Bibles to first Corinthians chapter 13. And this morning, we want to look at verse 13, first Corinthians chapter 13, verse 13. And now abided faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We praise you, Lord, for the Word of God. We thank you for this chapter and all that it contains. We just pray, Father, now that as we meditate upon this final verse in this chapter, that your Holy Spirit would teach us, drive these truths deeper and deeper into our minds and hearts, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Chapter 13 is sometimes called the love chapter, and it concludes with one final statement about love, and that is that of the three preeminent Christian virtues, Paul says love is the greatest. Now, they're all great. Faith, hope, and charity are all great, and they're all abiding, but love is the greatest. So let's look at what Paul actually says in verse 13. And he begins by saying, now abideth faith, hope, charity. Now the word now speaks about now at this present moment. It implies the entire dispensation of the grace of God. It implies the here and now as opposed to the future face to face as he mentioned in the previous verse. When we shall stand before the Lord Jesus face to face, and know even as also I am known." So that's in the future when we stand before the Lord as believers face-to-face. But now, in the present life, in the here and now, abide three Christian virtues – faith, hope, and charity. And these virtues are to characterize our lives for the rest of our days on earth until we stand face-to-face. So we might say, now in this life, in the here and now, faith, hope, and charity abide. And Paul emphasizes the abiding nature of these three Christian virtues in two ways. First of all, the term that he uses, abides, the word means to remain, to abide, to continue, to dwell, And so the very nature of the term that he chose to use speaks of the abiding nature in the present dispensation before we stand before the Lord in glory. But for now, there is an abiding nature to these three Christian virtues or there ought to be. So the verb tells us that, but also the verb tense is present. And the Greek verb present tense indicates ongoing or continuing action. So in two different ways, Paul emphasizes the ongoing, continuing, abiding nature of these three Christian virtues in this age, the verb and the tense. They continue to exist. And he emphasizes that, especially in this context, because they are seen in contrast to something else. Back in verse 8, Paul spoke about things that aren't going to continue forever. In particular, the supernatural revelatory gifts, the sign gifts, such as tongues and knowledge, they're not going to continue throughout this age. And we're told in verse 8 that whether they be prophecies, they're going to fail. Whether they be tongues, they're going to cease. And whether there be that supernatural gift of revelatory knowledge, it shall vanish away. Then he also says in verse 10, When the perfect is come, then the partial shall be done away. Verse 11, he speaks of when he was a child, he understood as a child, but when he grew up picturing when the church comes of age, when they receive that completed canon of scripture, then they put away childish things. So notice the contrast when we get to the end of the chapter. All these other things are temporary. The spiritual gifts, they were temporary. Tongues are going to cease. Knowledge shall vanish away. Prophecies shall fail. The partial things shall be done away. Childish things shall be put away. But, there are some things that will have an abiding, continuing, ongoing nature. Faith, hope, and charity. Faith abides now. We need faith now. In verse 11, Paul used an illustration of himself as a child. And he said, when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. Well, we all do. But when he became a man, he put away childish things. Childish things are suitable for childhood, but not for adulthood. And Paul was speaking here, using himself as an illustration of the church. There was a period in that first century of church history when the church didn't have the completed canon of Scripture. They only had little pieces of it. They only had a partial revelation. And so in a sense, they were like children in that first century. They needed the apostles to come in and tell them what to believe, tell them how to conduct themselves, tell them who to be wary of and what to teach. from the pulpit. So they were dependent upon the apostles before they had the Bible. And in that sense, they were like children. But when the church grew up and the completed canon of Scripture was given to the body of Christ, then they put away those childish things. The apostles died off the scene and were never replaced. They no longer needed tongues and prophecies because we had the completed revelation. Their purpose had been fulfilled, and they were no longer needed after that first century. But what was the problem in current? They were fighting with each other. They were fighting over the gifts. They all wanted those supernatural, splashy, revelatory