40 Faith, Hope, and Love: Why Love Is the Greatest (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is the podcast where we explain not only what scripture means but how we figure it out. We are studying 1 Corinthians chapter 13 today. This is the 40th talk in our series on 1 Corinthians. The lecture notes for today's talk are available on the link below the podcast, or you can find them on my website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 40. And while you're there, take a moment to check out the website. There's no charge, no spam, no ads, no clickbait, only Bible study. You can find previous episodes in this series and lots of other series as well. I am really glad you joined us today. We're gonna study 1 Corinthians chapter 13 today. In the last podcast, we looked at verses four through seven, Paul's attributes of love, and we went over those in detail. Today, I want to look at the overall argument of the chapter. I think this chapter is neglected and often misunderstood. People tend to get really excited about 1 Corinthians 12 and they love to debate chapter 14, and then we tend to ignore or just skim through chapter 13, and if people study it at all, they tend to focus on the attributes of love and ignore the rest. And it's easy to forget that Paul was making a point. I don't think he just decided to include an abstract treatise on the nature of love. He didn't say now would be a good time to write some proverbs on love that people can put in their greeting cards and use in their wedding vows for years to come. Paul was defining love in a way that highlights how seriously the Corinthians have gone wrong in their behavior. He's talking to a group of people who are making a very serious mistake, and that section on love is part of his corrective. In fact, this whole chapter is part of his corrective. And we tend to focus on chapter thirteen, four through seven and then ignore the rest. And yet I think this chapter is very significant, and Paul is making some really important points. Let's start by reviewing Paul's argument so far. I've argued that chapters twelve through fourteen are one unit, and that the argument he begins in twelve one runs through chapter fourteen. And the situation there is that some in Corinth have the idea that all the truly spiritual people will speak in tongues, and if you're not speaking in tongues, then you ought to be worried maybe you're not really a Christian. And Paul's making a variety of points to correct that perspective. He started by saying The mark of a truly spiritual person is that that person can say and mean Jesus is Lord. If you're looking to see is someone a child of God, has the Spirit been at work in them? You can tell by what comes out of their mouth, but it's not tongues, they will say and mean Jesus is Lord. Then he highlighted two different ways that the Spirit works among believers. One way the Spirit works is the same in everyone, and the other way the Spirit works is different in believers. So the way that He works the same in all of us is that He gives us saving faith, and every believer is the same in this. So this is the person who can say and mean Jesus is Lord. The one gift that the Spirit gives to everyone is faith, the ability to believe that Jesus is who he says he is and to seek salvation through him. So only those people in whom the Spirit of God is working are going to believe that. Because the Spirit gives each of us believers saving faith, that unites us as a people and makes us a family. We are one body, one tribe, one people, because we are all on this journey of faith together. The Spirit is making us the children of Christ, the people of Christ. The Corinthians are foolish to dismiss each other and reject other believers because they don't speak in tongues. On the other hand, the Spirit does give us each different gifts, and this is what we call spiritual gifts, and those are different for everybody. I argued that we should think of spiritual gifts as roles and opportunities to serve God. So rather than thinking of them as supernatural talents or abilities to do a specific task, we should think of them as the opportunities God gives us to serve His kingdom. And I think there are as many spiritual gifts as there are believers, because each believer is given a unique role to play in the body of Christ. So for instance, I would say that the gift of teaching is not so much the ability to teach, but the opportunity to teach. And Paul has argued that those differences between us, those differences in role and calling and gifting, are part of God's purpose and intention. Just as the human body is made up of lots of different parts, but is still one body, so the universal church is made up of many different believers who all confess that Jesus is Lord. And that's by God's design. It is his purpose and intention to give us different roles to play in the kingdom of God and different opportunities and different ways to serve. Therefore, the Corinthians are wrong to think that someone who lacks a particular gift is deficient. God has designed us to have diverse gifts. Not all are apostles, not all our teachers, not all show mercy, not all speak in tongues, as he said. And Paul argued that God gives us these gifts or these roles as opportunities to serve each other. These roles, these graces, gifts, are not intended to be the way we prove our self-worth or find our value in the kingdom. They are opportunities to serve the body of Christ. So the Corinthians are wrong to