Faith, love and hope

HAVING been unceremoniously hounded out of Philippi, Paul and co found themselves in the strategically important northern city of Thessalonica. You would have excused them for lying low – if they had decided to do not much more than lick their wounds.

Not a bit of it! Here was another chance to share the gospel; more people to engage with, who as yet knew nothing of Jesus.

We seem strangely lacking in that kind of commitment today, though our communities are largely populated by those who have little or no direct engagement with Christian faith. For how much longer can we continue telling ourselves that ‘it’s a private matter, not something I’d want to speak about?’

The impact of Paul’s preaching in Thessalonica was instant and impressive. Some of the Jews and a ‘large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women’ were persuaded that Jesus was the real deal (Acts 17:1-4). Even so, there were others who were strongly opposed and, fearing for their safety, the evangelists were again forced to depart the scene. 1 Thessalonians is written sometime afterwards. Naturally Paul had been eager to hear if the ‘little flock’ that he had planted had taken root or whether, under pressure, it had crumbled and collapsed. This letter makes it clear that the news that had come back to him was largely encouraging and, principally, that the Church was not only surviving but thriving – such that they had become something of an example to believers everywhere (1:8.)

As Paul writes to the Thessalonians, and as we find it in the opening section, he is moved to give thanks for three things in particular: their faith, their love and their hope and that which flows from these: work, labour and endurance (1:3.) When taken together, we have here what Calvin considered to be ‘a brief description of true Christianity.’

Faith, love and hope feature throughout the Pauline corpus, most famously as the momentous conclusion to the much-loved thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthian Church. We can helpfully think of them as a set, with each having its own emphasis. Faith is built on what God has done, traced through salvation history and culminating in the ‘Christ event’ and the birth of the Church through Pentecost. Love is what we experience now; it is who God Is and how we are called to live. Hope is formed out of what God will do, namely that his promises will be fulfilled and that ‘Jesus shall reign…’

But crucial in this is that each of the three inner qualities – faith, love and hope – has an outward expression. It was because the Thessalonians had faith that they worked. It was because they had love that they readily laboured, spending themselves, as it were, in pouring out that which God had first put within them. And it was because they had unshakable hope in God’s future that they persevered in the face of persecution. As Paul writes elsewhere – and as doubtless he had shared with these converts – present sufferings are far outweighed by the glory to come.

Our context can scarcely be compared with that of 1st century Thessalonica. And yet surely we Christians, as they, should be known for our work produced by faith, our labour promoted by love and by our endurance inspired by our hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Rev Martin Fair is minister at Arbroath: St Andrew’s.