Tag Archives: New Testament

1 Corinthians 13: 13 – Faith, Hope and Love (Sunday 15th February 2026)

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

FaithOur ‘Faith’ can mean what we believe. … When we talk about the faith of the Church we often mean a list of things that a Christian needs to believe. Over time the church has developed creeds which are intended to help us remember or recall together the important beliefs that we share. Often Christians say ‘The Creed’ when they are in church together on Sundays. Doctrine is very important but it is not what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13:13.

Our ‘Faith’ can mean what we believe. … When we talk about the faith of the Church we often mean a list of things that a Christian needs to believe. Over time the church has developed creeds which are intended to help us remember or recall together the important beliefs that we share. Often Christians say ‘The Creed’ when they are in church together on Sundays. Doctrine is very important but it is not what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13:13.

Another way we use the word ‘faith’ is to talk about how much faith we have. …

So, perhaps, we say to someone, if only you had enough faith, you would be healed. … Faith, in this context, seems to be something that we might be able to generate ourselves. There is a bible verse which we often hear like this “faith can move mountains.” And we take it to mean that strong belief and determination will allow us to overcome immense obstacles, achieving seemingly impossible things. I guess we imagine ourselves generating faith, screwing ourselves up to believe.

Just a bit more faith, just a bit more and we will see God work, we will have healing. … Perhaps we even try to demonstrate our faith by giving more generously, praying more earnestly, serving with greater commitment. But if we see faith this way, we have misunderstood what Jesus was talking about in the bible verse that we partially remembered.

In Matthew 17:20 and Mark 11:23, Jesus talks about faith as small as a mustard seed being able to move mountains. Have you ever seen a mustard seed? Mustard seeds are tiny, smaller than a grain of millet. The very point Jesus is making is that it isn’t the size of our faith that matters but where we place the little faith we have.

Throughout the whole New Testament there is only one root Greek word used for faith. It is the word PISTEO. Yes, it might be used in different contexts, tenses and verses. We can use it in many different ways but in the original language of the bible it has one meaning. PISTEO-faith always means ‘faithfulness’, ‘commitment’ and ‘steadfastness’ – faithfulness and commitment to God in Jesus. It is not focussed on what we can do, nor on how strongly we believe. PISTEO-faith is all about the one we have faith in. Mountains in our lives are moved not by the strength of our faith but by the God in whom we trust.

PISTEO-faith is about faithfully following Jesus but it is also about something more. …. I need a chair to illustrate this ……… What do you think of this chair? Is it a beautiful chair? …. What is this chair for? …. It does not matter so much where a chair comes from or how beautiful a chair is. …  What matters is that we trust that it will hold our weight. It is no good just hovering over it, no good admiring as a beautiful chair, no good being tentative about it. We have to commit wholly to trusting in the chair and put our weight on it. … Then it does its job.

New Testament PISTEO-faith is just like this. We need to wholeheartedly, faithfully, follow Jesus and when we are faithful, when we place our weight on our faith, we will discover that it holds us secure.

So, that is Paul’s first word FAITH. …..

Hope

In the UK, we sometimes do this … (cross fingers) and we say. “Cross our fingers and hope it works out.” When we do this, we are seeing hope more as ‘wishful thinking’.

Alternatively, we can talk about ‘the power of positive thinking’, as if by just hoping something will happen, we will see it happen.

Sometimes we say to people, “I hope you get better soon.” Then, hope seems to be about wishing something was true.

None of these is Christian Hope. The bible actually has a lot to say about Hope. But for now, here are just three verses.

Psalm 33:20-21: We wait in HOPE for the Lord, he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice for we trust in his holy name.


Isaiah 40:31: Those who HOPE in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.


Romans 8:25: We HOPE for what we do not have and we wait for it patiently.

Christian Hope is not wishful thinking. Nor is it positive thinking. Christian Hope is all about the one in whom we have Hopr. God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and God’s Spirit who dwells in us.

When we look forward with Hope, we see the future in God’s hands. We look forward with Hope because we have been made right with God through what Jesus has done for us at the cross. We look forward with HOPE because the Holy Spirit lives in us and leads us on into the future God has for us. … Because we hope in God, as Isaiah says, our strength is renewed. We will soar like eagles, we will have the stamina we need for the journey ahead.

So, FAITH, and HOPE.Paul’s third thing was LOVE. And, Paul says Love is the greatest of all three.

Love

The Apostle John, became the Bishop of Ephesus when he was an old man. We think that he wrote John’s Gospel, three short letters and the book of Revelation.

The first of John’s three letters is all about Love ….

“This is love, not that we loved God, but that God first loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin.” (1 John 4:10)

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” (1 John 3:16)

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.” (1 John 3:1)

The story is told of John as Bishop of Ephesus, in his old age with his powers failing, sitting in front of his congregation to preach. He began his sermon. … Little children, love one another. …. And he continued: Little children, love one another. … And again: Little children, love one another. Indeed, his whole sermon consisted of the repetition of just 5 words: Little children, love one another.