make something like tongues the measure of someone's spirituality or importance. Paul has hinted in chapter twelve, and he's going to go on to explain in chapter fourteen that some gifts are more important than others in terms of how much they edify other people. And he's going to argue that prophecy is at the top of the list, and tongues is at the bottom of the list in terms of how much it benefits and serves the body of Christ. So the Corinthians are doubly foolish. They shouldn't be judging others by their gifts at all, and they've chosen the least important gift by which to judge. As he leads up to chapter thirteen, Paul says all believers are united by the Holy Spirit working in them, so don't judge each other by which gifts are present and which aren't. And he says if you're going to be zealous for the gifts, if you're going to be preoccupied with a certain gift or a certain role, then you should be zealous for the greater gifts. Put the emphasis in the right place, which is on those gifts which are most important, and he's going to explain what he means by which gifts are the most important in chapter fourteen. But before he explains that, he interrupts himself. Before he explains what he means by the greatest gifts, he says, I will show you a still more excellent way, and he starts talking about love. And I think what's going on is he's saying, I'm going to talk to you now about something more important than any of the gifts. The roles we play, the gifts we have, that's the smaller, less important issue. The more important issue is that work of the spirit that gives us all faith. So in chapter 14, he's going to say, Let's talk about the diverse gifts, and I want you to value the ones that are most important. But before he gets there, he says, Let's talk about the higher issue. Let's talk about what's really important. Yes, the greater gifts are more important than the lesser gifts, but there is something that is more important than all of the gifts, and that's what he talks about in chapter thirteen. And that thing that is greater than all the gifts is love. All right, we're ready to look at first Corinthians thirteen, I'm going to start with verses one through three. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned but do not have love, it profits me nothing. So Paul starts talking about some of the various roles that believers may be called to play in the body of Christ. You might speak in tongues, you might prophesy, you might have wisdom and knowledge, you might have faith that moves mountains, you might give all your possessions to feed the poor or be a martyr. These are some things God might ask you to do on this journey of faith. And by the way, this list is one of the reasons I understand the gifts to be roles and opportunities rather than talents. He includes things here like giving my possessions to the poor and being a martyr. Those aren't talents, those are opportunities to serve, and yet they are included in this whole context of gifts of the Spirit. It's just one of the pieces of evidence. Anyway, he starts with tongues, which he's going to argue is the least of the gifts in chapter 14, but he goes immediately to prophecy, which he's going to argue is the greatest of the gifts in chapter 14. And I think by doing that he's giving us the whole range. He's not saying love is more important than tongues. He's saying love is more important than all of the gifts from A to Z. Both the least and the greatest of these gifts and everything in between are nothing without love. And notice how varied his list is. He's giving us a list of the ways the Spirit might call someone to serve the kingdom, and he's also picking things that we might be tempted to use to evaluate someone else's spirituality. These are things that someone might do that we might look at and go, wow, there's a really spiritual person. And I think Paul is deliberately picking the roles and the opportunities, the way we might serve that we find impressive. So we're tempted to go, wow, that person's speaking in tongues, or that person's a prophet, or wow, that person was a martyr, or that person gave all his wealth to feed the poor, and that person moved a whole mountain with his faith. Wow, those are the really spiritual people. And I think Paul is exaggerating the list. He pushes each one to its extreme. So he says, I don't just speak in the tongues of mankind, I speak in the tongues of angels. I don't just have a lot of knowledge, I have all knowledge. And it's not just that I'm generous, it's that I give all of my possessions to the poor. And I don't just have faith, I have the kind of faith that can move mountains. And I'm not a reluctant martyr, I freely offer my body to be burned. So he's pushing each case to its extreme. These are big, impressive actions. And the idea is surely such extreme actions must be spiritual. Those impressive gifts surely must be the mark of the Spirit of God at work in someone's life. And Paul says, No, that's not right. Imagine that I have done all these extremely impressive acts of service and charity, but I'm not a loving person. What should you conclude about me? I've done the extreme outward action of some religious zeal, but I have no love. What should you conclude? Nothing. Outrageously, extremely big religious acts that are not motivated by love mean nothing. These extreme acts say nothing about me as a spiritual person. They don't commend me as a spiritual person because if I'm not pursuing love, then the spirit is not at