As love is the most excellent thing, so is it the most enduring … for will not faith practically come to an end when we shall see and know thoroughly? And will not hope practically be at an end when we shall reach the fruition of all our hopes and be possessors of the fullness of our Heavenly Father's promises? Love, however, will never fail, even as it had no beginning. God is love, and since He was without beginning, so love was without beginning; because it is His character, His disposition; and as He endures forever, so love will endure forever.
Faith, hope and love are among the greatest graces. Faith enables us in confidence to apply the promises of God in life's battles; hope enables us to be courageous in doing and daring for the Lord in these battles; and love enables us to have the power to rejoice and delight in the hardships of these battles, making them easy, and turning them into glorious victories. Faith and hope are handmaidens of love, the glorious and beautiful mistress of the house beautiful, a character like God's and Christ's. It is because love is the most Godlike and Christlike of all the graces that it is the greatest of these three graces.
2 Sam. 22:31; Psa. 9:9, 10; 32:10; 34:8, 22; Prov. 3:5: Jer. 17:7, 8; Matt. 21:21, 22; Mark 9:23; John 11:25-27; Rom. 3:19—5:2; 9:31-33; 10:4-10; Gal. 3; Eph. 6:16; Heb. 4:1-10; 11; Jas. 2; Psa. 16:9, 10; 31:24; 33:18; 43:5; 71:5, 14; 119:74, 81, 116, 166; Acts 23:6; 24:14, 15; 26:6, 7; Rom. 5:2-5; 8:24; 12:12; 15:4, 13; Eph. 1:18; Col. 1:5, 23, 27; 1 Thes. 1:3; 5:8; Titus 2:13; Heb. 6:11, 18, 19; 1 Pet. 1:3, 13, 21; 1 John 3:3; John 3:16; 17:23, 26; Rom. 5:8; John 10:11, 15; 13:1, 34; 21:17; 1 Cor. 13.
