And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love (I Cor 13:13). Why is love the greatest?
When a Farmer sows his seed, he shows faith. While he waits for it, he has hope. But the greatest time of the farmer’s year is when he can reap and then joyfully share in abundant harvest, and that is love. Faith and hope have fulfilled themselves in love.
Love created the world and sustains it. Because of love God keeps the human race going.
Faith is believing what you cannot see. When we see face to face there will be no more need for faith. Hope will have gone when Jesus comes. Love alone will remain. That is what the kingdom of God is all about. It’s about what remains when faith and hope have passed. Love is essentially spiritual. The kingdom is not just about bashing oppressors. It is not sensual or hedonistic enjoyment. “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).
The greatest kind of love
A step further: if love is the greatest, what is the greatest kind of love? Jesus in John 15:12-14 tells us that it is: a) loving like Jesus has loved; b) sacrificing our lives, following his example; c) doing what he commands us.
I like a phrase that Judah uses in Genesis 44:30. Speaking of the relationship between his father Jacob and his young brother, Benjamin, he says that his father’s life is “closely bound up with the boy’s life.” That is great love. And I am sure we are meant to see an allegory in this, for God’s life is closely bound up with the life of His Son. Which is why the Son said, “I and my Father are one.” It’s nothing to do with a trinity of persons in a single God: it is simply and deeply the oneness and the wonder of pure sacrificial love.
Piercing the heart of God
I am sure you will recall Zechariah 12:10. When Jesus returns to reveal himself to a partially blind Israel, God says, “They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him.” Yes, when the soldiers drove those brutal nails into the holy hands of Jesus Anointed, they were piercing the heart of God. God felt the pain. At Golgotha, the Almighty put His feelings, His deepest emotions, on the line.
God went out of His way
If almighty God does something, it is because He chooses to do it. God is love, and so that determines the choices of action. And although the world may look a chancy, arbitrary place, for the godly it is not. The godly see that divine wisdom, and marvelous providential planning, go through all of creation and all of life. Remember, God went out of His way to love us! Yes, even while we were, and some of us still are, His enemies! “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
The hazard of love
The emblems of bread and wine reveal God’s love. In His love, our God prepared a body. Through His Son, our God poured out His heart for you and me. Paul accepted the hazard of love, and accepted it gladly and joyfully. “For your sake we face death all day long” (Rom. 8:36). Many of us here today know what that means, and willingly accept that hazard. At this table, once we discern the Lord’s body, nothing, nothing whatsoever can separate us from God’s love in Christ.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One