Faith, Hope, And Love

And the obscure Biblical Character is Paul! (who wrote the letters to the Corinthians, everybody that voted got it right).

1 Corinthians 13:13 NKJV
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

KJV
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity

NIV
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Amplified
And so faith, hope, love abide [faith--conviction and belief respecting man's relation to God and divine things; hope--joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; love--true affection for God and man, growing out of God's love for and in us], these three; but the greatest of these is love.

We’re using a couple different versions today partially because it is such a short verse, and partially because I felt like these versions gave us a full idea of what the verse means.

Charity is later translated into love. This gives a good idea of what love could mean. It could mean giving: of yourself, of money/material items, or of time and energy. We show love by taking an interest in others, and talking to them, no matter who they are, and just generally being nice to them. It could also mean what the Amplified version says, true affection for God and man, coming from God’s love for and in us.

The chapter talks about how prophecies and tongues will fail, but love won’t (verse 8), because our prophecies aren’t always fully God, they’re partially what we know, but love is perfect. Faith, hope, and love are three things that are important for us to show, but the greatest of these is love.

In the New Year, as we try to bring ourselves ever closer to God, we need to pray that we will learn the true means of faith, hope, and love, and how to show all of them, especially love.

So this next week’s character:
-was a faithful sidekick before his friend died (but still is)
-in this story, a woman asked him for help
-he taught her how to help herself

We did talk about his friend before as a previous Obscure Biblical Character. He’s an Old Testament prophet, who doesn’t have his own book.

In His Service,
Joyce