It was not my intent to add a third part to this title, but it dawned on me that something else would be helpful to round this out in a fuller expression.
Paul makes a statement that, if we do not pause and ponder it, we would miss its enormous significance to our spiritual lives. To the Galatian Christians Paul writes, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6). In its context Paul is arguing against the law as a means to one's right standing with God. It is Christ, who is the fulfillment of the law, that alone saves. In Christ the only thing that counts or matters as a true expression of genuine faith is faith working through love.
In simple terms Paul is saying that faith works. Faith in the Lord looks like something; it has tangible fruits that prove its presence, power and reality. Paul's words teach us that it is not just our profession of faith that counts but our practice of that faith that demonstrates its genuine character. That faith works through love means that faith in God is always demonstrated in acts of love which, in itself, has a vertical and a horizontal dimension. This means that the profession of my faith is proven in my visible love for God (vertical) and my visible and sacrificial love for others (horizontal). If either of these are not the pattern of my life my faith is not genuine.
The Vertical Dimension - Faith working in love for the Lord
The Christian life follows after the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ and His full and undivided love for the Father. Love for God is demonstrated in my devotion to His character and to His Word. It is the passion that moves me to situate my life in such a way that Christ is my center, my joy and my greatest pursuit. It is the feeling and the belief that He alone is worthy of the totality of my life and then acting in ways that prove this. To love God means to not love ourselves or to live as if we are the center of our world. It is refusing to be ruled or guided by our sinful passions but by an increasing love of God as we behold His glory (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6).
Love for God is seen in our complete trust in His trustworthiness and our turning away from idols. Therefore, genuine faith is demonstrated in a cross shaped life. A life conformed to and confronted by the claims of the cross to live lives of faithful obedience to the Lord in the face of and even the reality of death. It is the daily re-presenting of ourselves to the Lord as His servants and slaves. It is the daily giving of ourselves as living sacrifices such that we can know and prove in and with our lives the will of God (Romans 12:1-2). It is living under the reality of His Lordship and seeing all of life as being crucified with Christ, no longer us living, but Christ living in and through our lives (Gal 2:20). It is complete and utter submission of the whole of who we are to His authority.
Faith always works love toward God.
The Horizontal Dimension - Faith working in love for others
The Christian life follows after the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrificial and selfless love for the church. Paul put it this way saying that Christ "gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,"(Galatians 1:4). Here is what faith looks like: obedience to the Lord to the point of sacrifice for the good of another. Jesus's life and death are the pattern for the church in how we are to live our lives for one another and even for the world. Love is sacrifice, not simply of money and time, but of ourselves. It is the willingness of the one loved by the Lord to demonstrate this love by his or her life being sacrificed for others.
Paul moves from the love of Christ being expressed for "us" to a personal focus saying
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Paul has personalized the sacrifice of Christ for himself saying the Lord who gave himself for us is the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is incredibly important. Paul is now bound to this Lord - crucified with Him - meaning that he, Paul, sees as his personal mission the calling to embody the mission of Jesus which is the re-enactment of the cross – the giving himself for others. This is what faith working itself in love means. The faith Paul now has, is what empowers and compels him to demonstrate the proof of this faith in his sacrificial life.
Here is the point: if we are not dying we are not living. If we are not embodying the death of Jesus by dying for others we are not displaying the life of Jesus within us. If there is life in me because of faith in Christ faith will work itself out, it will demonstrate itself, in love. Not sentimental love that flows from the lips, but the sacrificial love that pours out like a drink offering. Therefore, Christians cannot own, embrace or confess a Christianity where love for God or love for others is considered as merely an option. Love for God and for others are the essential out-workings of genuine faith.
Let me end with this word. To profess faith in Christ is literally to claim that the God of the universe has inhabited my soul. It is literally confessing that I am one with God because of my faith in Christ. Now, if this is the case, that is, if God truly inhabits my being and my soul and if I am truly one with the Creator of the world and if I have the Almighty at work within me by the power of the Holy Spirit, here is the question: Can I be the same as I was before He inhabited me? Would there not be any change in my life? There must be!!!!
I am not asking if there would still be battles with sin. This will be true until the Lord returns. What I am asking is this: If the Originator of love and the Demonstrator of that same love has invaded my life how is it that His character of love would be absent in my life?
The truth is this. We have given ourselves too much wiggle room and have allowed for way too many exceptions to our love for the Lord and for others. Paul said faith works through love (Galatians 5:9). That's it. No other option is on the table. Faith, the eternal power of God given to us to believe, comes with power to enact a life that loves Him and models Christ's love for others.
This is why I named this blog "Cross Calling." We are called to love and model the cross. The vertical beam represents God’s love coming down to us and our going up to Him. The horizontal beam represents our love for one another. Faith always works love. The Christian life, therefore, is always and only a re-enactment of the cross.