Faith, Hope, and Love. Three Treasures from Above.

What if the Christian life is simpler—and richer—than performance, pressure, and spiritual résumé-building? We open 1 Corinthians 13:8–13 and trace a clear line: faith and hope matter deeply for life right now, but love is the only thing that never ends. Along the way, we challenge the drift toward religious hustle and recenter on relationship with Jesus, where dependence replaces display and grace outpowers grit.

We look at how Corinth elevated gifts like tongues, prophecy, and knowledge into markers of status—and why Paul calls them “in part.” Gifts are temporary containers for God’s work; love is the work. From there we sharpen practical definitions you can live: faith as confidence in Jesus alone, hope as expectant trust in His promises amid chaos, and love as delighted affection for God that overflows to people. We unpack the “already and not yet” of the Christian life—fully adopted and seated with Christ now, yet still maturing into what we already are. That tension reframes growth: not stricter rule-keeping, but deeper relationship.

You’ll hear how grace fuels real change, including freedom from numbing substitutes. Where alcohol and performance promise relief, Jesus offers healing. We walk through five anchor texts (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Peter, Colossians) that thread faith, hope, and love into daily work, endurance, and community. Expect a call away from cultural religion toward humble trust, eager waiting, and steady presence with God—because love never fails, and that’s the life we were made to live.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who’s weary of performance, and leave a review with one takeaway you’re putting into practice this week.

