Faith Working Through Love
Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.
The freedom that Jesus purchased for you and me on that Cross is something that we can never earn for ourselves. Now, many ‘Christians’ know that in their heads, but only a few live that truth out in their hearts.
I want to come back for a moment to one of my favourite verses about freedom in the Bible, in
Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.
In other words, none of the rules in the old rule book (in this case the rule if circumcision) count for anything. The only thing that counts, in the Kingdom of God, is faith working through love. Now there’s a powerful truth here about actually living out the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ. There is an incredibly powerful truth here about how to lay hold of this freedom, how to experience this freedom firsthand in our lives.
The first part is faith. I’m a simple guy – and you know what, God’s Word says that Jesus died for me and because of that I am set free from my sin, and because of that I have the gift of eternal life. I am going to believe in Jesus for my salvation. I am going to believe in Jesus for my freedom. And I am going to believe, just as the Bible tells me, that these are a free gift from God, through the sacrifice of Jesus. Full stop, end of story. I believe, how about you?
But then, then God wants us to put that faith to work in love. And the sort of love he’s talking about here, is sacrificial, unconditional love – the very same sort that Jesus showed towards you and me on that Cross. Agape love. Look – without work and exercise, your muscles will waste away. If you just sit there on the couch you’ll become weaker and weaker. And without works, faith is dead. Unless we take our faith out for a walk, unless we exercise our faith in sacrificial, unconditional love, it becomes empty, hollow … dead. I think you know what I’m talking about here.
What does freedom look like? How do we lay hold of God’s freedom? By having faith in what God says, and living out that faith, day by day, by showing the same unconditional, sacrificial love that Jesus showed toward us on that cross. It’s by living that sort of a life that you experience freedom. The sense of freedom that we’re all so desperately looking for comes, when we surrender our lives to God, believing in Him, trusting in Him, and working out that faith by loving others, for Him.
Rules? Nah. The only thing that counts is faith working through love.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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