gifts. They all wanted to be able to speak in tongues or get special revelation direct from God so they could show off how spiritual they were. They wanted the best gifts for themselves. And their behavior was childish and selfish. And so Paul is really rebuking them. The love chapter is really a rebuke. Chapter 12 ends. Paul had just been rebuking, reminding them of their foolishness, their childishness, and the way they all wanted the best gifts for themselves. And he says, I'll show you a better way. Love is the better way. And so what Paul does in chapter 13 is not unlike what the Lord Jesus did to the scribes and Pharisees when he said, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, For ye tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." The Pharisees were making a big deal out of the little things of tithing, all the little spices in their spice cabinets, and they forgot about the things that were really important, like faith, and mercy, and judgment. And the Corinthians were doing the very same thing, making a big deal out of the temporary spiritual gifts and omitting the weightier matters such as faith, hope, and charity. So now Paul directs them to something that is longer lasting than the revelatory gifts, namely, these Christian virtues. Tongues shall cease, and they did near the end of the first century, but faith is needed for the rest of the church age. Knowledge shall be rendered inoperative, that supernatural divine knowledge, but hope keeps us going for the rest of our lives, and we need it throughout this age. And while prophecy was going to fail, we're told in verse 8, love or charity never fails. So some of these spiritual gifts were never intended to continue. The supernatural revelatory sign gifts were never intended to continue throughout the church age. They weren't intended to have an abiding nature, but faith, hope and charity were. They abide. And Paul begins in verse 13 by telling us that faith, that's the first one he mentions, faith abides throughout this age and faith is needed in this age. You know, one of the Things the Lord Jesus wanted to make sure that he taught his disciples before he left was how to conduct the ministry in his absence. Jesus said, I go to my father and you will see me no more. They were able to walk by sight during the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus. They could see him. They talked with him. But in the latter days of the ministry of the Lord Jesus, He prepared His disciples for the time when He would no longer be with them physically on earth. They could no longer see Him face to face. And they were going to have to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. And that's what Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians. Paul wrote to the same group of believers and he said, we walk by faith and not by sight. Today, in the here and now, when Jesus is physically absent, we need to learn to walk by faith. One day we'll be face to face, but that's in a future age. That's not today. So the age of the dispensation of the grace of God is characterized by a lack of sight. The Lord Jesus is not on earth as He was in the Gospels. He's in heaven. He is hidden from us. And so this entire age is characterized by His absence. And Peter said, in the here and now, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Now we don't see Him, but we believe. Now we don't walk by sight, we walk by faith. And so the apostles who all throughout the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus saw Him every day for three years and were able to talk to Him face to face and get all of their questions answered directly from the Lord, one day He was going to be gone and they were going to have to learn to walk by faith in His absence. And yet, believing everything that He said, And that's the way we live today. Turn to Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 1. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is evidence. Faith is evidence of something that's not seen. It's evidence of something that is invisible. And this word evidence in Hebrews 11.1 means a conviction, a deep inner conviction or persuasion. And so faith is that deep inner conviction. It's that evidence. It's a proof of the reality of things that aren't visible to the natural eye. It was by faith that Moses saw him who was invisible. Look in verse three. For through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen, the created universe, were not made by things which do appear, the invisible Creator. And it's by faith we understand spiritual things. It's not difficult for somebody who knows who God is an omnipotent, omniscient, eternal being who can bring a universe into existence by His mere spoken Word. It's not hard for someone who has faith in that kind of a God to understand the creation story. But the natural man who doesn't have the Spirit and who doesn't have this deep inner conviction, he's not going to understand these things. He's going to need sight. And sight will never ever, there will never be a scientific way to observe creation. It's too late. The natural