PAUL’S LITTLE TRIAD

PAUL’S LITTLE TRIAD

1Corithinans 13:13  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

The triad is an archetype. It represents the process a system goes through in producing what it was designed to produce. A simple example of a triad is insemination, gestation and birth.

The apostle Paul gave us a profound triad in his letter to the Corinthian followers of Jesus. You can see it in the passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 quoted above.

In showing you the triadic example of insemination, gestation and birth, we can see the role that each of the three aspects of the triad play out. So, when we look at Paul’s triad of faith, hope and love, we simply need to apply those roles to Paul’s triad. 

Faith, which is synonymous with trust is cast in the role of the catalyst, the thing fertilizing the system. Trust is that which fertilizes us. It is not knowledge that fertilizes us humans. It is not having love that fertilizes us. Love is the thing ultimately produce by trusting acting on our heart. 

When we choose to trust God it stirs up hope in our heart. That is interesting isn’t it. It is the choice to trust God that changes, that brings change to our heart. Hope is our heart responding to our choice to trust God.  Again, we don’t feel hope come alive in our heart because we chose to accept a particular truth or dogma as being correct. Nor does it come alive in us as a result of us choosing to love other people. It comes alive in us because we chose to trust, to believe (which is a sub category of trust).

And when our heart responds to our choice to trust God with feeling hope, that births love. We feel love for ourselves and others because we feel hope in God whom we have chosen to trust. This is the profound reality the Apostle Paul is giving us in his little triad. 

The implications of this triad is that it motivates us to focus on God giving us what we need to choose to trust Him. God is the author and finisher of our faith/trust/  We don’t fixate on being loving beings. That comes automatically to us when we have genuinely chosen to trust God. And we know if we have genuine trust in God when our heart responds to our choice to trust God by feeling hope.

And we don’t fixate on thinking the right things. We don’t fixate on knowing the true things. We choose to trust, even when we don’t understand why we should. We choose to trust God because God loves us and we want, we need to be loved. This need to be and feel loved is the most basic psychological need a human has. All other psychological needs are subject to this one need. Even the psychological need to feel secure, to feel like we will physically survive is subject to our need to feel loved. It is this preeminence of our need for love that underwrites our choice to trust in Love, who God is.

And when we do, our entire life becomes spiritually fertilized with divine life, which is God’s love. 

Let God’s love do its perfect work in you. When you feel God’s love, choose to trust that loving God, no matter what your subjective heart says to your mind. You will find your heart responding to your choice to trust by feeling hope flood in. And that hope will give birth to the strength to love others and yourself.

© John Brusseau, June 25, 2025