But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For 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 5:5,6
Paul is categorized as one who preached the grace of God as the key to salvation. In my last post, we considered the impact of grace on our lives. Paul concluded the idea that we cannot earn our salvation with the comment that we are created to do the work God planned for us. In the Galatian letter, Paul is fighting with people who demand works over grace. He tells us Jesus died for our freedom over rules and regulations. We have been freed through faith in God, and we should never turn back to the old way of viewing our salvation as something we earn through good works. But notice that Paul does identify the fact that faith is not a neutral quantity. True faith in God’s saving grace requires action on our part.
One of the least quoted and most important (IMHO) verses in Scripture is here in Galatians 5:6. Here Paul tells us that “what is important is faith expressing itself in love.” Have you ever had a teacher stomp their foot on floor and say this will be on the test? Paul seems to be doing that very thing here in Galatians 5. Do we want to know what is really important to God? If so, here it is: “faith expressing itself in love.” Faith is more than just trusting God. It is trusting God and acting. We must act out our faith in love to be pleasing to God.
One thought experiment we can do to consider this idea is the man who trusts his Prius to get him to work and back but refuses to charge it. The car is in great working order, but without action, his faith in the Prius’ ability to get Him to work means very little as he walks to work. Our faith in God must lead to action. We must charge our faith with love. Love is the key to what Paul is trying to tell us. When Jesus was asked about the most important command in the Old Law, he summed it up as love God and love your neighbor (Mark 12:29-31). So Jesus tells us what’s important to God is having love. Paul reiterates that to the Galatians by saying that our faith has meaning if we are expressing it in love both to God and our neighbors.
So how do we show our love to God? Perhaps we can relate this to a person we really like in our life. Whoever that person is, if we love and respect them, then we will obey them. We will try to please them. We will converse with them. Essentially, we will want a full and deep relationship with them. If we love God, we should want all of the above things in our relationship with Him. God loves us unconditionally even when we are lost. He loves us when we are sad, sick, and stubborn. He loves us without recriminations or exceptions. Our love should be the same for Him and that should fuel our lives of faithful love.
What about our neighbors? How do we express our faith in love to them? In fact, who are our neighbors? When Jesus was asked this question, he immediately told the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10). Modern readers have a hard time really understanding this parable because we simply accept the Samaritan helped a poor man on the side of the road. The Jews had a very different reaction to this story because the Samaritans were a worthless, godless people who were totally shunned in Judean society. So the hero of this story is an unlikely person barely better than a dog. The two men who passed by on the other side of the road represented the best of the religious elite in Judea. Jesus tells the story to explain that anyone can be your neighbor even the worst of society, and anyone cannot do the will of God even if that is their job. Loving our neighbor means trying to help others and treating them as we want to be treated (Matthew 7:12). Faith expressing itself in love means we do not ignore pain and suffering, but take action to help others. This is what Paul (and Jesus and God) consider important in our lives.
We are saved by God’s grace when we put our faith in Him. That however opens the door to our hearts and, according to Paul, we are remade by God in the image of Jesus. That simply means that we are now ready to express God’s love in our lives. That we seek to serve others no matter the cost to ourselves. It is an amazing promise. God wants to recreate us in His image (again). Our role in this process is summed up by Paul in Romans 12:2 where he tells us to “let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” This is our challenge today; to let God transform us into a new person in Christ so we can express our faith in love.
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