Love And Faith As One

Love and Faith as One

When we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. Galatians 5:6

PAUL WAS PERTURBED AT THE GALATIANS. Many of them had come to Christ by faith and then tried to live for him by their own works. Many have struggled to sort out the relationship between faith and works and discovered many nuances in how it plays out, but the Galatians had tilted far to one side, incorporating self-effort into their beliefs about salvation. Paul rebuked them sharply, always pointing to the power of the living Jesus within believers as the source of their works, not the result of them. And in order to correct their misunderstandings about law and grace, he described what faith really looks like. It isn’t about external rituals. It’s the faith of Jesus pouring out of us in love.

The relationship between faith and love is foundational. We can’t believe without having an experience of God’s love; we have to be aware of his kindness toward us and his delight in us if we are going to trust him with our lives. But it also works the other way around; we can’t love well without having the faith of Christ within us. When we grasp both sides of that relationship—faith in the context of God’s extravagant love, and God’s extravagant love overflowing from us by faith—powerful things happen.

If you’ve ever tried to separate faith and love—to live by faith outside of the context of God’s love working in you—you know how futile it is. We neither experience nor demonstrate God’s love without faith, and we can neither experience nor demonstrate faith without God’s love. If we don’t see them as part of the same package—Jesus living within us—we’ll fail at both. As Paul expressed it to the Galatians, only faith working through love counts for anything.

That thought is echoed elsewhere in Paul’s writings (1 Corinthians 13:2, for example), which means it’s not a peripheral thought. It’s fundamental to our faith. Pursue it, embrace it, and live it out. You will believe only to the degree you love, and love to the degree you believe.

As soon as we are with God in faith and love, we are in prayer.