man cannot understand things that are spiritually discerned. We need faith in this age. And so faith is suited for life in this age because right now Christ isn't with us. We don't stand before him face to face. We don't see him. And in fact, the Lord Jesus, before he ascended into heaven, he told Thomas, remember doubting Thomas, I need to touch him. I want to see those marks in his hands. I won't believe until I put my finger on it. He told Thomas that there is a special blessing for those who don't see Him and yet believe. And that special blessing is ours during the dispensation of the grace of God. We live in a time that is characterized not by sight. They could see Jesus before our age and we'll see Jesus after this age, but for this age is characterized by the absence of the Lord Jesus. And we are to walk by faith and to believe and to trust on the basis of what He said in His Word. And to be willing to sacrifice everything, if necessary, because we genuinely believe what He said in this book. And so, sight really isn't necessary for spiritual truth to take a grip of our hearts. It's not necessary for spiritual truth to become a reality in our lives. The spiritual realm is true whether we see it or not. In fact, it's true whether a person believes it or not. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. In verse 18. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. Now, this sounds kind of crazy to an unbeliever, I suppose. Paul is describing himself and other believers in this age, and he says, we look at things that are invisible. We are observing in things that our eyes, our natural eyes cannot see. For the things which are seen are temporal. Everything we see around us is only temporary. But the things that are not seen are eternal. In verse 8 of this very same chapter, Paul said, we're troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We're perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Cast down, but not destroyed. Now how can that be? How was the Apostle Paul able to endure all the suffering and the tragedy and the persecution that he endured throughout his whole life as a Christian? Because his eyes of faith were wide open. Paul experienced difficulties. He experienced difficulties to a degree that we'll probably never know. And he was able to handle them victoriously because of his faith. And so when Paul saw the earthly, the temporal, when Paul saw the earthly obstacles that seemed overwhelming to the natural reason, he also saw that invisible hand of the Almighty and realized that those earthly obstacles, as difficult and painful as they were, were temporary. And in fact, he called them light afflictions. Read what he went through. from a natural perspective, they were anything but light. And he also says they only lasted for a moment in the previous verse, which meant his whole life on earth as a believer. He suffered all the way through until he was killed at the end. Heavy burdens were turned into light afflictions by faith. Things that seemed to go on and on and on without an end were turned into but a moment by faith. You see, faith enables us to endure. And without faith, we're told in Hebrews 1, 6, it's impossible to please God. This age is to be characterized. Our lives are to be characterized by those who walk in faith. And it's the only way that we're going to please Him who is invisible. Now, there's coming a day when faith will no longer be needed But it is essential today. You cannot please God without it. And it doesn't matter how many good works we try to do to please the Lord, or how many people we witness to, or how much money we give to charity or to missions. It doesn't matter what we do. Without faith, it's impossible to please Him. And so God demands faith of us. This life in which we're lived, Paul describes it as we're fighting a good fight of faith. In Galatians 2, Paul describes his life. He says, in the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Paul told the Romans that we stand by faith. He told the Corinthians in the final chapter of our epistle that they were to stand fast in the faith. He wrote to Timothy and he said, to hold on to the faith. And we're to walk by faith. Now, a walk means our whole manner of life. It's an old English word. It doesn't mean going for a walk. It's a sort of a graphic way of describing our whole lives, our journey, our walk through life. And we are to spend our journey, our walk through life, by faith. It's the way the Christian lives. It is the way we conduct our lives. And even though we don't see God, we believe Him. And we trust what He said. And we're willing to go on trusting what He said in His Word. And staking our lives, if necessary, on what He said in His Word. Because we don't need to see Him to believe Him. Faith is needed for absolutely every aspect of the Christian's life. We're saved by faith. We're sanctified by faith. We walk by faith. Our victory over sin is by faith. