Now abide faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
(1 Cor.13:13)

This past week we observed Valentine's Day, until recently called "Saint Valentine's Day" which is a day that largely celebrates romantic love. Certainly romantic love is part of the miracle of human love. And within the context of courtship and marriage, it is a gift from God and an essential part of what scripture calls "being fearfully and wonderfully made."

The thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians is written in the style of Greek poetry of Paul's day. It is about the eternal power and central importance of love in the Christian life. It is often used as a reading at weddings and, in all probability is also often misunderstood by being interpreted in the context of romantic or even erotic love.

In most translations, the word rendered in the King James Version as "charity" is translated as "love", which gives rise to this popular "take" on Paul's teaching and misses the point of the text.

In English we are rather casual about the word "love". We say "I love my spouse", I love ice cream", "I love my new car" and "I love the Lord" all using the same work.

In the Greek of the first century, however, there are three common words used for different types of what we call "love".

The first word is Eros, which is passionate or erotic love. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates spent a considerable time on the possibilities of seeking truth and beauty via Eros. We get the modern word "erotic" from this word.

The second word is the word Philia, which means friendship, as in a dispassionate but virtuous love. This was a concept developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity. In ancient texts, Philia denoted a general type of love, as in the love between family, between friends, a even the desire or enjoyment of an activity.

The third word, and the word used in our text this morning, is the word Agape. In Ancient Greek Agape often refers to a general affection or concern, rather than the physical attraction suggested by Eros. The verb form appears in the New Testament describing, among other things, the relationship between Jesus and the beloved disciple, John. In biblical literature, its meaning and usage is an expression of self-sacrificing affection.

Generally, in the New Testament, Agape refers to a total commitment or self-sacrificial love for the object loved. The word seems to contain more of a mental or intellectual element than the other Greek words for love. It is to be understood as rational love that is not based on self-interest. By this a Christian is required to love someone who is not necessarily lovely or loveable. The Christian by God's grace and mercy is required to "love" someone that he may not necessarily like or love in the sense of having warm fuzzy emotional feelings toward, and it is certainly different than erotic love. It is a love that acts in the best interest of the other person. The classic biblical text on this self-sacrificial love is the well-known biblical verse, John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son...."

A Christian is required to love his enemies ("...Love your enemies..." Matthew 5:44). In an apparent inconsistency, in both cases, the Greek word is agape, but in the King James Version, these are translated as "love". To understand our epistle this morning, I suggest you contemplate the preceding verses using charity instead of love: "For God extended such charity to the world as to give his only begotten Son" or "Be charitable to your enemies". Agape means loving someone or something even when they are unlovable. Agape is to be seen as one of what the Bible calls one of the Three Theological virtues.

This lesson this morning is to be seen as part of a series of lessons and prayers for the three Sundays that precede Lent and which are organized around what are called the Three Theological virtues, namely Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Septuagesima stresses faith, Sexagesima stresses hope, and Quinquagesima, the Sunday we celebrate today, stresses charity. We can even find these virtues listed in this morning's Epistle, from St. Paul to the Corinthians, where we are informed that faith, hope, and charity all have eternal significance, but the greatest of the three is charity.

Unfortunately for us, the meanings of the words virtue and charity have shifted enough over time to the point that they may no longer make any sense to us as theological terms, as words that are meant to help us understand God. Thus, it only makes sense to examine them a bit before we continue.

In classic usage, a "virtue" is a power and in particular, a virtue is the power or ability to act in a certain way. In ancient thinking, including the thinking of the Bible, a virtue is the power of a thing or a person to be what it truly is, or, as is the case most of the time in this fallen world, what it truly ought to be. In Greek thought, the "virtue" of bread, for instance, is its power to give nourishment and to sustain life. On the other hand, the possibility that bread might spoil and make us ill or that too much bread might make us fat would not be a part of its virtue, but a part of our experience of bread in the context of a fallen world.

Additionally, lots of things the Biblical writers or other ancient peoples would have called "virtues" are what our own society tends to call "values". Often today, the word "virtue" is relegated to the notion of living by a personal code of conduct. In contemporary culture, there is the additional sense that a person who is trying to be "virtuous" is somehow overly prissy or fussy in his or her behavior. So, if we look at how they are used today, the words virtue or virtuous have taken on a slightly negative meaning. The word used more often today is the word "value", as an expression of the worth of an idea.

