“FAITH WORKING THROUGH love” (Gal. 5:6)—we must spend another day on this. Faith working through love can be and is the most beautiful thing in the world. Faith working without love can be and is the ugliest thing in the world. It has caused more havoc in the world than possibly any other one thing.
The Muslim faith is a very definite and strong faith, but for the most part it works without love and in doing so works havoc. “It finds a desert or makes one.”
A man in Africa, just back from tearing down the house of a member of a rival tribe, said breathlessly to a missionary, “God is with me. While tearing down the house the roof caved in and fell on me, but I wasn’t hurt. God is with me.” He had faith, but it wasn’t a faith working by love; it worked ruin.
Francis Xavier, the great missionary to India, wrote to the Portuguese king that he was convinced the only way to Christianize these lands was to instruct the governors sent out that it was their chief business to convert the people and to punish them if they didn’t produce adequate converts. The king agreed, and it was done. It was faith, but it wasn’t faith working by love, and it worked havoc—to the Christian faith first of all.
A prominent pastor sent a telegram on every Sunday morning to another prominent pastor denouncing him for his lack of the true faith. His wife, before dying, said to her husband, “We have been on the wrong track.” Telling about this, the man rolled on the floor of a pastor’s study in an agony of remorse. He had faith and had tried to defend the faith, but it wasn’t faith working through love.
O blessed loving Savior, help me not to use my faith in the service of my egotism. Help me to have a faith that works by love and by nothing but love. Then and then only will I be a Christian. Let me love with Thy love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My faith will work by love or it won’t work at all.