The following Sunday, Bishop John sat down to preach again. He began his sermon: Little children, love one another. Again, his sermon was just the repetition of those five words: Little children, love one another.

By the next Sunday, the congregation was getting a little restless. John sat down to preach once again. How do you think he started his sermon? Yes, with just those five words … Little children, love one another. At the end of this service a number of people came to speak to him. “Bishop John,” they said, “Why do you just keep repeating those five words. Isn’t it time to move on to something different?”

Bishop John looked quietly at them and said, “My sermon will change when I see evidence that you are loving one another.”

Ultimately, the Gospel is a Gospel of love, nothing significantly more. God is the source of all love. God’s love has made us God’s children. God’s love comes to us in many different forms: …

God’s LOVE comes to us in the New Testament story of Jesus. … Love first came down to us at Christmas. It was born and walked about among us as a human being. Love died for us, love was outpoured for us at the Cross. Love came as sacrifice and service. Love brought dignity and purpose for Jesus’ friends, his disciples. Love brought new roles, new tasks to perform, new gifts to develop and share. Love came in the healing hands of Jesus.

God’s LOVE comes to us now in many different forms. … In the people we know who follow Jesus. In acts of charity which brings real hope into places of despair. In the prayers of faithful friends who hold us up before God when we struggle to pray for ourselves. Surprisingly, love turns up in unexpectedly places. …

St. John as Bishop of Ephesus says: “Little children, love one another for love comes from God.”

The Apostle Paul says: “Faith, Hope and Love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”

FAITH-ful following of a faithful God will make mountains move.

HOPE in God will allow us all to soar on wings like eagles.

But most important of all, God’s LOVE has won our hearts and calls us all to LOVE as Jesus Christ has loved us.

A New Commandment: John 13: 31-35 – 18th May 2025

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Dolly Parton first sang, ‘Love is like a butterfly’, in the Summer of 1974:

“Love is like a butterfly, as soft and gentle as a sigh,

The multi-coloured moods of love are like its satin wings,

Love makes your heart feel strange inside, it flutters like soft wings in flight,

Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.”

Jesus said: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” His words seem to be at odds with our culture. In our society, love isn’t something you can command, love is something that you feel. Love is something that you fall into and fall out of. Love is as much about sexual attraction and desire as it is about anything else. When we say, ‘I love you’, to the love of our life – we are talking about deep feelings not about something that we feel we have much control over.

And yet Jesus says: ‘I command you to love one another’.

We know that love is so much more than sexual desire. We feel love for our parents, our children – we even feel some kind of love for the football team we support, for our friends and our work colleagues. But even in these relationships love can be so temporary or dependent on events and our emotions.

Love is just like a butterfly, made up of multicoloured moods, flitting here and there, dependent on circumstance and passion.

The love Jesus commands, the love that Jesus often talks about, is just not like that. Love, as Jesus sees it. Love modelled on the love of God, is constant and committed love, unwavering in its strength and focus, determined to be there for the one who is loved no matter what they do. Determined to love, even when it seems as though that love is rejected.

In English we have one word for love. The New Testament uses four different words for love.

Eros – for romantic and sexual love

Storge – genuine affection for someone

Philio – for brotherly love or fellowship

Agape – the love God has for us and the depth of love he calls on us to have for each other. A committed, divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active love, generously and freely given with no thought for the self, only for the other. It is this word ‘Agape’ that is used in our Gospel reading.

The King James bible translated ‘agape’ as ‘charity’. In today’s world ‘charity’ means something different. It has lost the emphasis on God’s self-sacrificial love for humankind. It has become something that often people do not want to receive, demeaning to their sense of honour. Or, it is the name of a kind of organisation that has some sort of good purposes. We need hold onto the word ‘love’ rather than the word ‘charity’ in today’s world if we are to begin to understand the meaning of the Greek word ‘agape’

C. S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, uses ‘agape’ to describe what he believed was the highest level of love known to humanity – a selfless love, a love that was passionately committed to the well-being of the other. It is ‘agape’. It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to show, not erotic love, not even brotherly or sisterly love, not affection.

In last week’s Gospel (Easter 4), Jesus talked about a love that will not let us go.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”

“No one,” says Jesus, “will ever snatch you out of my hands.” It is not a sense of charity that God feels towards each of us, not a sense of charity that he feels for humankind. It is a love that give its all. No holds barred. A love that throws itself away in order to rescue those who are lost. A love that celebrates over every single person who returns to be enfolded by that love. It is that kind of love which we are commanded to show. Christ calls on us to decide to love others in the same way as God loves us.

Please, allow yourself to hear again that God loves and cares for you. And remind yourself again that God calls you not to love that is flighty or buffeted by circumstance, but to a love which is self-giving, committed and strong.