Transcript

Faith, Hope, and Love Framed

SPEAKER_01 0:27

We are going to be studying 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 8 through 13. So this is our third week in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and our 23rd week studying the book of 1 Corinthians altogether. And we're going to be going straight through as we always do. But today, the title of today's sermon is Faith, Hope, and Love, Three Treasures from Above. Right? Sounds like a cute poem you learn in kindergarten. Awana class. So Faith, Hope, and Love. We hear those words all the time, don't we? I saw I was at yesterday, I was in the airport, and a lady's t-shirt said faith, hope, and love. And I almost stopped her to say, hey, I'm going to teach about that tomorrow. But that would have been really weird. But I so I didn't. Okay. What is your Christian life focused on? What do you really want more of? What we're going to learn today is that all we need to really focus on is faith, hope, and love. But we're going to learn about what those things are. Because those that all sounds really like Christianese, right? You go to church, you hear about faith, hope, and love, and they seem like these religious terms. And it might sound religious, but it's really not. Faith, hope, and love are the exact opposite of religion. Because faith, hope, and love are all based, they're all relationship terms. So you have religion and you have relationship. We hate religion. We love relationship. We love Jesus. We love being in a relationship with God. Christianity, the Bible, is all about relationship with God, and it is not about religion. It's a total misconception in the world to think that what we're what we're teaching here, what we talk about, is religion. Because you know why? Religion is all about what you do. When someone becomes religious, it's what can I do to impress God, to please God, to make God happy. Well, I've been baptized, I take communion, I help old ladies across the street, I give money, I do all the things that my granny told me I was supposed to do to be a religious person. And because of those things I do, I think maybe I might have a little bit of confidence that I'm accepted by God, but that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says people who try to impress God never impress God. You can't. He says, All our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. In other words, the harder you try to impress God, the least, the less you will impress God. Because no one can impress God except one time one dude came and he lived a perfect life, and God literally ripped open heaven, he split heaven, and he said, This is my beloved son, in him I am well pleased, meaning I'm really impressed by the life Jesus lives because he's my son. He's me and I'm him, and but yet he's my son. His life impresses me. Religion wants to make church all about what you do. The church in Corinth that we've been studying this whole book, they got really distracted over uh with an over-emphasis on spiritual gifts. And so Paul had to start writing, and we started in verse 11, 12, start talking about spiritual gifts, and Paul wanted them to understand spiritual gifts. But what happens is the spiritual gifts got really weird because the church made it all about spiritual gifts. And what does that make them focus on? They were focused on themselves. What's my spiritual gift? What's my spiritual gift? And that's important, it's important to know how God's gifted you, but they were overemphasizing it. If you focus on them too much, your spiritual gifts begin to lose their effectiveness because your eyes get off of Jesus and onto yourself, and so there's no spiritual life or power in yourself, and so the spiritual gifts get neutered. They only work when we're walking in the spirit. So, how do we walk in the spirit? We keep our eyes focused on Jesus, our hearts focused on Jesus, and surrendered to his new covenant of grace in our lives. That's how to walk in the spirit. It's not some mysterious thing like you have to go to a weird prayer meeting, people have to lay hands on you, and you have to speak in another language. That's not what it looks like in the Bible to walk in the spirit. It's a heart that depends on Jesus. That's what the Holy Spirit initiates and breathes into you. He wants you to have a heart that depends on Jesus. This is kind of what I think they would have said in Corinth. Oh boy, we are so spiritual. Woo we look at us. Look at all the cool things we do for God. We we can speak in tongues, we can speak in other languages. We're gifted prophets and teachers and givers and helpers and pastors. Look at us, we are so awesome. And that's what it looks like to be super spiritual and fall into religious spirituality instead of true spirituality. Performance-focused Christianity is just religion. Look at what I can do for God. Look at what I what am I gonna do for God? If you're asking that question, it could be from a heart that says, Yeah, my life is surrendered to God, I want to do it, or it could be from a heart that says, my focus is on me and what I need to do, what I should do, instead of your focus being on Jesus. So there's two ways that we, and it all comes down to heart and relationship. You can't ever fake it with God. You can't ever fake humility. Humility is Jesus, I truly know that I need you, and I'm surrendering my life to you in faith. So Paul's gonna teach us today, and he just like he taught his church then, that they should focus on love more than their spiritual gifts, because their gifts are temporary containers of God's work, not the work itself. So the work itself is love. So just focus on the project, all the different aspects of the project, they'll come together in time. Those are the spiritual gifts, but the whole project itself is love. And so we've studied how this love is actually, we call it the greatest gift. So it's this love is a gift, the greatest gift we can receive from God is a heart of agape love. And we learned what the word agape love means last week, right? How it means the selfless, self-giving love. And so that heart that loves people selflessly is agape love. And it's a free gift that only God can give you. You can't muster up that heart, you can't give yourself that heart, you can't earn that heart or produce that heart just by saying, Well, I'm gonna be loving, I'm gonna be the most loving person I can be. You can't just decide that. You have to receive that heart from God as a gift. And who does he give that to? Whoever asks. Whoever says, God, I want to be like you. I want to be filled with your love, with your very nature. And what is that? That's the Holy Spirit. God, fill me with your Holy Spirit. Give me your Holy Spirit. So this is the practical lesson of this chapter, okay? We are children of God, and so we're gonna love like our daddy loves. That love is gonna flow through us because we're reborn as his children in his image, and he puts his image inside us, and that's called his Holy Spirit. So we'll never live happily in any other way except loving with agape love. That's the only way that you will be happy. So if you're a child of God, if you know that you've been born again and you have this relationship with God through you.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

But does it really?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Well, can I really love as God does? Love never fails. Can I you can do nothing without me, Jesus says? That will always fail. You see the difference? We either connect with God through Jesus with a humble heart of faith, or we become religious, which will always fail. Jesus will never fail. His love will never fail. So let's read our text here in 1 Corinthians. It says, Love never fails. Oh, that's where I got that. But where there are prophecies, where there are tongues, they will cease. Where there where there is knowledge, it will fail in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part will be done away with.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Okay, this is heaven, right? That's when everything is perfect.