work in me. Now notice how that point fits with chapter twelve. He's not saying that the gifts of the spirit are unimportant. They have their place, they have a purpose, but relatively speaking, they're not that important. The sanctifying work of the spirit that gives us each saving faith is much more important than the gifts of the spirit. Not every believer has every gift, but every believer has the miraculous gift of saving faith. And he's talking about a related idea here. Love is more important than all of the individual gifts. You Corinthians want to judge each other by what you do, by whether or not you speak in tongues or perform some sort of miracle or some outrageously spiritual action, but the performance of those acts in and of themselves means nothing. You Corinthians are in the foolish position of trying to prove your spirituality by speaking in tongues while acting hatefully toward your fellow believers. You're using gifts which were intended to serve each other as weapons to hurt each other. By your unloving attitude, you're rendering your so called gifts meaningless. Do you really think the fact that you babble incoherently makes you a spiritual person when you turn around and are hateful to your fellow believer and hold him in contempt? You arrogantly boast, look how I'm speaking in tongues and you're not. How does that make you spiritual? So he goes on then, let me tell you what love really looks like, to show you how far short your own spirituality is, and he gives this list which we went through in the last podcast. So I'm going to read first Corinthians thirteen, four through seven. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Now I went into that list at length in the last podcast, and I invite you to listen to that if you haven't already. I'm not going to go through it all again here. But just note that this list stands in contrast to the way the Corinthians are treating each other. They're not being long suffering or patient with each other's faults. They're not seeking each other's good. They are envious of what others have, and they're arrogant about what they think they have. They're using their spiritual gifts selfishly as a way of making themselves feel superior and dismissing and rejecting those they don't approve of. And Paul's saying as Christians, we're called to be as concerned about our neighbor as we are about ourselves. Even more so, we're called to love and embrace our fellow believers as our brothers and sisters. To be arrogant about my alleged spiritual standing directly contradicts that calling. Speaking in tongues while I condemn my fellow believers is not spirituality. So that's his point in these first three verses to perform any outwardly spiritual act, no matter how grand or zealous or accomplished that act is, is worthless if I'm not a loving person. Part of the mark of the spirit at work in me is that I want to be a loving person. If I have not embraced these two fundamental truths, love the Lord my God with all my heart and soul, and love my neighbor as myself, especially my fellow believer, then I do not have faith and I am not a spiritual person. It doesn't matter how outwardly grand and impressive my actions are. Then he goes on, this is thirteen eight. Love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. That's the new American standard. The ESV has Love Never Ends. Both those translations are pretty good, but it's a little bit easy to misunderstand what he means. It might sound like this verse is one more in the list of love is this and love is that, but I think he summarized the attributes of love in 3 7, and this verse is the transition or the pivot to his next point. He wants to explain why love has the importance it does in comparison with these other gifts of the Spirit. And he starts out by saying love never fails, but prophecy, tongues, and knowledge will. So those phrases go together. Love will not end, but prophecy, tongues, and knowledge, those will end. This word that's translated never fails is literally the word for fall, as in falling down. In fact, it's almost always translated fall as in fall down. You're at some elevated place and then you hit the ground. And it almost always describes a place you don't want to be. Metaphorically, you never fall where you want to go. You fall into a place you don't want to go. So it's used for falling into temptation and things like that. You either stand or you fall, that is, you're brought low. The only other place this word is translated fail or never end is in Luke, where Jesus says not one stroke of the law will fall or fail. Matthew uses a different word in the parallel passage. He says not one stroke of the law will pass away. And that's the same kind of idea we have here. I think in this context, never end or to fall is to pass away, to end. And Paul is not saying that the person who loves never stops loving or never fails to love. He's saying love will never pass away. Love will never end, but these other gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge, they're gonna cease. They're gonna pass away. Those are gifts for this life, and eventually we're not gonna need them anymore. So all the gifts we have in this life are going to pass away. They will fall while love will stand. They have a place, they have significance now, but that significance is going to end. By contrast, the significance of love is never going to end. Now why? Why does prophecy, knowledge, why do those pass away and love does not? He explains this is thirteen, nine and ten. