My time in Costa Rica has been peaceful, and full of awe. We have been staying outside of Buenos Aires in a small village called Terraba. While there we have been encouraging the local church and evangelizing to the 2000 residents in the village. The village itself is scattered around the mountains and people live in this rural area away from the city. The village is mostly populated by the indigenous people of Costa Rica, and their primary occupations are artisans and farmers. They have been very kind and have fed us meals, made us necklaces, and given us fruit almost every time we see them. They are loving and care about the community around them. We have been ministering by teaching English to the locals with one of my team members Jeffery Fain translating. In this way we are able to teach Bible verses in English and Spanish, and interact with the locals on a more personal level.This past Sunday I got the opportunity to preach! I was nervous because I had not preached in six years. I didn’t know what God wanted me to speak on and I felt overwhelmed the night before. I sat in my hammock and asked God what He wanted me to do and the following is what He put on my heart. That faith produces love.
II Peter 1:5-11 Peter challenges the Christians that they should add to their faith and abundance of Godly characteristics. The characteristics are faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. It struck me when reading this that the final product is love. Shouldn’t love be one of the first things that we achieve with our faith in Jesus Christ? But we see here that faith produces love as a final product.
This brings up the question what is faith? Hebrew 11:1 says “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” With this we can see that faith requires action, and that action is not spurred by the physical world around us but by the Holy Spirit and God pricking our hearts to see Him. We know that faith is the beginning of our relationship with God (Romans 3:23-25 & Philippians 3:8-9) So faith should lead us to the cross where Jesus bled and died for our sins, and where He conquered sin, death, and hell. With this knowledge we see that through love Jesus died for us. So our faith should produce love.
Scripture tells us that we can do mighty things with faith. Mark 11:23 says that we can move mountains with faith. Hebrews 11 gives many other examples of the saints of old having faith in God, and God using them to do mighty things. For example Samson being able to hold open the mouths of lions. But Samson knew that this strength did not come from himself, his strength came from God. He had faith that God would hold open the mouths of lions and that Samson himself would be the tool to do so. So through faith in God we can do mighty things. So why is faith at the beginning of this list in II Peter and not at the end? Because our faith produces love.
In 1st Corinthians 13:1-2 it says that we can have all of the gifts and faith in the world but if we do not have love, we have nothing. C.S. Lewis said “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” To truly love we must be like Christ. He was vulnerable when He bled for us. He was vulnerable when He took on our sin. He was fully vulnerable when He died for us on the cross. This is love. Faith is the beginning of our relationship with Him, but love is the intimacy of that relationship. To have love we must add to our faith many godly characteristics, but love is the end product.
When we are able to add to our faith love, we are able to fully share our faith. In I John 3:18 it says “little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” Our love should be an action just like our faith. We should actively love those who do us wrong, (Matthew 5:43-44) and know that our savior did the same for us.