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. So from start to finish, in the dispensation of the grace of God, everything is to be characterized in the life of the believer by faith. And yet, if we turn back to our epistle, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, we discover that as wonderful and as necessary as faith is, Paul says, faith abides when? In the here and now. Now abides faith. This is the life in which we need faith. Right now, in this age only, in other words, faith was not intended for all eternity. Faith is going to come to an end just like those supernatural revelatory gifts. When we stand face to face, we'll no longer need faith. Secondly, in verse 13, Paul speaks about hope. Hope also abides now. Prophecy and tongues have vanished away and ceased, but not hope. Hope is to abide all throughout this age for the rest of our lives until the Lord Jesus comes. And so both faith and hope were designed for life in the present age, in the absence of being face to face with the Lord Jesus. Both faith and hope were designed for life in a world system, an evil present world system designed by Satan, the god of this world. In a time when Satan is functioning as the god of this present evil world, and the Lord Jesus is absent in heaven, we need faith and hope today. Hope is needed when we live in a cursed earth. Hope is needed as we seek to live a holy life in the midst of six billion depraved sinners. Hope is needed for every one of us as we seek to walk with God, and yet our mortal bodies are still susceptible to suffering and to death. Hope is needed as we face a shaky economy. Hope is needed as we contemplate the fact that there are thousands of madmen around the world bent on killing us and destroying our way of life because of their twisted ideology. We need bright hope for tomorrow. Hope is needed when we look around at our unsaved loved ones on their way to hell and seem to have no interest in spiritual things. We need hope. And hope is needed for a church that seems overwhelmed by a tsunami of false doctrine and worldly worship. And hope is needed for the young dad and mother wondering whether their kids are going to walk with God or not, or follow the way of the present evil world system. There are so many dangers in this life. It is a spiritually perilous time, Paul tells us. And there are so many things in the world system designed to drag us down and to drag us away. We need hope for today, and hope is designed for today. We need that bright hope for tomorrow. You see, hope is defined in the Bible not as a hope so, but it is a confident expectation of good. And so hope by its very nature is optimistic and upbeat. Hope sees light at the end of the tunnel. It is bright, it is positive, it is cheerful. And stands opposed to what we see in the world. So our hope doesn't come from anything earthly. Our hope is spiritual. You see, if we're saved, we've been begotten again, we've been born again unto a lively hope, a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He's our hope. He rose from the dead demonstrating, proving that there is life after death. There is another world out there. There is another realm after this life only. And because He rose from the dead as the first fruit, that means we're going to rise from the dead. And so even though we don't see resurrections around us today, because of our faith in the Lord Jesus, we have a living hope, a bright hope for tomorrow. And it doesn't come from anything earthly. Turn to Romans chapter 15. Romans chapter 15. And verse 13. Now that God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope. So here's God's purpose for us in this day and age. Not that we should walk around with our jaws dropped down and our hearts heavy and burdened and discouraged and depressed and all the rest. No, God's plan for us in this age is that we be hopeful people because our hope is in the Lord. And God wants us to abound in hope. And how can that happen? It is so unlike us. It is so contrary to our fallen nature which is prone to discouragement. We can abound in hope, by a power that is outside of us, but also dwells in us. It is the power of the Holy Ghost. And so this hopeful spirit that the Christian has is not the kind of hope the world has, a kind of hope, I hope things go better, I cross my fingers, I knock on wood. No, ours is a confident expectation that is based upon spiritual truth and reality. A solid foundation, not a hope so. And it is a God-energized, Hope. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And notice in verse 4 of Romans 15, For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. So as we fill our minds and hearts with the Scriptures, God's Holy Spirit produces in us that bright hope for tomorrow. that just baffles the world. And God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And as we read in the Scriptures and learn of the great things that He has done in ages past, we acknowledge that He's the same in our lives today. And so reading the Bible, filled with the Holy Spirit, fills our minds and hearts with a bright hope for tomorrow. And that hope causes worry and fear and anxiety to fade away. That's not the way God would have us to live. This age is to be characterized not by fear and worry and anxiety. This age is to be characterized by hope. But like faith, hope isn't forever. Hope is for this life. There's coming a day when we won't need hope anymore. Turn to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. in verse 24. For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. You don't hope for something that you can see. You see it. You know it. For that which is seen is not hope, but what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? For if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. We don't see today. We're not standing face to face before the Lord Jesus today. We're not in that heavenly sanctuary physically today. We are not in that eternal city today. But we're hoping we know that one day we have a confident expectation based on a solid foundation of glory for tomorrow. And isn't that what Paul said in verse 18, I reckon that the sufferings of this present time, that's what this life is characterized by. In mortal bodies, in a sinful world, this life is characterized by suffering. But it's not even worth comparing to the glory which shall be revealed in us. There's our hope. Whatever we are enduring today by way of suffering for Christ's sake, or suffering in a sin-cursed earth, or suffering because of maladies of our physical mortal bodies. It's only temporary. We have great hope. We have bright hope for tomorrow. And so the Christian's hope is only for this life. It's going to be fulfilled one day when we stand before the Lord Jesus in glory, face to face with a glorified body, and all the crooked things of this life will have been made straight. That day is coming. And so we continue to hope for it all throughout our lives. And the Christian of all people ought to have hope in his heart. In fact, that hopeful spirit ought to cause others to be attracted to our Savior. Because they have to live in the same sin-cursed earth as well. So until the Lord Jesus returns, or until we go to be with Him, we ought to be continually demonstrating a confident expectation of good. Now, in the here and now, in this life, in the age of grace, is to be characterized by faith and hope. Now, back in 1 Corinthians 13, there is a third virtue that Paul mentions, faith, hope, and now charity. That's the old English word for love, agape love. And notice that Paul says in verse 13 that love is one of those things that abides now. Love is for now. Now, we've spent a little over six months defining and describing this agape love. So hopefully the term is familiar to us by now. It is that supernatural love of God. It is that spiritual fruit of the Spirit manifested by the power of God as we yield our members to the Lord. And like faith and hope, love is to abide throughout this age. It's necessary in this age. And in fact, it's the preeminent way in which a believer can manifest the indwelling life of Christ by showing His love. Now, holiness is that umbrella quality of God. And everything else falls under that, including faith, hope, and charity. But of all of those other virtues, love is the greatest. Love is action. We've noted in chapter 13 that all of the descriptions of love are verbs, verbs. It means that love is not something that we're to feel. Love is something that we're to do. Love is action. It's something that we're to practice and demonstrate through our speech and through our hands and through our deeds to others. And so when the Spirit-filled believer yields his body unto God as a living sacrifice, and as we yield our members unto God, then God is free to use the members of our body, our tongues, our hands, our feet, to serve others, to demonstrate the love of God, that Spirit fruit. And when we're yielded, God's love will flow through us just as naturally as the water through a conduit. And so there is a strong connection. There is an inseparable connection between having the life of God in us, that indwelling life of Christ, and having the love of God in us at the same time. If there's life, then there will be love. If we're really alive unto God, then the love of God just naturally is going to manifest itself through us. Paul said to the Thessalonians, but as touching brotherly love, I need not write unto you. For you know yourselves that you are taught of God to love one another. It's as normal and natural to the one who has the life of God to know what love is and to manifest it. We don't really need to be taught it. We simply need to yield our members to God and God's love will be manifested through us. It's the fruit of the Spirit. It's the preeminent aspect of the fruit of the Spirit. So showing love to others isn't going the extra mile. It isn't going way beyond the norm. It is the norm for this age. Our entire Christian lives are to be characterized by love. We're to put on love, Colossians 3. We're to follow after love, 1 Corinthians 14. We're to provoke one another unto love and good works, Hebrews 10. We're to abound in love, Philippians 1, 9. We're to be an example of love, 1 Timothy 4. We're to have a fervent love in our hearts one for another, 1 Peter 4, 8. We're to walk in