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. So how will prophecy and knowledge pass away? They will be made perfect. It's not that I know something now, but one day all that knowledge will be abolished and I'll know nothing. It's that I know something now, but one day I'm going to know everything. I won't need a prophet to tell me what's true because I will know what is true. Remember, he's addressing the question of how important is it that I have one particular gift? The Corinthians think it's essential that I speak in tongues, and Paul is saying, stop and think about all the gifts. How important is it that I be a prophet or a teacher or a miracle worker? And his answer is in the grand scheme of things, those are not the most important thing because those are passing away. And he gives this analogy to childhood. Let me read thirteen, nine through eleven. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things. So as a child, my speech, my thought, they were immature. I could speak, but not as well as the adults around me. I could think, but not as clearly or as wisely as the adults around me. Does anyone look at a child and say, Oh, look at his childish ways. I'm so sorry for him. He's such a child. Nobody thinks that. We know that kids are immature and they are going to grow up. There are these stages that you pass through to get to adulthood. You have a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of skill and it grows slowly. Children are moving toward a goal. We know that the immaturity of childhood will eventually give way to the maturity of adulthood. They will no longer lack the skills they lack as taught. Childish speech and understanding goes away. It is done away with. It falls. It's replaced by adult speech and understanding. And that adult speech and understanding renders it irrelevant. I don't need my childish ways anymore because I've reached maturity. I've been perfected in that sense. I have grown into and reached the goal of adulthood, the goal I was aiming for. And in doing that, my childish things pass away. It no longer matters whether I could read in preschool or kindergarten or second grade. It no longer matters that I learned math early or late because now I'm an adult. I know how to read and write and do math. So childish knowledge is done away with because it is replaced by adult knowledge. That's the analogy to spiritual gifts. God gives us these different roles to play in his kingdom. Some are apostles, some are prophets, some are miracle workers, some are helpers, some are encouragers, some are teachers, some speak in tongues, and so forth. How important is it that I have one particular gift among that list? Those gifts have a place, it has an importance in this period of childhood. It's significant that we can help and encourage each other on this journey of faith, and it is gracious of God to give us those roles to play. But ultimately, it doesn't matter how much I know today because one day I'm going to know it all. It doesn't matter that you were good at encouragement and I was good at teaching because one day we are both going to be complete and whole, perfect and mature. We won't need teachers, we won't need encouragers because we will have arrived at adulthood. He goes on in thirteen twelve, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. Now mirrors in those days were not as clear and precise as mirrors are today. Corinth was famous for its polished bronze mirrors, and if you've ever seen polished bronze, you can imagine how fuzzy and blurry a bronze mirror is by today's standards. So picture a distorted, fuzzy bronze mirror in this analogy. When I look in a mirror at the room behind me, I can see what's there, but it's distorted, it's blurred. When I turn around and look at the actual room, I can see it clearly, but when I look in the mirror, I don't see it as clearly as I do in reality. Paul's point is even the apostles and the prophets saw truth dimly in comparison to what's coming. Yes, we teach and encourage each other as best we can, but there's a sense in which we're all still kindergarteners. There's a lot more to come that we don't understand, even though right now some of us may know more than others. But the day is coming when all of us will be mature. One day we will all stop looking at that cloudy mirror and turn around and see the actual real room. When Jesus returns, we're gonna stop looking at the fuzzy mirror and turn around and see reality as it is. One day we will all know God. One day we will talk to Jesus face to face. One day I'm going to know Jesus in the same straightforward way He knows me. That change is going to render these gifts of the Spirit irrelevant. It's not going to matter whether I was an apostle with the clearest understanding of all or a lowly teacher with just a small corner of the truth. It won't matter because we will all know. We will leave our childish ways behind. It won't matter then who was more or less childish now because we're all going to be adults. We won't need to read and study the Bible. We'll know. We'll be able to walk up to Jesus and talk to him. So all of the gifts of the Spirit, all the roles we play in the kingdom are provisional in a way. There's a sense in which it doesn't really matter what role you play now because these are part of childhood and they're going to be replaced by the adulthood that is coming. But love is not like that. Love is not provisional. It's going to stand. All these other