Our living faith operates through love. Faith avails, operating through love, for living faith is active; may there be peace to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen!
Our faith and love need to be developed until the day of the Lord’s return so that we may have a rich entrance into His kingdom.
Faith is in Christ, and love is toward Christ. We have never physically met or seen the Lord Jesus, but because we had the hearing of faith under the speaking of the living word of God, we have been infused with Him as faith.
The result is that, though we have never seen Him, we love Him, and though we don’t see Him at present, we believe into Him, and we exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.
What a mystery! What a wonder! One moment we were like the rest, unbelievers, walking in the vanity of our life, and the next moment something was infused into us to cause us to become children of God, believers in Christ.
What differentiates the genuine Christians from unbelievers is the faith that was infused into them through the hearing of the Word of God. And this faith causes us to exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, for it is immersed in the Lord as glory. Amen!
By believing into the Lord and loving Him, we obtain great joy.
We may think that our Christian life is a life of suffering, dealings, and being sober-minded; this is not untrue, but the Christian life also has the side of being full of joy.
There may be nothing around us outwardly to bring us joy, and nothing and no one in our circumstances would cause us to be happy, but because we are joined to the Lord as one spirit, we can rejoice in Him.
May we not rob ourselves of the enjoyment of the Lord by living according to our religious concepts.
May we enjoy the Lord and live in the kingdom of God, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
We may think we’re non-joy people, and we may think others are joyous people by nature; it doesn’t matter what we are by nature – what matters is the enjoyment of the Lord which brings us into genuine joy!
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit; when we exercise our spirit, we enjoy the Lord in our soul, and our soul is made happy in Him.
Hallelujah, the Lord wants to bring us into a stage in our life as Christians individually and in the church life corporately with more joy than we have ever known before!
He will increase our joy which results out of our faith and love, until we become joyful persons, part of the joyful bride that will bring Him back!
Living Faith Avails, Operating through Love, Increasing our Loving Appreciation of Christ
Gal. 5:6 says that faith avails, operating through love; v. 5 says that we by the Spirit out of faith eagerly await the hope of righteousness.
It is not by the flesh but by the Spirit that we eagerly await the hope of righteousness, meaning the righteousness that we hope for, which is Christ Himself (1 Cor. 1:30).
Christ is our hope of righteousness; our righteousness is not out of the law but out of faith in the Spirit. Hallelujah, living faith avails, operating through love!
Love and faith are distinct, but they are inseparable; faith avails, functions, and operates through love. Our faith is not something static as an object; living faith is active, operating through love.
By faith, we receive the Spirit of life, and therefore faith becomes full of power (Gal. 3:2).
Faith operates through love to fulfill God’s purpose; God’s purpose is to complete the sonship of God for His corporate expression, which is the Body of Christ (Gal. 4:3-5; Rom. 12:4-5).
The more our faith operates through love, the more God’s purpose is fulfilled, our sonship is developed, and there is a corporate expression. Amen!
When the Lord sees this corporate expression, He is ready to return.
This corporate expression is nothing but the corporate Christ, the ark, into which we build ourselves through faith and love. Faith is our receiving the Lord, and love is related to our appreciation of Christ (Eph. 3:8, 17-18; Col. 2:2).
The more we appreciate the Lord, the more we love Him; the more we love the Lord, the more we appreciate Him.
Without such an appreciation, faith cannot operate; however, living faith avails, operating through love.
As we go on with the Lord, we appreciate Him more and more. We may even tell Him,
Dear Lord, we are so thankful that You are such a wonderful person to us. We cannot thank You enough for what You have done for us and in us. Thank You for interrupting our way and bringing us into the kingdom of God, the church life. Thank You for not allowing us to continue on our path in the world but saving us to bring us into the church, the Body of Christ. How kind You are, dear Lord, and how merciful You are. Thank You for training us and disciplining us. We give You many retroactive Amens and Hallelujahs for all that You have done and all You are doing. We love You. We love You right now even more than we loved You at any time in our life. We love You with the first love, with fresh love, for You are such a wonderful One!
We can pray in this way because we are under the hearing of faith; the hearing of faith awakens our loving appreciation of Christ (Rom. 19:17; Gal. 3:2, 5).
There must be many such awakenings among us and within us; we shouldn’t be spiritually slumbering, neither should we languishing in the land, but we should place ourselves under the hearing of the Word to be infused with faith and love the Lord!
The more we love the Lord, the more the living faith operates through love to bring us into the riches of the all-inclusive Spirit (Gal. 3:14; Eph. 3:8; Phil. 1:19).
