Love Activates Faith

John 3 : 16 - 17, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. NKJV

I cannot even begin to imagine what would have happened to mankind had God looked at the world and said, "I believe in you," but, nonetheless, didn't act on His faith. Likewise, God hasn't called Christians just to believe; He requires us to mature in His love and become His disciples, indeed. The Apostle James warns us not to be hearers of the Word only. He exhorts us to be doers of the Word so that we will be blessed. Aren't you eternally grateful that God loved the world so much that He GAVE His only-begotten Son? 

In Christianity, we place a great deal of emphasis on faith and believing; nevertheless, this is only part of the work. Whenever we put our faith in the work that Jesus has already done for us on the cross, according to Ephesians 2:8, it saves us.  However, now that we are saved, is having faith all that it takes to be a child of God? When we become saved, we have only just entered the race. The writer of Hebrews tells us to run the race that is set before us with endurance while we keep our eyes on Jesus.

Now we must begin to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. When we decide to move forward in our faith and allow it to become a "walk of faith," we have moved beyond faith and into love, or faith in action. James tells us that faith without obedient actions is dead. Consequently, there comes a time in every believer's life when we must choose to love God more than ourselves. In other words, we take what we have read and learned from God's Word, and we allow it to change our hearts and lives through "acts" of love toward our Savior. 

Isn't it interesting that after the gospels, God allows those who canonized the scriptures to place a book called, "Acts" after them? Acts is where we move on into a deeper commitment to Christ; it is where we will place Him before self. This is also the place where Christ begins the work of transformation in our hearts through our love and devotion to Him. 

In John 15, Jesus told His disciples, who had believed on Him that if they loved Him, they would also keep His commandments; consequently, they would abide in His love as well. Through faith, we abide in Christ. Even so, when we decide to apply God's Word to our lives through our love, do we begin to allow His love to abide in our hearts? Once we learn how to abide in God's love by keeping His Word, it will give us the power to die to self and to live a sinless life. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 119, "Your Word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against it." The psalmist understood something about spiritual maturity and how it is connected to submitting to the spiritual authority of God's Word. Didn't James teach us to first submit to God, and then resist the Devil, and he would flee? We, in and of ourselves, can't quit sinning, but if we will seek to keep God's Word through love, then we will abide in His love and defeat the power of sin.

God didn't save our souls so that we would have to live in bondage to our flesh and to sin until Jesus returns, or until we go to meet Him. He saved us and gave us the Holy Spirit and His Word so that we might overcome the flesh and sin through our obedient faith and out of our love for God. We love God because He first loved us. Only when we begin to live the Word does God become glorified and honored in our lives. How serious are you about becoming a disciple of God's Word? If you've never been poised with this question, then, please allow me to challenge you to get into the Word and put it into action in your life. 

Growing in the Grace and Knowledge of God,
Pastor Asa Dockery