We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 1:3)

Paul thanks God that the Thessalonians are exhibiting signs of faith, love, and hope. These are three paramount virtues of genuine and growing Christians.

Faith produces works that correspond to it. Faith is assent, a genuine assent birthed and sustained by the Spirit in a person, to a system of belief that has been revealed by God. This system or worldview is the Christian religion. We may say it in different ways to stress different aspects of it, but faith is genuine assent to the gospel, the Bible, Christianity, and Jesus Christ, that is, the truth about him or what has been revealed about him.

Because the Christian religion insists on certain inner qualities and outward actions, genuine assent to it will necessarily be accompanied by these qualities and actions. Because faith affirms the divinity and lordship of Jesus Christ, then it necessarily produces obedience to his teachings and commands. And because faith presupposes a work of God in the heart by which he transforms the individual and grants him godly dispositions, then these will of course be found in the individual who has faith. The works of faith, then, will include obedience toward biblical commands, compassion for the sick and needy, eagerness to suffer for righteous reasons, boldness in speech and action, and enterprising efforts to advance the gospel.

Now, there are various wrong motives for spiritual labor. Some perform ministry work for vainglory, to impress other men and to be admired by them. Some are taken up by a sense of ambition – the same kind of ambition that men have for secular careers and achievements, but applied to ministry work. Others are driven by competition. Whether there is any need or reason for it, they want to be better than everyone else, or at least better than some specific individuals that they have in mind, because the thought of being less successful than they are is unbearable. In connection with this, there is the motive of spite. It is possible to pursue what appears to be worthy spiritual projects for no other reason than malice and revenge. Of course, these wrong motives, and many others not mentioned, tend to overlap. They are against the spirit of Christ and must be exorcised from the heart.

Love is the only motive for spiritual labor that is worthy of the gospel. Contrary to the world’s opinion and even most Christian teachings, this love is mainly not an emotion or a feeling, but a disposition that cares about the things of God, to honor his name and obey his commands, and that cares about the welfare of other people, regardless of any emotion or feeling. A person who loves may consistently experience certain emotions or feelings that seem to accord with such a disposition, but he thinks and behaves with love – that is, a sacrificial obedience to God’s law concerning how to relate to God and to people – whether or not he is experiencing these emotions and feelings. Christian love drives emotions and feelings, while non-Christian love, which is not love at all, defines love itself by their emotions and feelings, and then allow love to fluctuate along with these emotions and feelings. Christians who define love as an emotion or feeling endorse a non-Christian characteristic as the supreme virtue, and contribute to the spiritual and ethical decline in the church and in the world. True love is biblical, intelligent, sacrificial, consistent, and persistent.

Hope produces endurance. If we are to grasp the connection between the two, we need to first understand the meaning of hope. Unlike some popular usage, in Scripture hope is not the same as wish. It is not something that we wish to have, but might or might not obtain. It is not something that we wish to happen, but might or might not happen. And it is not something that we will produce or attain by ourselves, our own ability and cleverness. Rather, Christian hope refers to something that God has conceived, ordained, and promised, and it is something that will surely happen. For the Christian to have hope is for him to look forward to something that God has promised, and he can participate in and benefit from this hope because of his union with Jesus Christ.

This hope is in Jesus Christ, so that although it refers to some things that will happen in the future, in a sense it is for us a present reality and a present certainty. This is because he has already revealed himself to us. We know this person now, and our hearts are full now. The fulfillment of the promise is not entirely in the future, but he has saved us already, and we have received from him already. Our hope is not wishful thinking, a baseless expectation, or an empty delusion, but it is a future certainty based on present reality.

We have from him knowledge, faith, power, love, virtues, his Spirit, and “every spiritual blessing” (Ephesians 1:3). We have salvation now. We have the knowledge of God now – that is, we know him now. We have a filial relationship with God now. And even though many believers would renounce their birthright to protect a tradition or a false humility, we have rational, coherent, and extensive answers to all ultimate issues now. God has given us all these things through the Scriptures and by his Spirit. Yet all these things, he says, only amount to a deposit for the greater things that he will lavish upon us in the age to come. This is what a Christian ought to mean by hope.

No wonder that those who grasp this shout and leap for joy. And no wonder those who have this hope possess great endurance. It is not a passive quality, but an active virtue. It energizes us to pursue that which God has ordained for us to do. As Jesus, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2), so we will consider “that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). And again, this endurance is not a strength produced by a delusion or deception, for we have already received a deposit, and we are already enriched by it. The future hope refers to our full inheritance, but those who believe have already experienced its reality. So we perceive that even those things that seem to harm and oppose us are only steps that will take us closer to the glorious end that the Father has promised.

In contrast, non-Christians have no hope. They have nothing. They do not have the answers to anything about anything. They cannot prove any of the things that they claim they know. They cannot demonstrate that their worldviews contain anything true or reliable in them. And they have no basis to think that they will gain knowledge or salvation, or that anything positive will happen to them in the future. For them to expect anything good would be delusional and wishful thinking.

Our knowledge of God in the present forms the basis of our hope for the future, and this hope in turn enhances our comprehension about the present. We are not only able to interpret any event in the past and present in relation to Christ’s anticipated and then accomplished redemption, but we are also able to interpret any past and present event in the light of what we know God has in store in the future. Unbelievers cannot do this. Because they do not know Christ, the light of men and the light of the world, they are completely in the dark, about any thing, about any time. They have no understanding of the past, no wisdom for the present, and no hope for the future. They are lost, ignorant, and miserable.