The more love we have for the Lord, the more faith operates; this faith operates to bring us into the riches, the profit, of the all-inclusive Spirit.
Instead of being those who are deprived of profit in Christ, we are abundantly enriched; instead of being brought to nought from Christ, we are strengthened with the bountiful supply of the Spirit!
As we spend time with the Lord in His word to pray, read, fellowship, and muse on the Word, the more our love for Him is awakened, and we have a loving appreciation for His person.
As we love the Lord, faith operates to bring us into the enjoyment of all His riches.
Amen, the living faith operates through love to complete the sonship of God for Him to obtain a corporate expression, the reality of the Body of Christ.
Lord Jesus, we love You. We appreciate all that You are and all that You have done in us and for us. We put ourselves under the hearing of faith, Lord, to be infused with Yourself much more. May our loving appreciation for the Lord be awakened day by day and even moment by moment. Amen, Lord, may our living faith avail, operating through love! We exercise our spirit, dear Lord, to receive You by believing into You. We exercise our heart of love to lovingly appreciate You and enjoy all that You are. We love You, Lord Jesus, and we enjoy all that You are as the all-inclusive Spirit for our participation and enjoyment!
Peace to the Brothers and Love with Faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Eph. 6:23 is an amazing verse, very rich, packed with the riches of the Triune God to be our enjoyment; it says, peace to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
It doesn’t say faith and love or love and faith, but love with faith. It is by love with faith that we can partake of and experience Christ (1 Tim. 1:14).
Faith is our believing ability, our receiving of what Christ is; by faith we not only believe that God is but we also partake of Him (John 1:12).
Love is our ability to love the Lord; love has been imparted into our heart through the Holy Spirit who indwells us, and by love, we enjoy the Lord (John 14:23).
Through faith we receive Christ, and through love we enjoy Him; we need not only faith to receive Him in our spirit but also love to enjoy Him and partake of Him in our soul.
On one hand, we need to exercise our spirit of faith to receive the Lord and be infused with His element; on the other hand, we need to exercise our heart to love the Lord and enjoy Him, partaking of His riches for our enjoyment and satisfaction.
What we need is not just faith nor just love; we need faith with love.
We need faith as a match and support for our love. In his conclusion to this book on the church, Ephesians, Paul speaks concerning the need of the church to enjoy Christ in love with faith, which operates through love.
Living faith operates through love, and we need love with faith. Love comes from God to us, and faith goes from us to God; by means of this traffic of love and faith, peace remains our portion. Amen!
And this peace to us and love with faith is from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We may skip “God the Father” and just focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, but we need to realize that love with faith is from the Father.
God our Father is the source of faith and love, love with faith; He infuses Himself into us to become our faith (our believing ability and the contents of our faith) and our love (the capacity to love the Lord and to love all men).
Our Father wants to give us more faith with love right now, even right this moment.
The Bible and all the verses in it are not merely for our mental understanding or apprehension; the Bible is a book of life for our experience of Christ.
We are not here to merely understand the sound doctrines but to enter into the enjoyment and experience of Christ as the reality of all the positive things in God’s economy.
As we do this and that, the Lord Jesus as the High Priest according to the order of Melchisedek is praying for us, interceding for all the saints, and actively working to minister all that God is and all that Christ has accomplished into us for our enjoyment and experience.
He wants that our love with faith would be developed. Love with faith is the means by which we partake of and experience Christ (1 Tim. 1:14); we need faith as a match and support for our love (Titus 3:15).
Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit to believe into You and receive You as life. We turn our heart to You to just love You and enjoy You in all that You are and have done for us. May our love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be developed and increased. Amen, Lord, we need love with faith; we need more of You infused into us to be our believing ability and our loving capacity. May there be a traffic of love and faith between us and God so that we may enjoy peace as our portion. Lord Jesus, we love You and we believe into You! May our love with faith be developed so that we may have an increased partaking of and experience of Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a message by bro. Ron Kangas on this topic, and portions from, Life-study of Galatians, msgs. 14, 25 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Meeting God’s Need and Present needs in the Lord’s Recovery, week 3, entitled, The Need to Develop Our Faith in the Lord and Our Love for Him.
- Recommended further reading:
– So faith bounds forward to its goal in God, / And love can trust her Lord to lead her there; / Upheld by Him, my soul is following hard / Till God hath full fulfilled my deepest prayer. (Hymns #350)
– The love for all the brothers, in our midst is found, / But in these days our love must increase and abound. / The Lord direct our hearts into the love of God / And prepare us in full for the day of the Lord. (Hymns #1305)
– Peace to the brothers and love with faith / From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. / Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ / In incorruptibility. (Scripture song)
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