The Divine Trilogy: Faith, Hope, And Love
January 2026
“We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints, For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel.”
—Colossians 1:3-5
In these three verses, we are given some very important information that every believer needs to understand—information that will help us in our daily living for God.
In verse 3 Paul says, “We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” If one is to notice, Paul is constantly giving thanks to the Lord. Only in the book of Galatians is the word omitted from Paul’s salutations. The lesson to us is that, as believers of God, we must continually give out heartfelt thanks to the Lord for all that He has done for us. Any and all good that has come our way is only because of the Lord. And, of course, the one thing we should be constantly thanking the Lord for is the cross. Salvation is the greatest gift God could ever give man, and that gift was only possible through the death of God’s Son on Calvary’s cross. Every day we should be continually thanking the Lord for His grace and mercy.
In verse 4 he says, “Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus.” The key word here is faith. Faith is here defined as being “in Christ Jesus.” This is a Christ-centered faith—a faith that centered upon what Christ did at the cross for lost humanity. Never forget, our Lord came to this world for one reason and one reason alone, and that was to be offered up on Calvary’s cross as the only sacrifice God the Father would accept. So anytime we think of Christ, it must always bein the sense of the cross. Actually, the two names—Christ and the cross—should be synonymous. We must never disconnect Christ from the cross.
“Faith in Christ Jesus” is such a common phrase in the church. However, I wonder if there is truly a proper understanding of the term. When we study the epistles of Paul, it becomes very clear that he is speaking of what Jesus did at the cross and the resurrection. We must never forget that everything that is available to us as the Lord’s children as outlined in the new covenant comes only through what Christ did at Calvary and the resurrection.
Romans 10:9 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
This verse plainly tells us what one has to believe and confess to be saved—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So let us never forget that when we think of Christ or speak of Christ, it must always be in the sense of His sacrificial atoning work.
Then the apostle said, “and of the love which ye have to all saints.” This presents to us the second part of the divine trilogy—love.
Love, one might say, is the fruit of faith and the proof of its genuineness (Gal. 5:6, I John 3:14). The love of which Paul speaks is agape love—the love that can only be produced by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer that is yielded to the Spirit of God. It is a love that impels one to sacrifice oneself for the object or person loved. If one properly loves God, one will properly love “all the saints.” This word, agape, denotes caring love—the love that counts no sacrifice too great for the one loved. It is God’s willful direction toward man. It involves God doing what He knows is best for man and not necessarily what man desires. For example, John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world, that He gave.” What did He give? Not what man wanted, but what God knew man needed, i.e. His Son to bring forgiveness to man.1
Every true born-again believer should exhibit agape love, as this sets us apart from the world.Love for each other is what should set us apart from the world.
In verse 5 Paul states, “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven,” which presents to us the last of this divine trilogy—hope.
In the New Testament, the word hope signifies both the sentiment of hope and the thing hoped for. Here it signifies the thing hoped for, meaning that it is guaranteed of fulfillment though the time of fulfillment is not known.
By Paul using the word heaven and the fact that all true hope is of God and from God, this states that only Christians have this hope.
Hope, as used by Paul, is not meaning the emotion of hope, but the object on which the emotion is filled. It is objective hope, not subjective hope.
All hope that we have is made possible by what Jesus did at the cross. All the future prophetic events that await us is a hope that will come to pass.
So there we have the divine trilogy—faith, love, and hope.