Faith Works by Love
Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. [1 John 3:1]
The revelation of God’s love is absolutely the most important aspect of your life in Christ. It is the foundation by which all truth stands; and therefore, everything you learn and know about God is measured by it. Consequently, if someone presents information concerning God that violates the principles of God’s kind of love, then it is to be discarded as it is written in 2 Corinthians 10: 4-5: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
In this passage, the word “love” can be easily substituted in place of God, as love is synonymous with God as the Scripture says, God is love. [1 John 4: 8] Therefore, the same passage can read two ways and still teach the same principle: casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God’s love; or casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the love of God.
When you apply this standard to any biblical teaching or preaching, it would be impossible to be deceived. The Bible teaches that your experience of the fullness of what Christ died to give you is directly related to your revelation of God’s love. Consequently, if you are not experiencing the totality of all of God’s grace and blessing, then you have failed to fully comprehend and know His love as it is written, That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. [Ephesians 3: 17-19]
The apostle Paul is teaching several profound truths here, in that while Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, you need to be firmly established (rooted and grounded) in God’s love. Earlier I wrote about having to pull weeds in my mom’s flowerbed, saying that the easiest ones to pull out were the ones that had not yet been deeply rooted. The same is true with you—if God’s love is deeply rooted in your heart, then Satan cannot steal this revelation from you. After being rooted and grounded in love, you are able to dig deeper in order to comprehend the four dimensions of God’s love (width, length, depth, and height).
While comprehension of the extent of God’s love is awesome, it is not enough to realize the fullness of God. Comprehension simply opens the door to the deeper revelation of God’s love—a love that is not known from mere intellectual knowledge (because it passes knowledge), but through an intimate and experiential knowledge of God that comes only from personal relationship. This intimacy is comparable to the relationship between husband and wife—the joining together of two to become one as it is written in 1 Corinthians 6:17: But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
This illustrates what I wrote before in that being rooted and grounded in love relates to your comprehension or mere knowledge of God’s love; and being filled with all the fullness of God relates to your intimate knowledge of God produced by relationship with Him through the Spirit.
Therefore, according to Scripture, any sin, unbelief, worry, fear, or doubt is a result of your failure to know God’s love the way you should. And instead of being offended or condemned by what this teaches, we should rejoice that we finally have the key to greater depths of relationship with the Lord.
The country/pop duo England Dan & John Ford Coley released a song called “Light of the World” and the chorus says this: “Light of the world, shine on me, love is the answer. Shine on us all, set us free, love is the answer.” This is the truth, my brothers and sisters. Love is the answer.
Understanding Love
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. [1 John 4: 19]
In order for you to even begin to have revelation of the totality of God’s love, you must first comprehend God’s love and then take these truths and allow them to grow and become deeply rooted in your heart. As in any relationship, getting to know someone takes time, and God is no different. Fortunately, we have eternity to know God. The fullness of Christ is not realized over night and neither is it given through the laying on of hands. I doubt any person whom has ever lived (other than the Lord Jesus) has realized the fullness of God. Our time on earth is so short and God is so infinite that it seems to be an impossible task, but it is not because the word of God teaches that it is possible to realize this fullness.
Perhaps the person who has come closest to the realization of the fullness of God is the apostle Paul. Most often, the apostle John is considered to be the person with the greatest revelation of God’s love. He walked with Jesus and his first letter is considered to be the preeminent teaching on God’s love. However, I do not think John had realized God’s fullness to the level of Paul, who wrote over half the New Testament and it was his ministry that was labeled these that have turned the world upside down. [Acts 17: 6]
And yet it was Paul who wrote perhaps one of my favorite passages of Scripture concerning the love of God. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8: 35-39]
It is so very clear through his writings, that Paul had such a revelation of God’s love, that he didn’t even care whether he lived or died. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. [Philippians 1: 21]
Many theologians may want to debate my assertion that Paul had a greater revelation of God’s love, and therefore, a greater relationship with God. As I said before, most Christians claim that John, who the Bible said was the disciple whom Jesus loved, [John 13: 23] had the greater revelation of God’s love. But, Paul, who never met Jesus in the flesh, knew God the more excellent way, which is by the Spirit. Since God is a Spirit, the best (and only way now) to know Him is by the Spirit. John knew the Lord both in the flesh and also by the Spirit as all the other apostles did. However, knowing Him in the flesh places limitations on knowing Him fully in the Spirit, which is why Paul had the greater relationship. The Bible says, Wherefore henceforth we know no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth we know him no more. [2 Corinthians 5: 16]
God’s Kind of Love
What the apostle John wrote in 1 John 4:19 above is so very true. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Love isn’t about your love for God, or the love you may have experienced through people. Love is understanding what God has done for you in spite of yourself.
