Unfortunately, it has become very popular in the Christian marketplace today to deify faith to such a degree that some would erroneously teach that if your faith ever falters or fails, that is evidence you are not truly saved and probably have been a false professor up to this point. Faith is incorrectly exalted and deified above all the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. No doubt faith is vitally important in the life of God’s children; without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6), and whatever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23). We do not want to diminish faith, but we also have to ensure we do not put God’s children in bondage by making them doubt their salvation because of inevitable failures in their working out of the gift of faith. As we will see is true of all the fruit of the Spirit, active faith (belief, worked out faith) is “enabled” by God and “exhorted” by God but “not executed” by God. We are “enabled” to believe by the gift of God of faith in the new birth and the Spirit exhorts us to believe, but that measure of faith is only “executed” in our life when we are diligent and obedient to follow the testimony of the Spirit in our hearts and work out (Phil. 2:12-13) the faith that God has given us and worked in.
Every child of God is given the measure of faith in regeneration, simply the substance of Christ in the soul that enables us to believe. “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” (Rom. 12:3) Not every man without exception has faith (2 Thess. 3:2, Heb. 4:2, etc), so the “every man” here are the children of God without distinction of race (to the Jews first, and also to the Greek, etc), not every man without exception. For the born again child of God, Jesus Christ is the substance of our hope, and Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27), is our evidence of things not seen. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1)
The Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ are in the soul of the child of God testifying that we are a child of God and testifying that we should believe our Father. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:” (Rom. 8:16) The Spirit, Christ in us the hope of glory, is always testifying to our hearts to believe God. There is never a moment when the child of God is left void of the testimony of Christ in us by faith, exhorting us to believe. The real question then is: do we believe the promise and testimony of the Spirit and Christ in our spirit by faith? The end result of justification by faith in Rom 4:16 is that “the promise might be made sure to all the seed.” The question on a daily basis is: do we believe and trust the testimony and promise of the Spirit and the testimony of faith to believe God today? The gift of faith is the substance of Christ in us by which we believe, and belief is an active expression of the gift of faith that we work out by believing the promise of God.
Similar to faith, the love of Christ inside of us is always testifying to us and exhorting us to walk in active love (charity, agape love in action). God enables us to love by the substance of Christ (who is Love) inside of us, but love is not always manifested actively and worked out like it should in our lives. There are varying degrees of expression of love in our actions (just as there are varying degrees of faith in our actions). In scripture, there are times in which children of God show great faith, little faith, no faith, dead faith, shipwrecked faith, weak faith, etc. The varying degrees of active manifestations of fruit in a child of God’s life can be said of all the fruit of the Spirit. Just like faith, there are times when we might show great love (charity). However, there are times when we might show little love, or maybe even no love at all. The substance of love inside of us (Christ who is Love) might even be a “dead love” with no works of love (1 John 3:14-18) outwardly manifest at various points in our lives (just like a dead faith with no outward works to prove it, James 2:14-20).
The same is true of all the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), which display the attributes of God in the actions and lives of God’s children. The substance of Christ inside of us enables us to exhibit love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. However, it is clear that while Christ in us, the hope of glory, is always testifying to guide us and exhort us to love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, it is evident that those are not always worked out and expressed and manifested as boldly as they ought to be in our actions. We have great, little, and no fluctuations of all of these fruit of the Spirit in our lives, and faith is no exception to that.
When we might show little or even no charity in our actions (1 Cor 13:1-3), does that in any way undermine or diminish or corrupt the perfect substance of Christ is Love that resides inside of us? No, God forbid. Love can be with dissimulation because we are told to be careful to be sure that our love is without dissimulation (Rom. 12:9). Even though we have perfect Love in our hearts, we can show no love at all in our actions if we neglect brethren in need or even hate them (1 John 3:14-18). Our failure to always work out the perfect Love that resides inside of us has no bearing on the purity of Love that dwells in our hearts by Christ.
When we allow bitterness to control our thoughts and actions rather than following the scriptural command to rejoice always (Phil. 4:4), does that diminish the perfect substance of Christ’s joy that resides inside of us? No, God forbid.
When we let fear and anxiety rule in our hearts rather than peace, does that diminish the perfect substance of the peace living inside of us by the Prince of Peace? Actually, we are given the formula and recipe for perfect peace in our life (Isaiah 26:3), but if we place our mind on the concerns of the world rather than Christ, then we will not live out the perfect peace that God had offered unto us if we would have worked out the perfect peace that God has worked in.
When God’s children act in pride instead of meekness, does that diminish the perfect substance of Christ’s perfect meekness that resides inside of us? No, God forbid.
When we get angry and lose our temper, does that diminish the perfect substance of Christ’s perfect longsuffering and temperance that resides inside of us and the Spirit that is testifying with our spirit to control our anger that we did not heed in that moment? No, God forbid.
Does God sovereignly overrule us and control our actions so that we always exhibit perfect love, perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect long-suffering, perfect temperance, and perfect fruit of the Spirit in all of our actions? No, of course not.
Rather, God “enables” us with the perfect substance of Christ in us that he has “worked in” during the new birth. Then, Christ guides us and “exhorts” us to “work out” perfect love, perfect joy, perfect peace, and perfect fruit of the Spirit in our lives. The Spirit testifies with our spirit to live in perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3). However, we might quench that testimony and exhortation of the Spirit at various points in our lives, and live in fear instead of living in perfect peace. We are exhorted to “quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess 5:19). If there was no possibility of us quenching the Spirit, then the Holy Spirit wasted ink in the canon of scripture and wasted our time. We can quench the exhortations of the Spirit testifying to our spirit to love perfectly, to display joy, peace, and longsuffering perfectly. Therefore, at various points in our lives, we can quench the exhortation of the Spirit leading and guiding us to be meek, instead of prideful, and the same could be said of all the fruit of the Spirit. The same is true with faith. There is never a moment when the Spirit will cease to testify to your spirit to believe (just as there is never a moment the Spirit or Christ in you will cease to testify for you to love perfectly or to be meek or to exhibit temperance, etc.)
The Spirit and Christ in us will always exhort and guide us to believe God and walk in faith, but we might quench the Spirit’s exhortation and fail in the “execution” of working out that faith by belief in our lives. God “enables” us and God “exhorts” us, but the “execution” of working out of the fruit of the Spirit is conditional on our obedience to the guidance and conviction of Christ and the Spirit in our conscience on a daily basis.