Trinity 20 – 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Faith, hope and love

As he begins his letters to the Thessalonians, Paul, praises the people in Thessalonica with these words.

We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by Faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance prompted by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Elsewhere, Paul writes, to the people in Corinth, ‘And now these three remain: Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’

Faith, hope and love.

This evening I thought we would just spend a couple of moments thinking about these three words, Faith, hope, love, as examples of our how we live out our Christian faith, vital ingredients on our journey of faith.

So let us begin with faith.

At every service, we affirm our believe, our faith in God, and in a nutshell, we affirm that we believe in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist, in God the Son who took our human nature, died for us and rose again, and in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world.

This is our faith, we believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But it may come as a bit of a surprise, when we hear the Christian faith summarised like this, there is little emphasis on rules and regulations, conditions of membership, do this, do that, do the other, don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other.

After all, there is a lot in the bible about rules and regulations, the first 5 books of the Old Testament are referred to as the law, the law is a key player in the bible and yet even in the baptism service there is no signing allegiance to it.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said he came to fulfil the law and the prophets, Jesus makes it clear that we are to live by the law, but it is not so much out of a sense of duty or religiosity that we keep the law, we keep the law because we have been transformed through becoming aware of God’s amazing love for us.

We keep the law, because of our faith, keeping the law is the outworking of our faith.

In our bible reading today, Paul writes ‘We continually remember before our God and father, your work produced by faith …’

In Hebrews we are given the following description of faith, which I think many of us might be able to relate to

‘Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see.’

There is certainty in this statement, but there is also that element of uncertainty. Faith is about accepting, that we don’t always have all the answers, after all, God is the creator of the whole universe and everything in it, for us to understand everything about God, would be to put us on a parallel with God, and I for one, certainly wouldn’t want that level of responsibility.

And so we live by faith – being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see.

And so what about Hope, what is it that we hope for.

To quote from Paul – ‘…. And your endurance prompted by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Our hope is in Jesus Christ, who as we will say as we affirm our faith, took on our human nature, died for us and rose again.

Sometimes when we use the word ‘hope’, we mean that we would simply like for something to happen,

I hope my football team will win next week …. for example.

What we are really saying is that it would be good if happened, but at the end of the day it’s not that important. At other times our ‘hoping’ something will happen is more of a strong desire … we could go on living if it didn’t happen, but life would be much better for us if it did.

And at other times, our ‘hope’ is life-critical – or after-life critical in the context of life everlasting.

Whilst these would all be appropriate uses for the term hope.

The hope that we are talking about in the Christian journey, the hope that we have in Christ, is a noun, and not a verb.

As insignificant as that might seem, remembering that hope is a ‘thing’ that is given to us and not a thing that we can muster up or do makes all the difference.

The hope that we have in Christ is a provision of God, not from us or anyone else.

Our hope is in Jesus Christ, who through his death and resurrection, has cleansed us from our sins, and promises us life everlasting.

This is an eternal hope, a hope that endures, even when life in this world is difficult.

John 3:16 says:

‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

In Jesus, we see the ultimate gift of love, Gods love extended to all humanity and the whole of creation. A love for the whole world, which he created in the very beginning.

In Ephesians, Paul writes ‘I pray, that you being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’

Gods love for us is immeasurable … and we see that most powerfully through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Love encapsulates the law, when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he summarises the whole law into two commandments.

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.’

Faith, hope and Love, but the greatest of these is love.

As we go from this place tonight, may we do so with faith, hope and love in our hearts and minds, as we seek to live our out Christian faith in our everyday lives. Amen