Love is the greatest because while faith is preached and hope pertains to the future life, love reigns. As 1 John says: ‘By this we know his love, that he laid down his life for us.’ Love is therefore the greatest of the three, because by it the human race has been renewed.
—Ambrosiaster

1 Corinthians 13 drips with beautiful imagery. Clanging symbols, darkened mirrors, children growing into adults—Paul deploys all of these metaphors to illustrate the preeminence of love over all other virtues and remind the Corinthians to love one another deeply. We’ve already talked about how all the achievements of this world (knowledge, wealth, influence) are useless without love, but Paul emphasizes another aspect of love in the final verse of this chapter: permanence.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Christians rely on faith, hope, and love to get us through the day. We have faith God won’t abandon us and that the things said about Jesus are true. We have hope the pains of this life will one day be overwhelmed by the joy of the coming Kingdom of Heaven. And we trust in the love of God to carry us through until that day arrives, and we seek to show this love to our fullest ability in the meantime.

But here’s the thing: not only is love patient and kind and humble and honorable and all those other wonderful things; it’s also enduring.

Right now, we rely on faith
because the things we believe in cannot be proven.
Faith always implies a certain element of not knowing.
In a sense, you can’t have faith without a little doubt too.
But Paul speaks of a time when the things we trusted in will be fully known.
We won’t need faith anymore;
it will be replaced by knowledge.

Right now, we rely on hope
because the things promised in the Bible have not yet come to pass.
We still experience pain and suffering.
Our societies continue to be imperfect and self-destructive.
Though there is still beauty in this world, humanity continues to act in self-interest.

But hope for a new life, for the arrival of God’s Kingdom,
for our resurrection into something new and beautiful—
this hope keeps us going in the here and now.
But because our hopes will one day be realized,
we won’t need hope forever;
it will be set aside when hope becomes reality.

When this time comes, love will remain,
and all will be love,
the love of God,
the love which moves the sun and other stars,
the agape love into which we are all called.

May faith, hope, and love keep you in the days ahead,
but always remember the greatest of these,
the one which will endure beyond time itself,
is love.