That leads to our last point, which is where Paul himself is going. He has talked about the importance of love and the nature of love. And if we really understand these two things, it follows that love never fails. All these other things he mentions are going to fail. Prophecies will cease. Tongues will be stilled. Knowledge will pass away. All these things are partial. But love will not pass away. He concludes this chapter by saying that faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love. Even when our faith falters and our hope disappears for a season, the love of God for us in Christ abides.
Even the disciples’ faith and hope disappeared. When Jesus died on the cross, that just did not fit their idea of what was supposed to happen. And when the disciples came to Thomas after they had seen the resurrected Lord, and he had not, he told them he would not believe it unless he had physical proof of putting his hand in Jesus’ side and his fingers in the nail prints of Jesus’ hands. For a time, we could say that the disciples’ faith died until Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection.
Hope died, too. My favorite example of that is the Emmaus disciples who unknowingly walked with Jesus as they made their way home after the crucifixion. They had heard reports that Jesus was alive, but they had not seen Him and did not have hope. When the Lord Himself came to them along the way and asked why the disciples were so sad, they told Him the story about Jesus. They went on to say that they had hoped Jesus was the one who was going to redeem Israel. That is what they were hoping for, but now their hope was gone.
Even though faith and hope seemed to be largely absent at the crucifixion, one thing that did not die was love. The disciples still loved Him. Mary is the great example of that. Mary, who loved Him almost to the point of distraction, had no doubt that He was dead. All she had in mind when she went to the tomb that Easter Sunday morning was the body. She did not expect to see Jesus alive. She just wanted to attend to the body because she loved Him. She did not have any hope that there was going to be anything like a resurrection.
When Jesus appeared to her she thought He was the gardener. She asked Him where Jesus’ body was so that she could take it away. She was offering to do the impossible. It was the body of a full-grown man, wrapped up in a 100 pounds of spices. She could not have moved that body no matter how hard she had tried. But she was not thinking about that. She loved Jesus, and that is all she was thinking about. And when Jesus spoke her name and she recognized who it was, faith and hope revived. And as the story of the resurrection passed to the company of the disciples, all of them had their faith and hope revived as well, chiefly because of love.
Do you really know that love? Have you experienced something of the love of Jesus Christ? Can you truly say that you love Him? Years ago a preacher was preaching on our love for Christ. Afterwards, a little girl in the congregation came up to him and said, “I don’t know that I really can say that I love Jesus. How can I love Him?”
He had very wise words: “When you go home, I just want you to keep repeating over and over, ‘Jesus loves me.’ Do you know that little song that starts that way?” She said that she did.
“Well,” he said, “You keep repeating that over and over. And you keep thinking about that: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’ ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’”
And so the little girl did that. Next week, when she came back, she told the preacher, “You know, I went home, and I kept saying that over and over again: ‘Jesus loves me.’ ‘Jesus loves me.’ And, you know, the first thing I discovered was that I had begun to love Him, too.”
That is the way God shows His love towards us. As Paul expressed it in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It is by understanding that Jesus loves you like this that makes you begin to love Him. Where that has happened, salvation has flooded into your heart. You have been made alive, and faith, and hope, and love remain forevermore.
