine wrote a short litt,e maybe 150 page book called, “faith hope and love.” And in this little book he said that if someone could master faith, hope, and love they would know the most important things about the Christian faith. So, and I think the reasons why will become apparent, we wanted to spend some time this advent season thinking about, and considering faith, hope, and love.
Where do they show up:
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel,
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
What are faith, hope, and love?
These three are the primary affections or postures of the heart in Christian faith. These three occur together a surprising amoutn of times in Scripture.
What is faith? Faith is, in the words of Hebrews, the “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1) In other words, faith is a confidence, a surety, a certainty that what I have hoped in is true. In other words, faith is a posture, a disposition of the will where we take hold of Christ, rest in him, and trust in him. Faith is a wholehearted taking hold of Christ, it is putting all your chips in on him, it is a wholehearted trust in him.
According to Romans 5:3-5, we see that hope does not put us to shame. Hope is our anticipation or longing for the things that God has given us, which gives us the ability to rejoice in our sufferings. So while faith is whole hearted trust that produces confidence, hope is a eager anticipation or longing or yearning that produces joy.
Finally, according to 1 John 4:7-21, our love is how we mirror God’s kindness and affection towards us back towards God, and, out of the overflow of that, towards others. In other words, our love for God is a heartfelt affection or pleasure or desire towards God, which should produce works of kindness and affection for others.
Faith, hope, and love are all mutually dependent. So you could argue from Colossians 1:4-5, that hope is the basis for both faith and love. You could argue from Romans 5:1-5 that love is the basis for hope and faith. You could argue from Ephesians 2:8-9 that faith is the first. I believe when you and I are saved, God gives us the seeds of all three at once. So Romans 5 tells us that God has poured his love into our hearts, and 1 Peter 1:3 tells us we have been born again to a living hope, and Ephesians 2:8 tells us that by grace we have been saved.
These three are the primary emotions of hte Christian faith which motivate all our actions in the Chrisitan life.
Won’t this lead to a kind of emotionalism?
Now, maybe you’re hearing me say this, and you’re saying, “listen Matt, I think you could pretty easily hear everythign you’re say8ing and it could be misunderstood and misapplied.” So maybe some of you grew up in a church tradition which overemphasized the emotions in teh Christian faith. And you would come to church and they’d tell you to love Jesus, and maybe even resort to things that woudl giv eyou a superficial emotional high. And the result of that would be twofold, first, inevitably, youy would come down from that emotional high and you would feel so low and you would wonder fi your faith was ever genuine in the first place, and you’d feel bitter, and burnt out and lower than you’d ever felt. Second, because you saw everyone else reacting and responding with a superficial emotional high, you responding by trying to pretend that you were feeling something you ewren’t. All the while you feel like a fraud because you know that the way you’re acting is not the way you’re feeling. And maybe you’re here today and that’s kind of been your default assumption all your life.
And I’m going to tell you something that has the potential to be incredibly freeing for you today, and it might just giv eyou eternal life. You are not saved by the quality of your faith, you are saved by the object of your faith. It is true, there is a difference between genuine faith and false faith. True faith will always produce fruit, it will always work through love. But what saves about faith is not how strong it is, but where it is placed. How much faith does it take to be saved? the faith of a mustard seed. What gives confidence about hope is not that you can conjure up some miraculous superpower. Hope produces joy because it is placed in one who will not let us down. Love overflows in good works towards others because it responds to God’s love for us.
Why isn’t faith, hope, and love in myself good enough?
Now maybe you’re here, and you say, “I have faith, hope, and love.” In fact, I am full of faith, hope, and love. I am the king of it. But it’s not in God, it’s in myself. And maybe you’re hearing me say this, and you’re saying, ultimately Matt, the only one that I can really trust, the only one that I can really love, the only one I can really hope in is myself.
And if that’s you, I suspect, on the one hand, that is because you have been let down so many times, that you have a hard time trusting anyone else. So maybe you had a parent who was absent, or a pastor or shepherd who did you wrong, or maybe there was someone who you really trusted, and they let you down. And probably, if that’s the case, you feel like you would have a hard time trusting God. And maybe you respond to that by saying, “Well, I’m just not going to trust anyone else. I’m going to hold my heart back, I’m not going to put my faith in anyone, I’m not going to hope in anything else, and I will save my ultimate love for myself.”
To which I would gently respond, “You’re assuming that you are less likelly to let you down than God is.” And I would also gently point out-you know that’s not true, don’t you? I mean, let’s be honest, the more ultimately we trust in ourselves, the less trustworthy we find ourselves to be. The more ultimately we hope in ourselves, the more we let ourselves down. The more ultimately we love ourselves, the less lovely we turn out to be.
When God says in Ps 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God,” or Jesus says in Matthew 11, “Come to me all who are heavy laden and I will giv eyou rest,” or the Psalmist says in Ps 43:5, “Oh my soul, put your hope in God,” it means we are akcnolweding that he is God we are not. He can give rest, we cannot. He is hopeworthy, he is trustworthy, he is lovely. It means that we say, “My ultimate hope, my ultimate faith, my ultimate love is in Christ-not myself.”
Why do they matter so much? Now maybe you say, “Okay, that’s fine Matt, but why do we need to talk about these things so much, I mean, does it really matter?”
It is biblical.
Because Paul wants us to know what our hope is (Eph 1:18)
It does because there is no other appropriate way by which we can respond to waht God has done for us. Take just a few of these verses:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Or, we might say, in the words of Revelation, that he is worthy. He is worthy of your faith, he is worthy of your hope, he is worthy of your love.
It gives us joy inexpressible (1 Pet 1:8-9). This is the remarkable truth. To have faith in Christ, to have hope in Christ, to have love for Christ, gives us inexpressible joy. And isn’t that superior to the faith, hope, and love of this fallen world? This is the kind of hope that will give us joy in the midst of sorrow.
Finally, faith, hope, and love are, I think, at the root of any obedience of faith. Cf. Heb 6:10-12
How can I grow in them?
So how do I grow in faith, hope, and love, I mean, it’s not like I can flip a switch and be more loving and more faithful and more hopeful.
I think there are many ways to grow in faith, hope, and love, but here is what all of them will have - beholding the glory of Christ. (2 Cor 3:18; Rom 12:1-2). Anything that brings us into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, ought to help us grow in faith, hope, and love.
Christianity regularly advances what we might call an indirect strategy when it comes to Christian growth. It is counter intuitive. Because if you want someone to love somebody else, just tell them to love that person. But the reality that doesn’t work, because nothing has changed in your heart. If you want to be a more loving person, your heart has to change. And that only comes as you come increasingly into contact with jesus.
Let me give an example. Imagine you go to a park....
Why advent? Because Advent gives us a fresh taste, in all the hymns, the Scripture readings, the traditgions, to experience afresh, the behold anew, the story of the gospel. There is something about htis time of year that brings us into a fresh experience of the person and work of Jesus Christ. As we anticipate anew the coming of Christ, that makes us of good cheer-that multiplies our faith, hope, an dlove for our Lord.
But won’t this diminish the good works of teh cross?
App
Your faith is only as good as the one you put it in
Faith hope and love only come as we meditate and think about al lthat God has given me
Faith hope and love for Christ give me the power to resist sin and grow in holiness
God has given me this season as a particular time to grow in Christ through the readings, the hymns, teh tradtiions, to fix my eyes on Christ in a paritcular and peculiar way.
Let yourself anticipate Christmas.
