and new desires, and new capacities infused into us, so as that we shall not be left with our own poor powers to try and force ourselves into obedience to God’s will, but that submission and holiness and love that keeps the commandments of God, will spring up in our renewed spirits as their natural product and growth.  Oh! you men and women who have been honestly trying, half your lifetime, to make yourselves what you know God wants you to be, and who are obliged to confess that you have failed, hearken to the message:  ’If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed away.’  The one thing needful is keeping the commandments of God, and the only way by which we can keep the commandments of God is that we should be formed again into the likeness of Him of whom alone it is true that ‘He did always the things that pleased’ God.

And so we come to the last of these great texts:  ’In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.’  That is to say, if we are to be made over again, we must have faith in Christ Jesus.  We have got to the root now, so far as we are concerned.  We must keep the commandments of God; if we are to keep the commandments we must be made over again, and if our hearts ask how can we receive that new creating power into our lives, the answer is, by ‘faith which worketh by love.’

Paul did not believe that external rites could make men partakers of a new nature, but he believed that if a man would trust in Jesus Christ, the life of that Christ would flow into his opened heart, and a new spirit and nature would be born in him.  And, therefore, his triple requirements come all down to this one, so far as we are concerned, as the beginning and the condition of the other two.  ’Neither circumcision does anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love,’ does everything.  He that trusts Christ opens his heart to Christ, who comes with His new-creating Spirit, and makes us willing in the day of His power to keep His commandments.

But faith leads us to obedience in yet another fashion, than this opening of the door of the heart for the entrance of the new-creating Spirit.  It leads to it in the manner which is expressed by the words of our text, ‘worketh by love.’  Faith shows itself living, because it leads us to love, and through love it produces its effects upon conduct.

Two things are implied in this designation of faith.  If you trust Christ you will love Him.  That is plain enough.  And you will not love Him unless you trust Him.  Though it lies wide of my present purpose, let us take this lesson in passing.  You cannot work yourself up into a spasm or paroxysm of religious emotion and love by resolution or by effort.  All that you can do is to go and look at the Master and get near Him, and that will warm you up.  You can love if you trust.  Your trust will make you love; unless you trust you will never love Him.