Faith Working Through Love

Galatians 5:2-6
Richard Spencer | Sunday, July 07, 2024
Copyright © 2024, Richard Spencer

As we have seen in previous sermons, this entire letter to the churches in Galatia was written by the apostle Paul to oppose a false gospel that had been accepted by some members of the churches in Galatia. This false gospel required obedience to some of the Jewish religious laws, at the very least circumcision, but probably others as well. And driven by pastoral love for the people, Paul went to great lengths in this letter to establish his apostolic authority and to confirm that the gospel he preached to them is the only true gospel, which was given to him by Christ Jesus himself as he wrote in Galatians 1:12, and it is this gospel alone that is able to save. The purity of the gospel is so important that Paul even rebuked the apostle Peter publicly for implicitly lending support to it as we are told in Galatians 2:11-14.

And, as we heard last week, the great burden of this epistle is that Paul wants the Galatians, and us, to be free and to exercise their freedom by rejecting any idea that they can contribute to their own salvation. To turn back to the law as a means of salvation is to give up your freedom and allow yourself to become a slave again. If you think you must keep some portion of the law in order to be saved, you are obligated to keep the whole law as Paul notes in Galatians 5:3. And no one does that perfectly. But, nevertheless, the law is still important. We are to serve our Lord by using our freedom to obey all that he has taught us to do, but we must recognize that our obedience never places God in our debt. We deserve his wrath and anything else is pure mercy.

Therefore, in our passage this morning, Paul again forcefully argues that turning back, even just a little bit, to keeping the law as a means for salvation is a complete rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It means, as he says in our passage, that you have fallen away from grace, that you have been alienated or estranged from Christ, and that his work of redemption will be of no value or advantage to you, it will profit you nothing. In other words, if you think you can contribute anything at all to your salvation, that is clear evidence that you have not seen your depravity and God’s holiness clearly and that you are not saved but, instead, are headed for eternal hell.

Friends, nothing can be more important than this. We are exhorted in 2 Peter 1:10 to make our calling and election sure, in 2 Corinthians 13:5 we are told to test ourselves and see if we are in the faith, and in Philippians 2:12 we are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Therefore, we must be sure that we have taken hold of the true gospel and not a perverted version of it. We must examine ourselves in light of the truth, not a lie.

And we must notice that there are ditches on both sides of the narrow road to heaven. To avoid the ditch on one side, we must not think that we can earn even the tiniest part of our salvation by our own effort. Therefore, Verse 6 of our passage begins by saying, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.” In other words, no work we do or can possibly do has any merit in earning salvation. Paul isn’t just speaking about circumcision, he is using that as a placeholder for anything we do that we might think can earn part of our salvation. The entire law stands as a unit. Earlier in this letter, in Galatians 3:10, he had written that “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’” Therefore, if you think you need to keep one part of the law to be saved, you actually have obligated yourself to keep the entire law as I noted earlier.

And on the other side of the path to heaven, we must not fall into the ditch of antinomianism and think that good works are not necessary. Therefore, Paul continues in Verse 6 of our passage by saying that “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Or as the English Standard Version puts it, which is more faithful to the original Greek, the only thing that counts is, “faith working through love.” Which is the title of my sermon this morning, Faith Working Through Love.

Now that is an interesting expression and deserves to be further explained, which I will do in a few minutes.

I have only two major divisions in my sermon this morning: The first is False Gospels and the second is The True Gospel. We will then consider how to apply this message to our lives. So, let’s begin with false gospels.

I.       False Gospels

We must first notice that there are many false gospels. Human beings are very creative when it comes to perverting God’s truth. And we should be extremely careful to not think that we are immune from perverting the gospel. There are many professing Christians, even many who claim to agree with biblical doctrines, who will be surprised by hell as Pastor Mathew succinctly put it. We read about them in Matthew 7:21-23, where Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

In my opinion, that is one of the most frightening passages in all of Scripture. These people called Jesus Lord and it is clear that they sincerely believed they were saved and would be welcomed into his presence. And yet, Jesus told them to depart; in other words, he said, “Go to hell.” And notice specifically what these people said to him, they began by saying, “Lord, Lord, did we not …”, and then they listed what they thought were their good works. In other words, they were trusting, at least in some measure, in the things they had done.

Now you might object to saying that looking at their works was a problem because Jesus had said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Which certainly says that good works are essential. But there is a world of difference, in fact an eternity of difference, between what Jesus meant and what these people meant. They obviously thought their works were, at least in some small measure, meritorious; in other words, that they deserved something good for what they had done. But Jesus never said or implied any such thing. When he spoke about the one, “who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”, he was referring to the fact that someone who has been regenerated, or born again, will obey out of love and gratitude. The born-again person’s obedience is not in any way meritorious because our works are never perfect, which is God’s standard. A Christian’s obedience cannot be even the tiniest part of the basis for his salvation, it is, rather, a result of the fact that he has been saved.

