The greatest act of faith we will face as Christians is learning to walk in love with everyone.
Love is the basis of faith, and it works by love, according to scripture (Gal.5:6). In fact, we were saved by an act of love.
God, the Creator, had every reason to completely discard us all and start again but He chose to send His Son Jesus to take our punishment, the wages of sin, which is death, so that we could be born again and have a genuine restart.
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.
John 3:16
That is sacrificial love, the kind of love that goes beyond reason. It requires a level of forgiveness that is willing to go the extra mile in finding a way of reconciliation that costs everything. For God it cost the life of His only begotten Son.
As children of God through faith in Jesus we are admonished to imitate Him. This means displaying the same kind of love God afforded us when He could have cut us off altogether.
Instead, He chose to love us by sending a substitute, what scripture call a propitiation, literally an exchange, taking our place, Jesus, the Son of God who was sent to save us through paying the price of our sin.
Sacrificial love
God’s love, having paid the ransom, requires from us, in reciprocation, to simply believe. What do we need to believe? His message and offer of hope by accepting Jesus as Lord of our lives, future and destiny.
His sacrifice was His life, and His blood. He gave everything. Our sacrifice is to lay down our lives for Him through a change of direction, repentance, which means to turn from our ways to His.
It is a sacrifice that leads us away from following the false gods of this world to become disciples, followers of Christ. It takes us into the realm of God, the kingdom of love, which is beautifully defined by the Apostle Paul.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
Welcome to our new love lifestyle. It will be a lifetime’s work for every Christian to work on living up to these standards. It will be impossible without the leading of the Holy Spirit.
The level of love required can only be accessed and released through interaction with the Deity of Love. God is love. We receive the Holy Spirit and love comes into our life. We are renewed in the Spirit of love. Now we can display this love to others.
This applies to showing love towards our worse enemy as well as with our best friend. By ‘enemy’ meaning those who make us their enemy rather than regarding people as enemies to ourselves.
It applies to those who we find hard to love as well as those that are easy. In many ways it takes faith to walk in love.
Remember that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Our true enemy is the adversary who is merely a fallen angel, along with the angels that joined his rebellion. Our stand is against demonic influence (Eph.6:12).
Love in action
We are commanded to love people in the same way we love God (Mt.22:37-40). All people. Which is why I say love is our greatest faith project. If we are to assist Jesus in saving souls we will have to love the world in a way that draws them towards God’s all-embracing love.
The good news is that the fruit of the Spirit includes love. When we have the Spirit of Christ in our lives love comes as part of the package. God is love, and those who have God in their lives will also have love. Walking in love becomes easier when we simply have to yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-25
Did you see that admonition to ‘crucify the flesh with its passions and desires’? There will be times when we need to get the better of our feelings towards others. We will need to resist the temptation to react or to retaliate when others come against us or try to persecute us for our beliefs.
Love is accompanied by long suffering and self-control. These are equally fruit of the Spirit. They help us deal with those times when we are wronged or falsely accused, at those times when love seems difficult to apply. We can do this because we are told it is possible.
I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
Galatians 5:16
Walking in the Spirit is akin to walking in love. It is the antidote to being flesh-driven. It is the solution to the temptation to react instantly and strongly to impertinent challenges (Pr.16:32, Pr.19:11).
We need to guard the fruit of joy and peace that come through the Spirit and not allow ourselves to be captured by the adversary through people he controls. As we have seen, they are not our enemy. The devil is. We are cautioned to resist him. We resist by drawing near to God (James 4:7-8).
The love of God is sacrificial and unconditional, and is present in our lives towards other people.
Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
Ephesians 5:1-2
The instruction is primarily for members of the Church to love those within, but also towards the unsaved world from those who are in the Body of Christ. We are the children of God and therefore called to imitate Christ by walking in love with those within and without.
Love is our greatest faith project, but, when applied through faith in God, yields fruitful results.
