“Now these three remain: faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
The primary understanding of the above scriptural text lies in the ending value of love. Love is a quality of life that lasts beyond the present time. It is an unending phenomenon that runs through the cycle of eternity and unhindered by galloping factors of life. Its appreciation is without limitations and its relevance abounds in all circumstances, and in all society.
Love is not constrained by time and does not operate on the caprices of nature such as beauty, wealth, knowledge or any endowment. This is because it flows from the supernatural realm.
Love precedes faith and hope. In God’s preferential scale of value, love remains the greatest of all virtues. The greatest of these three is “love”, because God Himself is love (1 John 4:8). The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love supersedes all gifts because it endures over all. After all gifts must have faded, all faiths waned, and all hopes perished, love must persist. Love will still be the governing principle that controls all that God and His redeemed people are and do. Love is truly unequal and profoundly uncommon in its truest application. It is the highest quality of God’s Being and the depth of His nature.
In its divine application, love does not delight itself in any narrow interest or any perspective that defines a parochial motive.
Love does not take interest in what you have; neither does it take into consideration where you are or where you come from. Its suitability and purpose are not contingent upon place, tribe, time, religion or culture. It rather endures beyond what is present. It gains no credit at judgment, but accepts all men and women whose hearts are given to its purpose.
In this direction, love credits others with good intention. Love, therefore, hopes not on unreasoning optimism, but in expecting ultimate triumph through God’s grace.
When love has no evidence, it believes in the best. When the evidence is adverse, it hopes for the best. And when the hopes are repeatedly disappointed, it still courageously waits. Love is never dismayed, no matter what.
According to 1 Corinthians 13:8-9, “Love never fails, but where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. These will surely cease because they are partial in nature and will be unnecessary when what is complete has come. So, love is a perfect completion of all things or the consummation of values in an inestimable manner.
Love never ends; it never collapses. It is eternally given, and eternally endures over and above all things (1 John 4:16); unlike the gifts, which are designed for the present life only. Love outlives the present age. Indeed, prophecy and tongues will be unnecessary in the immediate presence of God. Knowledge, human and divinely revealed, will as well be superseded by the fuller light and revelation of love.
Therefore, brethren, let us not grow weary in loving one another, and, above all, in loving God who Himself is the source of love. May we live in God’s love and rely on God’s love, and then show forth His love to the generation of humankind.
When this is done, the bizarre of destruction of human life and values through the activities of terrorism will be extinct.