When God graciously reaches down and gives one of his chosen children a new heart, that person is radically changed. They are not made sinless, but their fundamental nature is changed from being an enemy of God to being a child of God. We must never allow ourselves to think of this transformation as being any less radical than it truly is, or we are in danger of accepting another gospel. One that settles for a little moral reformation, but which does not include a complete change of heart.

That is why Jesus told Nicodemus that a man must be born again to be saved. The change is no less radical than being given a new heart, or a new life. Or, as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Or as God himself told us through the prophet in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

And so, we see a critical difference between a true believer and a false Christian; the true believer sees his absolute poverty and need for Christ, while a false Christian thinks he can contribute something to his salvation. There is no conflict between God’s law and his gospel. But all false gospels find some way to either deny that man is utterly incapable of doing anything to earn even a small part of his salvation, or to deny that salvation requires a radical change, which results in a different way of living. In other words, they reject the idea that we need an entirely new heart, a new nature.

And, given the fact that we are so well taught in this church, I want to dispel any notion you may have that knowing the true gospel and affirming it with your mouth is the same as truly believing it. There are all kinds of ways in which a false gospel can creep into your thinking and living. This is an issue of the heart more than it is an issue of intellect or behavior. And we are told in 1 Samuel 16:7 that “the LORD looks at the heart.” And in Hebrews 4:12 we are told that “the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Therefore, in examining ourselves, we also need to look at the thoughts and attitudes of our heart. And, in principle, it really isn’t all that difficult to do so. Ask yourself some hard questions. For example,

• Why do I read the word of God?
• Why do I pray?
• Why do I come to church?
• Do I sincerely care about other people independent of what benefits I may or may not receive from our interactions?

These are just a few examples of the questions you can ask, but I’m sure you get the idea. These questions all have to do with our motives, not just our stated beliefs or external actions. Now, of course, I’m assuming that you do read God’s word and pray regularly, come to church and so on. If you don’t even do those things, then you don’t need to examine your motives, your lack of action is already sufficient evidence that you have not been born again or are backsliding and in severe danger.

But assuming you do these things, then you should examine your motives. And, as always, I must warn against looking for perfection. None of us are perfect. We still have sin in us. But be honest with yourself. Do you read and pray and attend church out of love for God and a desire to know him and please him? There are all kinds of other reasons for doing these things, but the love of God had better be the main one. And do you care about other people only because they are enjoyable to be around? Or do you care for them because they are God’s children and you are commanded to love them, which also honors God?

These are difficult questions, and you may not be happy with your answers. In fact, if you are completely satisfied with your answers, I would suggest that you are not being totally honest with yourself. We all still have sin in us and so we will have something less than perfectly satisfactory answers to these questions. But if you have been born again, then love for God and a desire to please him will certainly be the most important motivation, and you should strive to make it by far the greatest motivation.

And love should animate your relations with other people as well. And, I must add, this is love in the biblical sense, not in the worldly sense. The world defines love in terms of how someone makes you feel or what you get out of the relationship. In other words, the world’s definition of love is entirely self-focused, which is the opposite of true, biblical love. The love I’m talking about here is a love that is focused on what is best for the object of your love. It is entirely other oriented.

The Bible tells us clearly what God means by love. In 1 John 3:16 we read, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” That is an extremely high calling! We are to lay down our lives for our brothers. In other words, we are to do everything in our power to do what is best for our brother, even if it costs us our life. And don’t water down God’s word by thinking this is hyperbole, it isn’t. We know that because Jesus Christ himself is our example, and he not only gave his life for us, he also bore the wrath of God for us.

Brothers and sisters, this is the crux of the matter. Any gospel that does not require us to live a life of sacrificial love, for God first and then for others, is a false gospel.

Remember that in Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus told us, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The world knows nothing of this kind of love because it isn’t natural; it is supernatural. It is given to us by God. In 1 John 4:19 we are told that “We love because [God] first loved us.” No one can live this life of love unless and until he or she has been born again. This kind of love is completely focused on the object of the love, not on ourselves. None of us do this perfectly, but it is what we should desire and what we should strive for, and we should see some measure of it in our heart.

In relation to God, love is demonstrated by obedience. We desire to please God in all that we do and we recognize that his way is always the best way. In John 14:15 Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” And, in 1 John 5:3 the apostle wrote that “This is love for God: to obey his commands.” And in 2 John 5-6 we read that “I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.” And those verses tie together our love for God and our love for one another. If we love God, we will keep his commands, and he commands us to love one another. If you had to summarize all of the law with one word, it would clearly be the word love. But, of course, love must be defined biblically as I’ve noted.

