Faith, Hope, and Love

Paying attention to how we will be judged seems like a no-brainer. Students want to know how they will be graded. How much does the final exam count? What about the term paper? Is homework a major part of the grade? Is attendance necessary? As mentioned before, there is a significant number of Christians who think that they will not be judged by God at all. They would say that judgment scenes like Matthew 25, where Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, correspond to how nonbelievers will be judged. This is problematic on multiple levels. First, this implies that the sheep, the saved, are saved on the basis of their works apart from faith. In other words, these unbelievers earn their salvation, which is a heresy called pelagianism. It makes no sense since they are saved apart from Christ and it implies that Jesus’ life, suffering, death, and resurrection are nonessential. Seeing the sheep in Matthew 25 as unbelieving saints saved apart from Christ and apart from faith would suggest that there was no need for a new covenant at all: Judaism would be sufficient without the need for a Messiah. In any case, those Christians thinking that they will not be judged believe either that they will be accepted into heaven based on their faith alone or that they will not be judged because God has infallibly decreed them to be saved and infallibly decreed the rest of mankind to eternal damnation. Then again, if God infallibly decrees through His divine sovereignty some to be saved and the others to be damned, then why would there be need of any judgment scene such as Matthew 25? If salvation is either by faith alone or based solely in accord with divine decree, why would Jesus and His earliest disciples place any emphasis on morality? If it is by divine decree that some are damned and some are saved, then why evangelize if the eternal fate of everyone is predetermined irrespective of human knowledge, human freewill, and human love?

The Church has always taught that faith, hope, and love are essential virtues. All three are essential. If faith alone is essential, then hope easily becomes distorted. Christian hope is the trust we are to place in God’s promises. Hope really depends upon faith since we have to believe in Jesus before we can place our trust in His promises. If faith does not lead to hope, then we see tendencies toward presumption or despair. Presumption assumes that God’s favor, mercy, or anything He has promised to mankind is obtained automatically. Presumption denies the role of repentance in salvation, denies the need to take up our crosses, denies the necessity of discipleship, and denies that forgiving the trespasses of our fellow man is required for receiving God’s forgiveness. Despair, on the other hand, denies Christian hope by thinking that Jesus’ promises of divine forgiveness, mercy, patience, and compassion are virtually unobtainable. In other words, if faith does not lead to hope in Jesus’ promises then our behavior is inconsequential to our salvation, that our sins are of no importance, or that our sins are more powerful than divine mercy and compassion. Faith must lead to hope since hope is essential to salvation: “We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance” (Rom 8:22-25).

The primary hope, the primary promise of Christ, is eternal life. Yes, there may be benefits to following Jesus here on earth, such as a better life, a better family, a better society, a better capacity to withstand misfortune, and so on, but none of these things can compete with the joy, peace, and glory of heaven. “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1Cor 2:9-10). Here we see the virtue of hope, the hope of heaven, being promised to those who love God. So it is not faith alone, but faith, hope, and love. After all, our salvation is not like gym class where you can pass by showing up, you can get a better grade by suiting up, and you can get an A by participating. No, it is faith and hope and love that matter.

—Fr Booth