Walking in the Spirit, Not Performance

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So when we die, we will arrive in the spiritual world. Thing is love. And then your loving response back to him. Because God is love. So he you are gonna be the object of his love. He is going to be loving on you, on you, and that will be all that matters. And his truth will swallow up everything else. All the pain, all the sorrow, all the regret depression and disappointment will be baptized in his love and in his life.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And all that's left will be his love for you, and you will experience the tasty, the most glorious thing you could ever imagine.

Love as the True Work of God

SPEAKER_01 11:05

So it's obviously happening, not so fast. We also have an opportunity to see the completeness of his love, to experience and feel his love on this planet. And that's what's so incredible here. The new covenant of grace that Jesus brought us has welcomed us into the family of God now. You are seated in heavenly in the heavenlies right now. You are seated with Christ right now. You are in Christ, you are fully adopted, and so everything that's real about heaven, about God's love and all that I just described to you, it's yours right now. You have it right now. That's your relationship with God right now. It's yours. You're like, why don't I feel it then? Well, feelings are fickle, but you have it in your spirit right now, because your spirit is linked with Jesus, inseparably linked with Jesus. And this life, so what are we doing in this life then? Why don't we just die and go to heaven since that's our real home, that's our real reality. Why do we live this life? Well, we're called to simply grow in grace, which is learning all that Jesus has done for us. We're learning how to understand what Jesus has done for us and then believe what Jesus has done for us, believing in the realities of heaven that they're for right now. That's our life of growth. In 2 Peter 3:18, he says, Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever. So growing is very important. So let's go back now to 1 Corinthians, and it says, When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, what's that? Growing. I became a man, I put away childish things. For now I see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall known know just as I also am known. So we are in this life, we are growing and maturing in grace. What does that mean? It means we are growing and maturing in relationship. We are not growing in religiosity, we're not growing in all the rules that you'll follow. You are growing in relationship. That's what the gospel says, that's what the Bible says. You grow in grace. And we grow in this relationship with Jesus now until we die, and then when we die, it's perfected. Nothing is held back from us until heaven, though, relationally. You get all of Jesus. He did that so he could give you all of himself relationally. As much as you want of him, he will give you. Oh, I wish my relationship with Jesus was closer. Well, who's that on? Not him. He is literally dying to get more in your life. It's us that hold back. We hold back. Oh, Jesus, I don't really want you to go into that little room that I keep locked, that I keep, I don't even know where I have the key anymore. I don't want you to talk to me about that. I don't want to surrender this. That hurt's too painful. This is too too much. And I'm I'm really afraid of you seeing all this part of me. He is perfect in his faithfulness to you. He is absolutely perfect. And he calls you, he's inviting you to grow in trusting in his faithfulness, which is called his grace. He wants you to trust, I am there for you. I am I'm here, I am your life. And you're not going to be happy without me. So let's do this. You and me, let's go, let's do this. The emphasis is on the perfect work of Christ and our the believer's identity in him, which is already complete and perfect in a spiritual sense. Okay, our identity is already complete in him. We are both perfect in heaven right now and we are growing on earth. It's already but not yet. Already, but not yet. And we see that in 1 John 3:2. Beloved, now we are children of God. So that's complete, right? Yet it not has not been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. So you see, already but not yet. That's the day when we die, our faith will be made sight. All right, Spurgeon quote, Spurgeon quote. He says, He it is who shall rivet our gaze, absorb our thoughts, enchain our affection, and move all our sacred passions to their highest pitch of celestial ardor. We shall see Jesus. I love him. All right, back to our text. It says, and now abide faith, hope, and love.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

These three. But the greatest why is love greater?