In summary, any so-called gospel that is not built on the biblical notion of sacrificial love, which is completely directed to the good of the object of the love, is a false gospel. And it isn’t that hard to tell. The minute a so-called gospel deals primarily with what you do and what you think and say, and how everything affects you, it is wrong. If it says you will be saved by not drinking wine, going on certain pilgrimages or obeying any set of rules, it is false. If it says that you can ignore the law of God, it is false. The true gospel begins by completely denying your own merit, loving God for who he is and crying out to him, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!” And then it continues by walking in true, sacrificial love in grateful obedience to God’s commands.

And so, let’s now move on to examine this true gospel.

II.      The True Gospel

Going back to Verse 6 of our passage, Paul wrote, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Or, as I noted, the ESV says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”

Real saving faith is described here as “faith working through love”, which I noted is an interesting expression and needs to be fleshed out. We could say that faith is working through, or is made evident by, or made powerful by, love. In other words, this is speaking about the fact that faith produces a life of love, which means that our works are motivated by love and demonstrate love for God and others by sacrificial obedience and service.

And where does this love come from? It is not in us naturally, we only love because God first loved us as we noted a couple of minutes ago from 1 John 4:19. And, in Romans 5:5, the apostle Paul wrote that “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” And we are told in John 5:41-42 that Jesus Christ, in speaking to people who refused to come to him for salvation, said, “I do not accept praise from men, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.” Which indicates that if someone has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, that person does have the love of God in his heart.

Earlier in his letter to the Galatian church, in Galatians 2:20, Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Therefore, we can put this all together and say that God’s love for us caused us to be born again, which caused us to place our faith in Jesus Christ. And God also placed his love into our hearts so that our faith works through this love; in other words, our actions are motivated by this love. And this love, which is now ours, originated in God. And because we have the love of God in our hearts, Paul can say later in this epistle, in Galatians 5:13, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”

To see that love is the dominant force in our salvation, you need look no further that what is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16; “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God’s actions in redeeming a people for himself were motivated by love. This love motivated him to send his only begotten, eternal Son, the second person of the holy Trinity, to become a man, to live a life of suffering among sinful people, and to give his life as a ransom to pay for the sins of his chosen people. What amazing love! We cannot plumb the depths of this love. And, if you have been born again, you will surely see that it had nothing to do with you being in any way lovable. It was simply that God decided to love you.

The fact that God chose to love you and that he did so freely, not because of anything in you, is called the doctrine of unconditional election and it is a perfect example of true, biblical love. God does not receive anything from us in return. We receive all blessings from him, and all of creation redounds to his glory, but he receives nothing good from the hands of those he has chosen to save. And God’s election of his people unto salvation was not based on anything in them, it was unconditional in that sense. Paul clearly explained this doctrine in Romans 9:10-13, where he wrote that “Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’”

Now many people have a real problem with the idea that God hates anyone or anything. But there are many verses in the Bible that speak of God hating and detesting not just sin, but unrepentant sinners. To hate is really the flip side of love. If you love all that is righteous, holy and good, then you will hate all that is wicked, profane and evil. How can God not hate all that is opposed to his nature? But, praise God, he also loves, and he chose to save some people to demonstrate the depth of his love.

And this idea of God’s sovereign election of people, not based on their worthiness, is not only in the New Testament. It is in the Old Testament as well. God spoke to the Israelites through Moses in Deuteronomy 7:6-7, and said, “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” And when God says the Israelites, “were the fewest of all peoples”, this is a synecdoche; in other words, it is using a portion of something to represent the whole. Being the fewest of all peoples is just one trait, but the meaning is that no trait of the Israelites was the cause of God’s setting his affection on them. He chose them because he chose them, period. It was all based on his love.

This idea of election runs all through the Bible. For example, in Ephesians 1:4-6 we are told that God chose us in Jesus Christ “before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

Notice that these verses clearly state that our predestination to be adopted as God’s sons, which is referring to our being saved, was “In love” and “in accordance with his pleasure and will”, which emphasizes both God’s freedom and the fact that his love was not based on our being lovable or his receiving something good from us in return. And the choice was “to the praise of his glorious grace”, and we know that grace is unmerited favor, so this denies that God simply looked into the future and foresaw our choice. And finally, we are told that he has “freely given” us this grace in Christ. These verses are clearly teaching God’s unconditional election of his people, just as the verses from Romans 9 do.

And because this idea of unconditional election is so hard for people to accept, let me give just a few more examples to demonstrate that this is the biblical doctrine. In Acts 13:48 we are told that “When the Gentiles heard [Paul and Barnabas], they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” In Matthew 24:31we are told that God, “will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” In the Old Testament, God told Moses, in Exodus 33:19, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” And, as a final example, it is interesting to note that even the angels who didn’t fall with Satan were chosen by God. In 1 Timothy 5:21 Paul told Timothy, “I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.”