Most of you understand that grace is unmerited and undeserved favor. Therefore, by definition grace is a byproduct of love because God’s love is unconditional and not dependent upon your performance. God loves you because He is love—not because you are lovable. And because God’s love is not based on what you have done or are doing, we must accept it as a free gift in spite of where we are, who we’re with, and what we’re doing. God’s love, as Jesus said, is likened to loving your enemies. Therefore, we can understand the greatness of His love through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus as it is written, But God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [Romans 5: 8]
Put in contemporary terms, God’s love is comparable to us offering our beloved child to Osama Bin Laden for him to torture and kill, all so that Bin Laden’s life could be spared.
Since I’ve provided you with a glimpse of the extent of God’s love, let me throw some scenarios on the table to see if they measure up to what the Bible teaches about God’s love. And let me remind you that God loved you enough to send His Son to die for you—and this while you were His enemy. Therefore, how much more does He now love you in Christ? The Bible says, Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. [Romans 5: 9-10]
I am planning to write a book entitled Much More: The Abundant Grace and Love of God in Christ Jesus. It is based on a number of verses in the Bible that support the main title, “Much More.” It is this phrase you should sear in your heart with a hot iron.
Scenario #1: The doctor’s report says you have Multiple Sclerosis and your church brothers or sisters say that God is glorified through the suffering of His children. Therefore, God will allow you to be sick and die of this terrible disease.
Question #1: Would you or any parent either allow his or her child to be exposed to a life-threatening illness or circumstance, thinking that it would reflect better upon you as a parent?
Hopefully the answer is a definite “No!” Why? Because you love your children and would never do anything to harm them. Furthermore, our government puts parents like that in jail or at the very least, removes the children from the home.
Scenario #2: You get fired from your job, your wife leaves you, the bank calls to re-possess your car and house, and your dog runs away, and the pastor tells you that God is trying to teach you a lesson for not coming to church every Sunday and Wednesday night Bible study.
Question #2: Would you or any parent either cause or allow tragedy and hardship to come into your children’s life, just because they didn’t honor you as a parent, or call you every weekend?
Again, the answer would be a definite “No” because you love your children.
I posed a similar scenario to a friend of mine some time ago, and he argued and said, “I’m not God and God’s ways are higher than our ways.” [Isaiah 55: 9] He said, “We can’t compare our love to God’s because we’re not God.”
After I thanked God that my friend wasn’t God—because if he were, all of us would be in trouble—I directed him to the words of our Lord and Savior. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? [Matthew 7: 9-11]
There’s that phrase “much more” again. Isn’t the Lord awesome in His abundance?
The words of Jesus fly right in the face of what my friend, and also what many Christians believe—that God’s ways are greater, but yet somehow less than what we would do. As I said before, they see God as schizophrenic and capable of just about anything if provoked. While they won’t even expose their children to the risk of getting diseases like polio and smallpox (through vaccinations) they claim that God would “allow” you to get a terrible disease, and then refuse to heal you.
We can compare our concept of love to God’s and then multiply it by ten thousand. Yes, His ways of loving are much higher and greater than ours. If we, who in the words of Jesus are evil in comparison to God, would not do this to our children, then how can we claim that God, who is love, would do so? Do we love our children more than God loves them?
And this is my point to all those who cling to this false teaching. You can argue doctrine all day and we can play biblical ping-pong with verses of Scripture. But you cannot argue the love of God. For the Christian it should be an indisputable fact.
Everything in the kingdom of God works by faith and as the Scripture says, Faith, which works by love. [Galatians 5: 6] It is the revelation of God’s love that supplies the power of faith. We can liken faith to a flashlight with the light being the power of God and faith being the casing and the battery being love. Only to the extent of your revelation of God’s love will the power and blessings of God be manifest in your life as it is written, Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according the power that works in us. [Ephesians 3: 20]
The apostle Paul, in the face of all the tribulation and adversity confronting him, wrote, For the love of Christ compels us… [2 Corinthians 5: 14] Therefore, when you see yourself falling short of the fullness of what God sent His Son to die to give you, turn to God’s love and know that it is the key to all faith, blessing, and power in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Part VI-- Faith Works By Love
Part VIII-- The Balance of Grace and Faith