love, Ephesians 5, 2. And then our epistle, 1 Corinthians, ends with these words, let all things be done in charity or love. There are countless commands in the New Testament for us to love one another and to demonstrate our love for the world by sharing the good news. And so in that sense, love is no different than faith and hope. Love is for now. Love is for life in this world. And God's love seeks a conduit. It seeks an instrument to manifest the indwelling life and love of the Lord Jesus. And we're those instruments. Oh, we ought to be. Paul says back in first Corinthians 13, at the end of verse 13, he says, the greatest of these is charity. The greatest of these Christian virtues is love. And notice that faith, hope and charity. This is sort of a trilogy in the New Testament, and we see these three Christian virtues appearing together in quite a few places. Let's look at one example. Turn to 1 Thessalonians 1. 1 Thessalonians 1. And verse 3. Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, there's one, Your labor of love, there's another, and your patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith, hope, and love. Faith, hope, and charity. And these are to be the driving force behind all of our efforts, behind all of our service. And here Paul says that our work ought to be a work of love. Our labor is ought to be rather a work of faith, and our labors are labors of love. And our patient endurance ought to be characterized by hope. Faith, hope and charity, faith, hope and love are the motivation behind everything that we do, or it ought to be the motivating drive or force behind everything that we do as believers. This trilogy ought to be operating in us at all times. All three are necessary in the Lord's work. All three are necessary if we're going to serve the Lord as faithful priests. But of the three, love is the greatest. And let's stop and think for a few minutes as to why love is the greatest. In 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 7, we're told that love includes faith and hope. Love believeth all things. Love hopes all things. And so because love includes faith and hope, love is the whole and faith and hope are a part of it. So the whole is certainly greater than any one of its parts. So between faith, hope, and love, love is the greatest. Faith and hope are part of agape love. Paul tells us in Galatians 5 that faith works by love. Faith, which can be theoretical, you can have faith in our heads, but it becomes active by love when love works, love functions, love puts that faith into action and turns it into deeds of love and service for the Lord and for others. So faith operates. It's literally energized by love. And hope makes not ashamed. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. And so as long as the love of God is being shed abroad in our hearts, we'll never be ashamed. We'll never be disappointed. Hope puts all of its eggs in one basket, so to speak. We are hoping in that future glory, not in this life only, but in the life to come. And the one who puts his faith and his hope in what Christ has accomplished and in that future life, he'll never be disappointed. One day we're going to stand before the Lord and our faith and hope will be realized. And we'll never be disappointed in that day. So love is greater because it incorporates both faith and hope. Turn to Matthew chapter 22. Matthew chapter 22. In Matthew chapter 22, in verse 36, a young man came to the Lord Jesus and said, what is the great commandment of the law? He wanted to know of all the 605 or so codified laws in the Mosaic system, which one was the greatest one? Because that was being debated in that time and he was hoping to trap the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus said, love. In fact, if you love God, you will keep all of the commandments in the first tablet of the Decalogue of the Ten Commandments. If you love the Lord, you're not going to curse him, you're not going to bow to an idol, you're not going to have another god before him, and you're certainly going to honor the day set aside to him. So if you really love the Lord with all your heart, then that will incorporate all of those laws relating to our relationship to God. And then Jesus surprised the man by saying, not only is love the number one law, but it's also number one and two. And if we love our neighbor as ourself, then we will have kept all the commandments in the second tablet of the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments. If we really love our neighbor as ourself, we're not going to steal for him. We're not going to bear false witness against him. We're not going to commit adultery with his wife. We're not going to covet his goods. So love As we read in Romans chapter 13, love fulfills the law. In fact, Jesus says in verse 40 of Matthew 22, on these two commandments, love God and love your neighbor, hang all the law and the prophets. In other words, if we really love God and one another, the kind of love the Bible describes, agape love, if we love the Lord with all of our heart and we love our neighbors as ourselves, And