Brothers and sisters, our salvation is entirely the result of God’s love. Which is a sacrificial love, not based on the object of that love, but based on God’s loving nature. As the apostle John tells us in 1 John 4:8 & 16, “God is love.” Therefore, if we have truly been saved, we are being transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ, which means that we will be characterized by love. And, therefore, our faith will do good works motivated by our love; our love for God and our love for other human beings. And our works will be sacrificial works aimed at what is best for the other. In other words, our faith will be working through love. Just a little later in this letter, in Galatians 5:13-14, Paul wrote “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

And then Paul goes on a few verses after that to list the fruit of the Spirit that should be evident in the lives of believers and that list begins with love. In Galatians 5:22-23 we read that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” This is a glorious list of attributes, but Love comes first.

Therefore, the true gospel is a gospel of love. God demonstrated his love by choosing a particular group of people, before the creation of the world, to be saved. He knew that man would fall, and he looked at the whole mass of fallen, sinful humanity, and chose those whom he was going to save. He then created this universe and governed its operation day by day. He promised a Savior to Adam and Eve immediately after the fall in the garden, and he then governed all human history, giving more and more information to his people about his plan, until, at just the right moment in history, he sent his eternal Son to become incarnate by the virgin Mary.

And then Jesus Christ demonstrated his love for his people by living a perfect, sinless life, and willingly going to the cross to bear the wrath of God and die to save us. And then God showed his love to each of us individually by working through his Holy Spirit to give us new hearts so that we would repent and trust in Jesus Christ’s atoning work for our salvation. And he continues to show his love for us by working in us to enable us to put our sins to death and to walk in greater and greater holiness and love before him. And then, when we die, he shows his love for us by perfecting our spirit and taking us to heaven. And, at some point in the future, Christ will come again with great power and glory and all of God’s elect children will receive their resurrection bodies and will begin a glorious eternity with him in heaven. Enjoying perfect fellowship and peace and great love.

And, if this is true of you, if you have been born again, then you are a new creation in Christ Jesus and you will live a life of love. As Paul commanded us in Ephesians 5:1-2, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

This true gospel results in our living a life of love. And that life redounds to God’s glory and is used by him to attract others of his chosen children to the church. In John 13:34-35 Jesus told his disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And that leads me straight into how to apply this word from the apostle Paul.

III.    Application

Paul has told us that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” And as I pointed out early on, there is nothing more important than making sure that we have true, saving faith. There are many counterfeit gospels out there. It is entirely possible, for example, to intellectually agree with all the statements of a biblical creed like the Westminster Confession of Faith, and even to live a life that appears, from the outside, to be generally in conformity with God’s commands, and still not be saved. Remember the people who came to Jesus and said, “Lord, Lord” only to be told to go to hell.

The key to true, saving faith is love, the love of God in our hearts. God tests the motives, not just the actions.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the actions are important, but right motives are essential. Outwardly good works done for the wrong reasons are of no value. And, therefore, the sole application I want us to take away from this passage in Galatians is that our works of faith must be motivated by love.

We must examine our lives as the Bible tells us to. But in doing that examination, we must look at our motives as well as the external acts. We saw earlier in 1 Samuel 16:7 and Hebrews 4:12 that God examines our thoughts and attitudes and in Proverbs 16:2 we are told explicitly that “All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD.” The apostle Peter exhorts us, in 1 Peter 4:7-8, by writing, “The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

Love is the most important quality, true faith is empowered or motivated by love and is characterized by love. In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 Paul famously wrote, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

Friends, do you have love for God in your heart? Do you love your brothers and sisters in Christ? Don’t give a quick, knee-jerk answer to these questions. Go home and pray and seek the Lord and ask him to show you your heart. And if you don’t see the love of and for God in your heart, cry out to him and ask him to have mercy and change your heart.

And, even if you do see the love of God in your heart, we are all lacking compared to the love we should have, so we can all benefit from asking God to give us greater love. And you can also stir up love in your heart by spending time in God’s word and meditating on all the marvelous things he has done for you and for others. We all have so much to be thankful for, let us consider these things and fan into flame our love for God and our desire for our heavenly home.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But that faith must be a real, biblical, faith that produces good works. And those good works must not only be good in terms of the external actions, they must also have the right motivation, which is love for God and love for others. Love is both the key to living a productive, overcoming Christian life, and it is the proof that we have been born again. Paul concluded his great chapter on biblical love in 1 Corinthians 13:13 by writing, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Therefore, let us all go home and examine ourselves. And may we then repent of any deficiencies that we find, call on God for mercy, and may we all then go forth and live a life of love, which will bring God great glory.