Love Never Fails: Eternal vs Temporary

Heaven Now and Not Yet

Growing in Grace, Not Rules

Already and Not Yet Explained

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Well, very simply, because love is eternal, love lasts forever. We won't need faith forever. We only need faith in this life. You don't need hope forever, you only need hope in this life. But love is eternal, it will go on forever and ever and ever. You will be receiving God's love and giving God love back and forth forever and ever and ever. That is our destiny. That's what's gonna happen. And you're like, well, that sounds kind of boring, dude. Have you ever been married? Do you know how incredible it is to love someone and be loved? It is amazing. And we're talking about a perfect relationship based on the love of God, and that is eternal. So that's what why love is better. But in this life, you can really simplify everything down to faith, hope, and love. So faith, what is that? It's faith in Jesus. It's not just like random faith, it's faith in the Jesus. So this means choosing to place my confidence in Jesus alone. So why am I going to go to heaven? Because Jesus died for me. Why do I have peace? Because Jesus gave it to me. Why am I not guilty of sin? Because Jesus has forgiven me. All my confidence is in him, not me. Not because I was baptized or I made good decisions or I've done this or that. It's never about that. It's only about what Jesus did. So that's what faith is. Hope is having hope in his finished work. That means living with an expectation that God will do what he said. So when you have hope, you're like, I know it looks crazy right now. I know it looks insane. I know it looks impossible, but I have hope. I have a guarantee in my heart that Jesus is gonna do what he said he's gonna do. And then love is delighting in Jesus and living with passionate affection for God through Jesus. Not passionate religion, not I'm really passionate about following other rules, but passion for God Himself. You would rather spend time with God than do anything else. You would rather delight in his word, in his presence than anything else. That is what love looks like. This describes the life of grace perfectly that we talk about every week as we put on the grace glasses in 1 Corinthians that we've been learning about. But it this doesn't describe religion. Like if you've gone to church and if you've gone to certain kinds of churches or just religious churches or traditional churches, this doesn't describe the life that they're talking about all the time because they want religion wants you to focus on yourself and what you do. Faith, hope, and love are all relational, not religious. It's the practical way we can describe a life lived with God as your father, not God as your boss, your slave driver. No, it faith, hope, and love is God as your dad, your daddy, your your daddy, your papa. So we're gonna look at five verses now to end our service that describe the life of faith, hope, and love. So first is first Thessalonians, first Thessalonians 1, 3. Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father. So he at the beginning of his letter to Thessalonians, Paul says, This church, he's so happy for them, he's so excited about them because they placed a relationship with God as their first priority. And how did he describe it? Faith, hope, and love. That's what relationship with God looks like. And it affected everything that they did. Yeah, they worked, they labored, they waited, but it was all through Jesus. It wasn't, they didn't have faith, hope, and love in religion. They had faith, hope, and love in Jesus. It's relational, not religious. All right, the second verse is the same book, 1 Thessalonians 5 8. So at the end of the book, he says, But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of religion. Wow, we see them again. Faith, hope, and love. Anyone ever know someone who needs to be more sober in their life? Yeah, it's it's around, it's out there, it's around. And here we see that relationship with Jesus is the only path to real, sober, true sober living. Relationship with Jesus. You can't accomplish it, you can't truly see the freedom of sober living through rules, it's through relationship with Jesus that you'll discover the life that is not even able to fall into that kind of temptation. It's life, it's love that Jesus sets us free with, it's his own power, it's his own life, it's his own love that he invites us. When alcohol says I can numb that pain, Jesus says I can heal that pain. When alcohol says I can I can make you feel better, Jesus says I make you better. It's a shallow ripoff of what Jesus Himself wants to give us through his grace, through his own life. And Jesus and Paul's like, you've done it. You got it, you're doing a great job, church. All right, the next verse is Galatians 5, verses 5 through 6. It says, For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love. So in our lives, we have to eagerly wait. Can you those words don't usually go together? How do you eagerly wait for something? Like it just doesn't, I don't know, those words don't make sense. But to eagerly wait to see his righteousness show up as we trust in him. So, man, do you want to see righteousness in your life? Of course you do. So