Thursday, May 26th - Faith Working Through Love

#thestruggleisreal - I'm Going to Stop Counting The Days, OK?

In May and June, Toni Ruth and I (and Richard) will be preaching a series based on Paul's letter to the Galatians called #thestruggleisreal.  During this series, I'm going to be posting regularly with some brief thoughts on various passages from Galatians.  I hope that you follow along as we look for God's grace in the midst of some very real struggles!

There's an inherent risk for me whenever I preach or teach on a passage from Paul. Things can get so complicated so quickly and I find myself in the middle of tangle of points and notes and side comments. Not to mention the temptation to bring in stuff from other letters, or from the Old Testament, or from the Gospels.  It gets pretty muddled and needlessly complex. This has happened this morning as I finished mapping out my sermon for Sunday. 

I tend to 'map' my sermon using boxes (I think of them as 'movable chunks') and arrows that indicate the flow.  There's nothing earth-shattering or radical or particularly unique about my sermon-writing technique, but wow, as the picture to the left indicates, Paul has a way of making a mess of my puny, little 'technique'…

There are moments of precious clarity, however.  Chapter 5 verse 6 is one of those moments: "the only thing that counts is faith working through love." Wow, that's powerful.  Of course, true to form, my questions start immediately: in what way does faith working through love 'count'? How does faith 'work'? And how does it work through love? Whose faith?

My understanding of what Paul means here, incomplete as it may be, is that it is the faith of Jesus that led him to the cross to die (see Philippians 2:5-8) makes our salvation possible and the way that saving faith 'shows up' in our lives and in the world is through the love given to us by the Holy Spirit.  The reconciling work of God - in the world, in the church, and in me - does not depend on the strength of my faith nor on the power of my love.  Both my faith in God and my love for God and others varies day to day and both are subject to fluctuations - high points and definite low points. It's a blessing that my faith and my love aren't what saves me - neither are up to the task.

It's also not my moral perfection that saves.  Righteousness is not an accomplishment, but a gift. Paul was pleading with the Galatians to not fall into a way of thinking that a person can be saved by perfect moral performance.  It's a recipe for all kinds of bad stuff and it's ultimately destructive to the community of Jesus followers (see, for example, the mess in Corinth).  I am thankful for God's grace that saves and for moments of powerful clarity in Paul that lead me to this grace.

So, brothers and sisters, whatever you're struggling with today, I want you to know that God's grace is bigger and stronger than what you're facing.  God's love is deeper than your deepest struggles and stronger than your toughest trials.  I'm praying that you might know today - in big and small ways - God's grace and love in your life. 

I feel a little like Loki after writing a sermon
on a passage from Paul..."puny sermon technique..."