gifts are going to pass away, but love is going to remain. His last verse comes back to that and ties it in. This is 13 13. But now faith, hope, love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. Okay, why is love greater than faith and hope? That one's at first reading is a little strange because faith and hope seemed pretty important to me. So let's think about what he's talking about. The clue is this but now. But now remain or now abide. I think he means in this life, at this time, right now, in this period of childhood, we ought to be seeking faith, hope, and love. If you want a gift of the Spirit, tongues is not the one you should be seeking. You should be seeking faith, hope, and love, and particularly love. When you add faith and hope to the list, it's really clear that he's talking about now, about this life. Faith and hope are what I need now. When I get to the kingdom of God, I'm not going to need hope anymore because all the promises that I'm hoping for now will be realized. In the kingdom, I'm going to have what I'm hoping for. Similarly, I won't need faith anymore because I'll be walking by sight. All the things that are not seen now will be seen. All the things I'm trusting God for now will be realized then. So faith and hope are unique to this age. They are keys to life now. He's saying in the future the gifts are going to pass away, but love's going to remain. So now in this age, faith, hope, and love are the most important. Today, in this life, spiritual gifts like knowledge, prophecy, and tongues have their place. They have an importance, they have a significance. God has given them to us in His loving kindness to help us encourage each other in this time of childhood. God has gifted certain people to serve the body in certain ways. We need that in this life. That diversity is by design. But it's a diversity that we need now in this stage of childhood. Ultimately, that's going to cease. The giftedness of particular people is going to be swallowed up in the fullness of the gift to us all. When that happens, what's left of significance? What's going to remain and still be important? If it's not ultimately significant whether I'm a prophet or not, what will be significant? What's not trivial in the grand scheme of things? And Paul says three things remain as essential. When you look at the grand scheme of things, what's truly important is whether I have faith, hope, and love. Those are the essentials. It's not a tragedy that my child didn't read until second grade and some other kids started reading in preschool, but it would be a tragedy if my child couldn't breathe. Breathing is essential in both childhood and adulthood. Breathing will remain. Breathing is not provisional. Likewise, it doesn't matter whether or not I'm a prophet, but it matters a great deal whether or not I have faith. Faith, hope, and love are like breathing. They're essential. Paul's saying, you Corinthians are concerned about whether or not you have a particular gift, but I, Paul, am saying one day all those gifts are going to be swallowed up by the fullness that is to come, and in that day when we're complete and mature, we aren't going to need that stuff anymore. But what is significant and what will remain in that day is whether or not you have faith, hope, and love. That's what you should be concerned about. Now let's talk about these three. Paul has already argued that love is different. Love is not going to be done away with. Or to take the analogy of childhood again, if this child is a spoiled brat, I don't say it doesn't matter because one day he's going to grow out of it. It matters because character always matters. Yes, he's immature, but if I see a child who delights in being a bully, that's an issue I need to address. That's wrong. Character matters in both childhood and adulthood. The character we have as an adult is shaped by the character we have as children. By analogy, love is like character. It is always significant. Love is one of the fundamental values. Being a loving person will be as important in eternity as it is today. True, right now I am immature in my loving and I will be mature then, but the importance is the same. Saving me from being a selfish, unloving person is part of what salvation is all about. It's part of our great hope. Through the work of the Spirit, I'm starting to get the right perspective and to see what love is about. And my lack of love is a tragic flaw that God has set about to change. Now Paul adds faith and hope to the things that are essential today. They're a little different than love, and that faith and hope are for this age. He doesn't really spell this out, but I think we can figure out why he put them in the list. Let me push the childhood analogy a little bit more. Think about a baby in the womb. When that child is born, she will no longer need an umbilical cord. She will be able to survive on her own. But now in the womb, that umbilical cord is her lifeline. Without it, she's not gonna make it to birth. Faith and hope are like that lifeline, that umbilical cord now. I'm not going to need hope when the thing I'm hoping for has been given to me, and I'm not going to need faith when I'm walking around in the kingdom of God staring it in the face. But right now, in this age, I need them. I'm not going to get to the kingdom without them. Right now, faith and hope are my lifelines, like the umbilical cord. I'm not going to make it to birth into the kingdom without them. Building a strong mature faith are