Greatest of All

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 333, Greatest of All.

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13.

This verse closes the most-read chapter at weddings, funerals, and church services all over the world — 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. But notice — Paul didn't start out talking about love in a pretty, sentimental way. He started by dismantling everything the Corinthians used to feel spiritual — tongues, prophecy, knowledge, miracles — and said: without love, all of that is nothing. A noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. Noise, with no substance.

And after describing what love actually is — patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not easily angered, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things — he arrives at this final conclusion: "faith, hope, and love abide, these three."

Notice the word "abide." Everything he mentioned before — gifts, tongues, prophecies, knowledge — will one day cease, pass away, become unnecessary. But these three things remain. They outlast time, outlast change, outlast even into eternity.

But then he makes a distinction that changes everything: "the greatest of these is love." Why? Think it through with me. One day, faith will become sight — when you see God face to face, you won't need to trust what you can't see anymore, because you'll be seeing it. One day, hope will become possession — when what you've been hoping for finally arrives, hope has already finished its job. But love? Love doesn't change form. It doesn't become something else when it reaches heaven. It simply continues, because love isn't a stage along the way — it is the destination itself.

And there's a deeper reason still: Scripture says elsewhere that God is love. Not that God has faith, or that God has hope — He doesn't need those, He already knows and already possesses everything. But God is love. That is His very nature. And that's why love is eternal — because He is eternal. Faith and hope are our responses to God as we walk this road; love is who He is, and who we become the closer we live to Him.

And that love didn't stay theoretical. It took on a face. Christ, on the cross, was patient with the ones crucifying Him. Was kind to the thief beside Him. Kept no record of wrongs. Endured all of it, to the end. Every line of that chapter, Jesus lived first, for you.

I want to ask you: is there someone in your life today who is hard to love? Someone who tests your patience, who doesn't give anything back, who may not even notice the effort you put in? The love that abides — the greatest of all — doesn't wait for a return. It simply loves, because it was loved first.

So today, choose that person. And do one concrete act of love for them — patient, kind — even if you get nothing back.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.