In the Christian tradition faith, hope and love are known as the three theological virtues.

To say that hope is the greatest of these may feel a bit off. If you are familiar with the Apostle Paul’s great ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13 you may know that it ends with these words: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Love is the greatest, not hope.

But the point St. Paul was making is that love can be considered the greatest because it will be the last one standing. There will come a time when faith and hope will no longer be needed. Not so with love. There will always be love. Why is that? First and foremost, because God is love. And when that day comes when God is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28) and we are welcomed home into the eternal embrace of God — the everlasting love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit — that is all there will be. Love.

But until that day arrives what sustains our love is faith and hope. Both traffic in the unseen and the not yet. As we wait for what we cannot yet see and yearn for what we do not yet have, faith allows us to trust in what is promised and in so doing, opens the door to hope. Hope, in turn, animates our lives toward the fulfillment of that promise.

Without faith, there is nothing to hope for. Conversely, without hope, faith is listless. Or, maybe we can put it this way: faith without hope is dead. So when hope runs dry, our faith begins to languish. But not only does our faith suffer, but also our resolve to act in love. 

A helpful way to see the relationship between these theological virtues is through the analogy of a journey. Among the many routes before us faith is what allows us to see and choose the path marked out for us in Christ; the one Jesus walked before us and continues to walk ahead of us. Love is both what infuses each step we take and the end toward which we walk. Hope is that which keeps us moving. It compels us forward as we anticpate the loving end for which we are destined.

And this, I think, is the greatness of hope. To love in the way Christ calls us to love — namely, to love even our enemies — is an act of hope. It is hope for our enemy and hope in God to vindicate us should our enemy choose to repay our love with hatred and malice. We need hope because hope enlivens us to stay the course (to keep the faith) even when (especially when) the way of love gets hard. 

All this to say, we don’t want to downplay love. Love is indeed the greatest in that it will last through eternity. But there are times in this journey we call the Christian life, where one of faith, hope and love will take on a greater role. Could it be that in our time, when the fulfillment of God’s promises seems so far off and we find it a struggle to keep on keeping on, that the greatest for us is hope?