These changes in the meaning of words can have a profound effect on our religious thinking, to the point that we no longer think like Christians, and can no longer really understand what St. Paul is teaching in this, and other passages.

By its very nature, the language of "values" is man-centered. A "value" is a judgment placed on an object, on an action, or on a person by an individual human being or by a group of human beings. Values are inherently subjective. l can have my values or "value system" and you can have yours. Because of this man-centeredness, moreover, values are always intrinsically relative. I value this, you value that. All of our values are relative, and based upon how we "feel" about something, and to us, are therefore true.

This kind of relativity can make us sound like idiots when we are confronted with a Hitler, a Stalin, an Osama Bin Ladin or even a Hugh Hefner. These people all have "values". We know that everything such people value is evil, but if values are based on human judgment, how do we say that they is wrong, except that there are more of us and therefore, our values win. This head-counting is an invitation to put every moral issue of right and wrong up to a vote or to govern ourselves through focus groups and opinion polls. By this reasoning, if there are more poor people than wealthy people, the poor can simply vote themselves all the wealth of the rich and call it just. The result is a moral blindness in which we begin to treat what we know to be evil as if it were the same as what we know to be good.

In stark contrast to the relativity of human values is the biblical language of virtue, which is God-centered, rather than man-centered. The concept of virtue begins with God himself, with the unity of his eternal life, perfect will, and absolute power. In the Book of Genesis, God calls everything that he creates, including mankind, "good". That goodness resides in God's having given every creature the power, or virtue, to be exactly what God intends it to be. To make this understandable in current terms, we could say that "virtue" is both the absolute "value" that God puts on each creature, as well as his gift of power to that creature so that it can achieve the value that he has established for it.

In this way, too, we can see that the Fall as found in Genesis 3, is a surrender of virtue. It is a willful rejection of the goodness and power that God offers the world and every creature in it, in favor of rebellion, corruption, weakness, and imaginary powers which no creature can exercise. Original Sin, is therefore, ultimately the substitution of man's value system for God's virtues.

An earthly surrender of virtue by creatures, furthermore, cannot totally erase the signs of God's divine virtue in creation itself. In his mercy, God sustains the world and mankind until there is reclamation and restoration of all of creation to its proper virtue through the blood of Jesus Christ.

The work of God's virtue, even in a fallen world, is clear enough that even pagan philosophers noticed the existence of certain virtues that make a human being human, rather than just another animal. These were and are called the cardinal "virtues" from a Latin word for "to hang", since ordinary human identity and decency hang on them.

These cardinal virtues identified by the pagans philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, and confirmed by such great Christian moral theologians as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, are prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. If we do not exercise the power that God has given us to think and to judge; to exercise moderation in all that we do; to be strong in bearing the burdens of life; and to be just in dealing with others, we make ourselves less than human. In this condition, we are not living a decent life even by the standards of this fallen world.

The theological virtues with which we began are the supernatural gifts of God; gifts that can take us beyond even earthly decency to eternal life in Jesus Christ.

Faith is the power to trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior, as our Teacher, and as our Lord. Hope is the power to wait for God's good time for the keeping of all his promises to us. Charity, from the Greek word "agape" is the power to love, but it is loved stripped of all self-concern. It is a moral love without lust or any desire for personal gain. Charity is the power to put others and their honor, their reputation, their glory and their well-being ahead of ourselves, whether we are loving God or man. And we can only understand why charity is the greatest virtue when we understand virtue's beginning in God. Before God creates anything, he is the Blessed Trinity, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, sharing eternally the power of love. When St. John writes "God is Love" he is trying to express in human language the infinity of the uncreated virtue of charity that an inseparable part of God's very nature. (1 John 4:16). When we are able to love innocently, unselfishly, and completely, we will come as close to understanding God as it is possible for a creature to understand his Creator.

We cannot be Christians unless we understand that everything true, whether in religion or anything else, begins with God and ends with God.

All who strive in faith and hope to exercise the theological virtue of charity are brought closer to God. When we strive for this spirit of "agape" we will be led to all of the other virtues.

But we need to remember that we live only because God has loved us first. We can love only because God has loved us first, and he ought always to be the first and greatest object of our love. And any time that we lose sight of what it means to love, what it means to exercise the virtue of charity, all we need to do is to look at the cross. Jesus Christ on the cross is divine love incarnate. He is what love means, and we can only learn to love by following him.

Now abide faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.