How do faith, hope and love and the nine types of fruit (see Archive) join up? How do they work together, as Paul clearly thinks they do? What Paul does, again and again, is to give initial guidelines, especially in areas where the outworking of Christian virtue will lead people into behaviour patters that will look surprising to them, and perhaps shocking to their neighbours. They will need to be reassured that this is indeed the way to go. Instructions that could look like simple old "rules" are, for the most part, guidelines to keep them on track while they are learning the habits of the heart. He is not lapsing back toward a rules-based ethic purporting to advocate a virtue-based one.
Paul is no doubt well aware that however much he may want the virtues and the fruit to be chosen, developed, and put into practice by every single Christian and by the church as a whole, there are going to be many cases where one cannot simply wait for that to happen. One cannot, in the meantime, leave people with no guidelines as to where the virtues ought to be leading, any more than you can leave new converts without clear indications of which styles of behaviour will in fact cohere with "being in Christ" and which won't. We note that Paul is engaged in active pastoral ministry.
Stepping in with some firm "rules," as (for instance) in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, does not mean that he has given up inculcating virtue and is going back to rules, let alone to "the Law" itself. Rather, he is displaying the skill of the pastor: knowing when to let the young pupil learn from mistakes made, and when to push the theory toward the back burner and go to the rescue. Rules and virtue go together. We can see, on a broad canvas, the truth which Paul highlights in Romans 8.3: what the Law could not do ... God has done. See 1 Thessalonians 1.3, 5.8; Colossians 1.4-5.
We are daytime people, even though the world sleeps on! As in 1 Corinthians, then, the three virtues are to be found in an eschatological context. These are the things which belong to the new day that is dawning, and which you must make every effort to put on in the present time. It may be clear that love is a virtue, in the sense of being an aspect of present hard-won discipleship which genuinely anticipates the central feature of the life of the coming age; but how does this apply to faith and hope?
See 1 Corinthians 13. These three abide. They will last into the future world. Faith and hope will not vanish or be emptied. Why not?
It is true that faith and hope do at present seem to us to be looking forward to the new age, so that we might assume that when that new age comes they will be redundant. But Paul is seeing much deeper that that. Faith is the settled, unwavering trust in the one true God whom we have come to know in Jesus Christ. When we see him face to face we shall not abandon that trust, but deepen it. Hope is the settled, unwavering confidence that this God will not leave us or forsake us, but will always have more in store for us than we could ask or think.
I believe that the God we know in Jesus is the God of utterly generous, outflowing love, I believe that there will be no end to the new creation of this God, and that within the new age itself there will always be more to hope for, more to work for, more to celebrate. Learning to hope in the present time is learning not just to hope for a better place than we currently find ourselves in, but learning to trust the God who is and will remain the God of the future.
To speak of "virtue" is indeed to say that we are concerned with the moral growth, the habits of the heart, of every single individual. But to insist that the three primary virtues, are faith, hope, and above all love is to insist that to grow in these virtues is precisely to grow in looking away from oneself and toward God on the one hand and one's neighbour on the other. The more you cultivate these virtues, the less you will be thinking about yourself at all.
Of course morality must take root deep within the individual. To insist on that, as virtue does, is to insist that it is neither an externally imposed rule, nor a calculation of consequences that could in principle have been done by a computer, nor a matter of discovering what is in the depth of one's heart and being true to it. But if "morality" ends up coming to its focal point in faith, hope, and love, then - though it will spring from deep within - its actual focal point is outside the self and in the God and the neighbour who are being loved, in the God who is the object of faith and hope and the neighbour who is to be seen, and loved, in the light of that faith and that hope.
All three, themselves gifts from God, point away from ourselves and outward: faith, toward God and his action in Jesus Christ; hope, toward God's future; love, toward both God and our neighbour. "Those who belong to the Messiah Jesus crucified the flesh": there are no exceptions, no categories of people who can, as it were, slide sideways into the holiness which the gospel generates without going the painful route of crucifixion with the Messiah and then the hard moral effort needed to cultivate the virtues in all their fullness.
The point of using the term "fruit," after all, is that these are things which grow from within rather than being imposed from without. The different varieties of fruit are, like the virtues, characteristics that need to be thought through, chosen with an act of mind and will, and implemented with determination even when the emotions may be suggesting something quite different. That is how you are recreated as a fully human being, reflecting God's image. That is how you become, in advance, part of the "royal priesthood."
