On the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, the Epistle from Galatians 3:16-22 and the Gospel from Luke 10:23-37 seem to be talking about very different aspects of religious teaching and experience. The Epistle highlights the importance of faith over the value of specific commands of the Law. The Gospel emphasizes the great commandments of the Law and the importance of loving actions toward God and neighbor. For many believers, the difficulty has been how to fit the two emphases together. Do we start with faith or with love?
In abstraction, love is paramount. God is love, and His dealings with human beings begin with His love. Human beings are called to respond to divine love. Because God first loves us, we are to love Him and our neighbors. This is beautiful, and it sounds simple, but in reality, loving God and our neighbors is not easy. It is complicated by the fact that human nature is fallen and corrupt. On our own, we are sinners who have lost the capacity to love as we should.
This human condition means that love is not our first step. Our response to divine love must begin with repenting our lack of love followed by faith in God's love revealed in Jesus Christ. Without such faith, we are not really open to love. God's loving grace must first begin to transform us by creating faith in Him. Christian Faith then opens our hearts to love God in return. And as we begin to love God, we also begin to love our neighbors created by God. As Galatians 5:6 indicates, the core of the Christian life is "faith which worketh by love."
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