what the trials of this life are all about, and it's essential that I have a strong mature faith. To really push the childhood analogy a bit farther, being a prophet, being hospitable, speaking in tongues, that's like being male and female or being short or tall. Either one works, either one has its advantages, either one has its disadvantages. It's different to be one or the other, and my life experience will be different, but it's not essential like an umbilical cord or like breathing. To summarize, here's what I think he's saying then in this chapter. The gifts of the Spirit are for today. The gifts, the roles the Spirit gives us to play, like speaking in tongues, whether or not I'm a foot or a hand to use Paul's analogy, whether I'm a prophet, a teacher, or an encourager, those are for today. We need those now. In his wisdom and loving kindness, God gives them to us for today to help and encourage us on this journey of faith. They are good gifts from God to us for this life. Everyone has a different role to play in God's kingdom, and that's by God's design, it's part of his plan and his purpose. We should not expect everyone to have the same gift, nor should we judge each other by who has what. In an ultimate sense, it doesn't matter who has what because one day when we enter into our inheritance, all that imperfect knowledge will be replaced with full knowledge and maturity. We won't need those gifts anymore, we will have arrived. Faith and hope are essential now because they are the means to enter eternal life. They mark me as a child of God. Yes, they will pass away then, but now they are essential. But love is essential both now and then. It is fundamentally essential. Being the kind of person who loves, as Paul has described it, is part of what we're hoping for, and it is also our destiny. If I'm not interested in being a loving person, then I'm not really interested in what the gospel promises, because the gospel is all about freeing me from my slavery to sin and selfishness and rebellion and making me into the kind of person who loves God with all my heart, mind, and soul and loves my neighbor as myself. Being a person who refuses to acknowledge the value and the place of love says something about who I am and what I'm hoping for. If I'm not interested in being a loving person, then it calls into question why I'm even claiming to be a believer. So let me wrap this up. I think this chapter gives us a really important perspective on this life. Imagine that you're walking through a forest and you're tired and you're thirsty and your feet hurt, but you know up ahead, maybe around two more turns, there is a cool stream and a place to take rest and shelter. That knowledge gives you perspective. You can keep going because you know the goal is in sight. That's the kind of perspective Paul's giving us here. When you're tempted to be envious, when you're tempted to get provoked, when you're tempted to lose your patience or hold a grudge or be envious over why did she get all the gifts? Remember what's important. You're looking at the provisional, the trivial, the things that are going to pass away. We are the kids complaining about how we don't get to do what the adults do. In this life, we're in childhood. We're not grown up yet, but adulthood is surely coming. And that's Paul's perspective. We are children on the way to adulthood. I should not be surprised that I feel inadequate or like something is missing because I am inadequate. Something is missing. This is the time of childhood. We are not yet grown. We're getting some basic lessons down, but there's a whole lot more growing and learning to do. But we should also remember we have a future, not just a future, a fulfillment. We are not going to remain in this inadequate childish understanding forever. We're going to grow up and taste the fruit of adulthood in the very best sense. One day we will understand. However much life is puzzling and confusing now, one day we're going to know it's going to make sense. So what must we have now? We're on this journey and the completion is in front of us. What's essential that we have? Faith and hope. God has promised that He's at work, that He's taking us where we need to go, and our job is to believe in His promises and find hope in those promises. And we have to see the high importance of the place of love. Imagine if every last person in the world were instantly transformed into the kind of people who genuinely care about others the way they care about themselves. It's almost unimaginable how different the world would be. And if that were to happen, we would have covered a significant distance to the kingdom of God. That lack of love is what makes this world the tragedy that it is. Lack of that kind of love is at the heart of sin. Lack of love is one of the primary fundamental things we're hoping to be freed from by the blood of Christ. So if we're going to be zealous for something and long for something, we would be wise to be zealous for faith, hope, and love. You've been listening to Wednesday in the Word, my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. If you've been blessed by listening, please leave a positive comment wherever you listen to your podcast and tell a friend what you've learned. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast of Heartfeltmusic.org. I invite you to check out his music there. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Kristal Morada, and I'll meet you here next week at Wednesday in the Word.