Morality, surprisingly to some, is part of a mission. Cleansed vessels are to be put to fresh use; conversely, fresh use requires cleaning. Paul insists that the church must be, must think of itself as, and must make every effort to remain, one body, a corporate virtue where all other virtues come together.
-From After You Believe by N.T. Wright, paraphrased pages 198-206
Paul is no doubt well aware that however much he may want the virtues and the fruit to be chosen, developed, and put into practice by every single Christian and by the church as a whole, there are going to be many cases where one cannot simply wait for that to happen. One cannot, in the meantime, leave people with no guidelines as to where the virtues ought to be leading, any more than you can leave new converts without clear indications of which styles of behaviour will in fact cohere with "being in Christ" and which won't. We note that Paul is engaged in active pastoral ministry.
Stepping in with some firm "rules," as (for instance) in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, does not mean that he has given up inculcating virtue and is going back to rules, let alone to "the Law" itself. Rather, he is displaying the skill of the pastor: knowing when to let the young pupil learn from mistakes made, and when to push the theory toward the back burner and go to the rescue. Rules and virtue go together. We can see, on a broad canvas, the truth which Paul highlights in Romans 8.3: what the Law could not do ... God has done. See 1 Thessalonians 1.3, 5.8; Colossians 1.4-5.
We are daytime people, even though the world sleeps on! As in 1 Corinthians, then, the three virtues are to be found in an eschatological context. These are the things which belong to the new day that is dawning, and which you must make every effort to put on in the present time. It may be clear that love is a virtue, in the sense of being an aspect of present hard-won discipleship which genuinely anticipates the central feature of the life of the coming age; but how does this apply to faith and hope?
See 1 Corinthians 13. These three abide. They will last into the future world. Faith and hope will not vanish or be emptied. Why not?
It is true that faith and hope do at present seem to us to be looking forward to the new age, so that we might assume that when that new age comes they will be redundant. But Paul is seeing much deeper that that. Faith is the settled, unwavering trust in the one true God whom we have come to know in Jesus Christ. When we see him face to face we shall not abandon that trust, but deepen it. Hope is the settled, unwavering confidence that this God will not leave us or forsake us, but will always have more in store for us than we could ask or think.
I believe that the God we know in Jesus is the God of utterly generous, outflowing love, I believe that there will be no end to the new creation of this God, and that within the new age itself there will always be more to hope for, more to work for, more to celebrate. Learning to hope in the present time is learning not just to hope for a better place than we currently find ourselves in, but learning to trust the God who is and will remain the God of the future.
To speak of "virtue" is indeed to say that we are concerned with the moral growth, the habits of the heart, of every single individual. But to insist that the three primary virtues, are faith, hope, and above all love is to insist that to grow in these virtues is precisely to grow in looking away from oneself and toward God on the one hand and one's neighbour on the other. The more you cultivate these virtues, the less you will be thinking about yourself at all.
Of course morality must take root deep within the individual. To insist on that, as virtue does, is to insist that it is neither an externally imposed rule, nor a calculation of consequences that could in principle have been done by a computer, nor a matter of discovering what is in the depth of one's heart and being true to it. But if "morality" ends up coming to its focal point in faith, hope, and love, then - though it will spring from deep within - its actual focal point is outside the self and in the God and the neighbour who are being loved, in the God who is the object of faith and hope and the neighbour who is to be seen, and loved, in the light of that faith and that hope.
All three, themselves gifts from God, point away from ourselves and outward: faith, toward God and his action in Jesus Christ; hope, toward God's future; love, toward both God and our neighbour. "Those who belong to the Messiah Jesus crucified the flesh": there are no exceptions, no categories of people who can, as it were, slide sideways into the holiness which the gospel generates without going the painful route of crucifixion with the Messiah and then the hard moral effort needed to cultivate the virtues in all their fullness.
The point of using the term "fruit," after all, is that these are things which grow from within rather than being imposed from without. The different varieties of fruit are, like the virtues, characteristics that need to be thought through, chosen with an act of mind and will, and implemented with determination even when the emotions may be suggesting something quite different. That is how you are recreated as a fully human being, reflecting God's image. That is how you become, in advance, part of the "royal priesthood."
Morality, surprisingly to some, is part of a mission. Cleansed vessels are to be put to fresh use; conversely, fresh use requires cleaning. Paul insists that the church must be, must think of itself as, and must make every effort to remain, one body, a corporate virtue where all other virtues come together.
-From After You Believe by N.T. Wright, paraphrased pages 198-206
