About The Three That Remain

It is one of the most delightful pieces of text committed to manuscript.

It’s an outline of what love is and it is the kind of love that transcends what a lot of times we think it is. This passage was read at the wedding of my wife and I and I have also heard it read in other weddings. Beautiful as that is, that was not the primary purpose of the outline. It was written for a community of believers – a gathering of people from a variety of backgrounds who were connected and united by this very love. So as a result to function as the Body of Christ, this love was pivotal for them as a whole.

Great as that is and moving though the outline undoubtedly was, there was the last part of it that stuck in my head recently.

These three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth)

Yeah the greatest of these is love. It is all about love – it makes the difference. I was asking myself, some questions about this portion.

Do these three remain? What does it mean that they remain? How should that shape my life in the here and now as it will in the there and then?

Here’s why it matters to me. In saying that these remain, there’s something of significance about these three. Great as love is, it is not the only thing that remains. The three are together. The three are involved in the life of the saints. There is something about these three that does something about who we are.

Talking it through with some friends got some good fruit to think about how these three that remain are so important to the story we buy into. It’s worth sticking around to see how working out the answers to those questions makes a difference.

(Photo by Mike Szczepanski on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden