June 14 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

1 Corinthians 13:9–13

Devotional

Faith, hope, and love are the Christian’s three friends on his path of life. All these three are indispensable. Love is the greatest, but without faith and hope, even love is not perfect. “These three abide,” Paul says. They also remain after death.

Faith will abide forever. Faith involves knowing and trusting. God’s church in eternity will have a perfect knowledge and a full trust. Certainly faith will be transformed into sight, but this knowing and trusting will remain forever.

Hope will abide forever. It is true that Scripture says, “Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” (Rom. 8:24). It is true that God’s child on earth is saved in hope. “In hope of eternal life, which God...promised” (Titus 1:2). God’s child lives in the expectation that this hope will be fulfilled. But there will not be any stagnancy in heaven. In this sense hope will remain in order that there will be an eternal progress from one glory to the other. “But we all...are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). To love is to hope. That will even be the case in life eternal.

Love will abide forever. Faith, hope, and love will all remain. But the greatest of these is love. Heaven without love is no heaven. This is already a reality on earth. We have a foretaste of heavenly life here on earth. If faith may believe and hope may live, then it will never be without love. Love is the heart of both, for God is love. He who has nothing of this love has nothing of God. To be without love is to be without God. Faith without love is a false faith. If we had faith even to move mountains, if we had the insight to understand all mysteries, and if we spoke the language of faith as the language of angels, and yet had not love, then we would be nothing more than sounding brass. A metal instrument can give beautiful sounds, but of itself it is cold and hard. Faith and hope can give pure sounds but one thing is lacking: love. Love is the greatest.

 

From The Everlasting Word by Frans Bakker, compiled and translated by Gerald R. Procee. Reformation Heritage Books and Free Reformed Publications, 2007. Used by permission. For further information, click here.