Faith Without Love Is Dead

Tuesdays with Edwards!

In 1738 Jonathan Edwards preached a series of sermons on 1 Corinthians 13 that has become famously known in print as Charity and Its Fruits and has become a spiritual classic; one of Edwards most beloved works.

In the opening sermon, Edwards argues that the KJV is not the end all be all of translations and that the Greek word agape translated as “charity” in the text of 1 Corinthians 13 is better translated “love.” In fact, I do not know of any modern translation that has not sided with Edwards’ expositional teaching on this point. Love in this chapter is shown to be the thing. It doesn’t matter how great the act appears, or deep the wisdom seems, or how committed a person is to a cause, if it is done without love, it is missing the essential thing that makes those things praiseworthy. When Tina Turner sings “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Edwards answers with the Apostle Paul, “Everything.”

That “everything” means “everything,” including faith. James says in 2:26 faith without works is dead. Edwards would argue that it is scripturally accurate and honest to say that “faith without love is dead.” In the following selection Edwards unpacks that thought.

This and the entire series Charity and its Fruits can be read online at www.edwards.yale.edu. This selection is from Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) Pages 139-141.

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The truth of the doctrine [that the sum of all Christian virtue is love] appears from what the Apostle teaches in Galatians 5:6, even that faith works by love. A truly Christian faith is what produces good works. But all the good works which it produces are by love. By this, two things are evident to the present purpose.

(1) That love is an ingredient in true and saving faith, and is what is most essential and distinguishing in it. Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith; but it is the life and soul of a practical faith. A truly practical and saving faith is light and heat together, or light and love. That which is only a speculative, is only light without heat. But in that it wants spiritual heat or divine love, it is vain and good for nothing. A speculative faith consists only in assent; but in a saving faith are assent and consent together. That faith which has only the assent of the understanding is no better faith than the devils have, for the devils have faith so far as it can be without love. The devils believe and tremble. Now the true spiritual consent of the heart cannot be distinguished from the love of the heart. He whose heart consents to Christ as a Savior loves Christ under that notion, viz. of a Savior. For the heart sincerely to consent to the way of salvation by Christ cannot be distinguished from loving the way of salvation by Christ. There is an act of choice or election in true and saving faith, whereby the soul chooses Christ for its Savior, and accepts and embraces him as such. But as was observed before, election whereby it chooses God and Christ is one act of love. It is a love of choice. In the soul’s embracing Christ as a Savior there is love.

Faith is a duty which God requires of it. We are commanded to believe, and unbelief is a sin forbidden of God. Faith is a duty required in the first table of the law, and in the first commandment; and therefore it will follow that it is comprehended in that great commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” [Matthew 22:37]. And so it will follow that love is the most essential thing in a true faith. That love is the very life and soul of a true faith is especially evident from this place [Galatians 5:6] of the apostle Paul, viz. that faith works by love, and James 2:26 compared together: “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” The working, acting nature of anything is the life of it. What makes men call anything alive is because they observe an active nature in it. This working, acting nature in man is the spirit which he has in him. Therefore as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without a working nature is dead also. And if we would know what this working nature which is a true faith is, the apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 5:6. He tells us the thing by which faith works is love. It is love that is this active working spirit which is in true faith. That is its very soul without which it is dead, as the Apostle in the words of the text tells us, that faith without charity, or love, is nothing, though it be to such a degree as to remove mountains. And when the Apostle says in the seventh verse of the context, that charity believeth all things, hopeth all things, possibly he has respect to those same great virtues of believing and hoping, or faith and hope in God, with which he compares faith in other parts of the chapter, and particularly in the last verse. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three.” The Apostle in the seventh verse shows the preference of charity, or love, to the other two of faith and hope, as including them in it; for charity believeth all things, hopeth all things. This is probably the Apostle’s meaning, and not as it is vulgarly understood of believing and hoping the best of our neighbor. But possibly more of this at some other opportunity, God permitting. That a justifying faith, as to what is most distinguishing of it, is comprehended in the great command of loving God, appears further from what Christ says to the Jews, John 5:40–43, “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. I receive not honor from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

(2) It is further manifest from this place [Galatians
5:6] of the Apostle, wherein he speaks of faith as working by love, that all Christian exercises of heart, and works of life, are from love. For we are abundantly taught in the New Testament that all Christian holiness is begun with faith in Jesus Christ. All Christian obedience is in Scripture called the obedience of faith. Romans 16:26, “Is made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” The obedience here spoken of is doubtless the same with that mentioned in the preceding chapter, ver. Romans 15:18, “For I will not dare to speak of those things, which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed.” And the Apostle tells us that the life he now lived in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the Son of God, Galatians 2:20. And we are often told that Christians live by faith, which carries in it as much as that all graces and holy exercises and works of their spiritual life are by faith. But how does faith work these things? Why, in this place in Galatians it works whatsoever it does work, and that is by love. Hence the truth of the doctrine follows, and that it is indeed so that all which is saving and distinguishing in Christianity does radically consist and is summarily comprehended in love.