The Products of Faith, Hope, Love (1 Thessalonians 1:1-3)                                              2010. 01. 10                                  Pastor Edward Cheng

We’re all familiar with having mottoes, either at home or at work or school—these sayings that summarize what’s most important to us.  Paul seems to have three mottoes, three fundamentals for the Christian community.  Saying that these three things, faith, hope, and love, are the most important for Christians means leaving out a lot of things: peace, obedience, holiness, kindness, self-control, etc.  Not that these things aren’t important, but faith, hope and love seem to rise above the rest as being the most fundamental, throughout the New Testament (see 1 Cor. 13:13, Col. 1:4-5, Gal. 5:5-6, 1 Thess. 5:8, Heb. 10:22-24, and today’s passage, 1 Thess. 1:3).  Why are these three the highest values in the Christian life?  I would suggest that there are three reasons why faith, hope, and love are the things that we need to meditate on and strive for above the rest.

First, faith, hope, and love encompass all of time—like the three ghosts of the Christmas Carol, representing Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future.  Faith represents Christian Past—the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  When Paul speaks of faith, it is something that we have in the present, but it is also rooted in the historical work of Jesus.  What we do here today, we do because of what Jesus did.  Our faith is not just a feel-good philosophy; it is based on the fact that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again, and that people who knew him before he died also witnessed him resurrected. 

Love represents Christian Present.  We are governed by love now.  It starts by understanding God’s loving us, and then continues with our loving God, and then with our loving each other.  Love should dominate all our interactions today.  Jesus even prayed that all his followers would love each other, because that would mark them as God’s children (John 17).

Obviously, hope is Christian Future.  This is not a generic hope that “everything will be okay.”  Christian hope is rooted in something that will happen in history—Jesus is going to come back.  We need to be living constantly with this expectation.  Everything will be okay because Jesus is coming back.  In fact, that’s one of the major themes of 1 Thessalonians.  Every chapter ends with a mention of Jesus’ return. 

The second reason that faith, hope, and love are most important is that all three have present effects.  1 Thess. 1:3 mentions “your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope.”  In a literal translation, those three phrases are actually “work of faith, labor of love, and endurance of hope.”  The word for “work” in the first phrase is a generic word for deeds, or action.  Faith is rooted in an historical act, but it results in works in our lives right now, or it should.  Salvation is free and not earned by us, but genuine salvation should change us and transform our lives—not necessarily overnight, but it should still be an observable process.  The present component of the second phrase is “labor,” labor that involves sweat, sacrifice, and commitment.  Love, right now, should cause us to give to each other and serve one another.  We ought to have a love for the Church (the universal church), and for our own church, and to serve the church and the people in it out of love.  This love also results in labor for people outside the church, because those without the gospel are in trouble.  The third component, “endurance,” is important because it means that hope in the future gives us the ability today to keep going in the face of suffering and obstacles.  We know that Jesus is coming back, and that as Christians, we have a sure reward: to be with the Lord, in heaven. 

The third reason why faith, hope, and love are most important is because all three are wrapped up in Jesus Christ.  Our faith is in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the one person in history who died for us.  Love is epitomized in Jesus Christ, who actually sweat blood for us.  And finally, our hope is completely wrapped up in the return of Jesus, who has gone to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house (John 14:1-3). 

Faith, hope, and love: past, present, and future, all with present effects, all having to do with Jesus Christ.  This is why Paul has determined that these three rise above the rest: they encapsulate everything that we do.  Our prayer is that we would learn to examine ourselves to see if we have those present effects, and to meditate on Jesus—on what he’s done, on how he prompts us to love now, and on how he’s coming to take us home.