love, faith and hope

1 Corinthians 13: "13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

At last week's D-group, the speaker cited this verse to emphasize the importance of love. However, I started to ask myself this question: what exactly is faith?

Here is the definition of "faith" given by Merriam-Webster's dictionary: "belief and trust in and loyalty to God."

To me, both love and hope seem to be the by-products of faith. Theoretically, if we have true faith in God, we would do what he wants us to do. So at first, we would love him wholeheartedly and love others as ourselves.

Needless to say, faith brings hope of spending eternity with God in heaven.

Then why did Paul put love as the most important matter? My guess is that for non-Christians, love, faith and hope could be treated separatedly. Hence, without having a real faith in Jesus Christ, people can still love each other and make a better world. Also, love is the powerful tool to destroy the devil's plan.

I still stand by my arguement though. Faith is what matters most. Love is the practice of faith. If we have faith, we have love for God and others. Without love, we can't say there is faith.