do you go out there and start trying to be more righteous? No, that's not eagerly waiting. That's stressing out and trying to do it on your own. That's by the flesh. So you want to see righteousness in your life, you want to see yourself do the right thing, then eagerly wait. That means wait with purpose. I'm gonna wait upon the Lord. I'm gonna dig into spending time with, I'm gonna dig into getting out in the morning and away from people and opening up the word and spending time with Jesus. That's how you eagerly wait because you're not in charge when you're spending, when you go for a walk with someone, it's not like, all right, let's go. You you you legally stroll, you leisurely, legally, leisurely stroll with somebody, and that's like an exciting relational thing. You ever tried to walk with someone who walks too fast? It it doesn't lead towards romance or anything like that. Relax, chill out, spend time eagerly wait, and that means dig into a relationship with Jesus where you just spend time together. God has given you time in this world. Spend it with Him. You get you get a currency of time. Every day you get 24 hours, you gotta sleep for a few of them. So what are you gonna do with the rest? God says, Take me with you. I want to spend time with you. All right, our next verse is 1 Peter 1, 21 and 22. For through him we believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God, since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love. Faith, hope, and love again of the brethren. Love one another fervently with a pure heart. So again, we see faith, hope, and love working in us to produce God's love with a pure heart for each other and back for him. Again, this all points us back to relationship. Every single one of every time Paul mentions or anyone mentions faith, hope, and love, it's always about relationship. So that's what you're learning today. This is the message today. Faith, hope, and love are relational, not religious. And our last verse, Colossians chapter 1, verse 4 and 5. Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel. Wow, there's all three of them again. It's almost like we should know how this relationship with God works. And that is by grace. The gospel of grace. He calls it here in this verse the word of truth, the gospel. The gospel is all about relationship. We're gonna pound this in. It's like, why do you keep saying the same thing again? Relationship, relationship, relationship. Because we are in the deep south, right? And in the south, Christianity is a pale version of what it's intended to be. In the South, generally, you have people who say, I'm Christian. Why are you a Christian? Because I go to church. I've gone to church, I was baptized. I am a good person. I say this, I do this. And that is not what being a Christian is. According to the Bible, being a Christian is my confidence is in Jesus. I'm connected to Jesus through faith. I died with him on the cross. I rose again with him. Now he lives inside me. So the person I now I was before that was self-focused had died, and I'm not that person anymore. I'm born again, and it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live, I live by faith in him who loved me and gave himself for me. So it's not about religion, it's not about church, it's about relationship. My faith is in him, my hope is him, and he is my love. Because he loved me, I can love others in the way that he loved me. So I'm filled with a heart of love, with a spirit of love. That's what being a Christian is. And we have to stand as a bright light here in the community we live in to say, I'm not just gonna be religious. Because Jesus, you know, the only people Jesus ever got mad at were the religious people. Those are the people that he tossed over their tables and he condemned, you know, he said, you guys are not right. And he spoke, he had he had very serious words of woe to the religious people. But people who would connect with him and would would would just run to him with all their problems and all their mess and say, God, I'm a prostitute, I'm an addict, I need you, you're the only one who can save me. You're the only one who wants to even talk to me. And Jesus says, Welcome, come. I will set you free, I will heal you. He healed everyone who came to him and asked. Jesus never turned a single person away. Who needed healing? Who needed his touch? Who needed his spirit? No one. He turned not a single person away. But when you become religious, you say, I don't really need Jesus because I look how good I'm doing. I follow these rules. I got the Ten Commandments plastered up on my wall. I got pictures of Jesus, I got statues of Jesus. I am good to go. Look how religious I am. And Jesus says, Don't think that that's a relationship with me. Don't think that that's salvation. A relationship with me is humility, saying, God, I know that I have sinned. I deserve nothing, but Jesus, I accept what you are offering. That you would forgive me. I believe it. I believe you were the substitute, the sacrifice for my sin. And I will lay down my life to you. I will receive your spirit, and I'm asking you to live through me. It's not about me anymore. It's not about what I want. I'm gonna live my life for him, through him, him living through me. That's it.