we love one another as Christ loves us, then that kind of love, the law can't touch us. We're living above the law, we're fulfilling the righteousness of the law. And so the law and the prophets in verse 40 is really an Old Testament way of saying the scriptures. If we love God with all our heart and we love man, our neighbor as ourselves, then we have fulfilled our responsibilities to the law, and the Mosaic law cannot touch us. Love is also the greatest, because it can never be exhausted in this life. We're commanded to love God, we're commanded to love one another, and we're commanded to love one another multiple times. And so while we might be practicing that today, and hopefully we are, and while we might be obeying that command to love one another today, there's always more we can do. There are always more ways we can manifest love to more people in greater depth, with more sacrifice, with more consistency, with purer motives, with a heart that's more and more fervent in serving the Lord by manifesting His love to others. There's no end. And that's why Paul says his prayer to the Philippians was that their love would abound yet more and more. It's not enough to say, I'm loving my neighbor, or I love the Lord. We need to be abounding more and more. Or as John put it, he speaks about in John, the one who keeps God's word in him, in his heart, the love of God will be perfected, brought to completion, made whole. Is God's love perfected in your heart? Has it been fully ripened in our hearts so that there's no more room for improvement? I don't think so. And so no matter how often and how sacrificial we think that our expressions of love to others are, it's nothing compared to the love of God manifested on Calvary. We are just scratching the surface. If we think that we understand the love of God, Paul's prayer for the Ephesians was that they might know, that they might comprehend a bit of the depth and the breadth and the height of the love of God which passes knowledge. We'll never get there. We're just scratching the surface, but keep scratching. Life in this dispensation is to be characterized by love. We're to be growing in love and manifesting it in deeper and deeper ways so that it becomes, over time, more and more complete and whole and perfected in us. And then love is the greatest because 1 Corinthians 13 says, love never fails. And that's where it stands in contrast to faith and hope. Faith and hope will be fulfilled one day when we stand before the Lord Jesus face to face, but not love. Faith and hope are for this age. Faith, hope and charity, love are for this age. But when we stand before the Lord Jesus face to face, we won't need faith anymore. And when we have entered into glory, we won't need hope anymore, but we will need love. We will be serving the Lord Jesus Christ in love throughout all eternity. And we will begin to be learning about the love of God throughout all eternity. Love is the greatest thing on earth today. And it's also the greatest thing in heaven. The temporary spiritual gifts were suited for earth, but they're long gone. The Christian virtues were designed not just for the first century, but for the whole church age. But they will fail one day. But love never fails. And love is the greatest, because John tells us God is love. And it's the very nature and core and heart of God, a holy love. It's not just that God loves, He does, but He is love. His whole being is characterized by love. He is the source, the author, and the originator of the real agape love that flows through us. And so love is the greatest, because agape love is an expression of God who is love, who dwells in our hearts by faith and manifests that love through us. As we yield our members for service to Him, God's love is manifested to others. And therein lies the power of our witness upon her. The life and love of God manifested through us. So now, we can close our Bibles. Six months of studies on the subject of the agape love of God. We have a lot of knowledge. Now we're responsible not just to be hearers of the Word, but to be doers of the Word. Remember, all the descriptions Paul used of love in chapter 13 were verbs, action, to be practiced and obeyed, not just felt. So we shouldn't be concerned, as the Corinthians were, about earthly things and which gift we have or don't have and fret and worry about earthly things. Rather, we ought to be much more concerned about the weightier matters – faith, hope, and charity. And when that's the case in our lives, Christ will be seen through us. We will be fulfilling God's purpose for us on planet earth. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We praise you, Lord, for this great salvation that you've provided for us. We thank you that Christ lives in us and his love is manifested through us by the power of the indwelling spirit, which enables us to have victory over indwelling sin. We thank you, Lord, that you are able to transform us, selfish, self-centered creatures, into those who are growing into the image of Christ. And we give you all the praise and honor and glory in Jesus' name. Amen.