Love / Present

Faith / Past

Hope / Future

Love is present tense. God is love. (I John 4:16) He told Moses, “I Am that I Am.” (Ex. 3:14) God, Himself encompasses the fullness of time, past and future, the same way He manifests Himself through both Word and Spirit, articulation and breath.

Love exists in the present tense and stands as the highest of all three Kingdom attributes, as the Apostle Paul states, “but now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (I Cor. 13:13) The will of the human soul stands as the highest point between the mind and the emotions, choosing which thoughts to accept and meditate upon, while at the same time choosing the response of the emotions to these thoughts. The will makes choices in the present, based upon the knowledge of the past. It could be knowledge as old as the most ancient Scriptures, or as new as the last God-inspired revelation only a moment ago; but faith still draws upon the understanding of the past. For example, the testimonies in Scripture, being of the past, build our faith to receive God’s manifested blessings in the present.

Faith, however, works by love. It is the action of love that brings faith to life. “Faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26) Faith (past) united to Love (present) is the most powerful motivational force that causes the future, or realm of hope, to open wide with possibility. Hope is the realm of the emotion (speaking of the soul), and as emotion is affected by choices (will) and thoughts (mind), the future responds to those choices and thoughts (past and present seeds, which have been and are being sown).

Both the past and the future are subject to the choices of the present. The present filters what it wants of the past, allowing it to pass into the future. Of the past and future, however, the past holds authority over the future, just as seeds sown in the past must manifest in the future. One would say, “But the future must be greater, because the possibilities are positive and full of wonder, whereas the past is fraught with both failures and successes, but truthfully, mostly failures. The past speaks of death, the future of natural life. How can the past be authoritative over the future?”

The only way to sever the authority of the death and decay the past holds over the future lies in the power of the present (Love) to choose to overlook the failures of the past, draw upon the successes of the past, reject the destructive seeds of the past and to protectively nurture the good seeds sown.

Love alone can take the past and metamorphosize it into a powerful future. This is the power of forgiveness. It is the power of Jesus (the Word) Who was made flesh, living in the death and decay of this realm, but risen in the power of God’s choice, anointed with victory for the future, to reign as King in the fullness of this hope…our “Blessed Hope.”

The Word without the resurrection of Love remains a dead letter, for the “letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (II Cor. 3:6), but as faith is united to love, it is simultaneously broken from the past and brought into the present, creating victory for the future. Without being united to love, however, faith’s future is non-existent, just as “faith without works is dead.” (Js. 2:26) “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” (Js. 1:22)

Inactivity with the Word is disobedience. It is rebellion to the possibilities of its future. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. (I Sam. 15:23) Leaving the Word unacted upon in the choices of the present is demonic and will be judged by God. The rejection of God’s Word (Jesus) results in damnation, because the future is left empty and therefore hope is destroyed. “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17) The Word must be acted upon and that action is Love.

(for more study, see the Trinity Concepts Key)