FAITH
The actual essence and life of faith is the Lord's alone. Through our faith, the Lord endows us with charity...and then charity becomes the highest importance. Charity is Love for our neighbor and mercy.
Faith does not have any life besides that which it gains from Love. It is from Love that Faith forms and sprouts. Faith is like light. No light exists that does not come from the sun (Love) --- the source of where light develops. Faith develops according to the quality of Love or Charity.
To have faith without love is lifeless. Faith without love is represented in the story of Cain and Abel. Abel represents charity and Cain represents faith detached from love. Cain killing Abel means a detached faith extinguishes charity.
The first form of faith to bring life is a memorized type of thing...facts. Factual faith is represented in Gen 3-13 as things that had no living soul.
The next form of faith to bring life is in the intellect...faith truly understood. Faith truly understood is also represented in Gen 14-19 as things that have no living soul.
The last is faith from the heart...faith born of love, or saving faith. Faith brought alive by love is represented in Gen 20-25 as animate creatures.
Love and the faith that arises from it are called "Lights"
Love is the greater light that rules by day...the Sun.
Faith is the lesser light and rules by night...the Moon.
People who live their lives through love...do love the Lord with all their hearts, but these people know, say and perceive that all love comes from the Lord, and nowhere else, as does all life (a product of love), and all happiness. Therefore, they do not claim love, life or happiness as their own...but from the Lord. To live life this way, faith springing from love, in all our hearts, souls and mind -- is to be one with the Lord.
LOVE
The earliest church acknowledged no faith besides love itself. Heavenly angels have no idea what faith is if it is not a matter of love. The entirety of heaven gives itself over to love, because no other kind of life than that of love exists in the heavens. Love is the source of all their happiness, which is so immense that it could never be understood by the human mind.
If you were to take ALL the things you love -- the things you long for (since longings are bound up with love) -- and set them aside, your thought processes would come to an immediate halt and you would be like a corpse.
Self love and materialism produce an imitation of life and an imitation of joy, but since they are diametrically opposed to genuine love-- that is, loving the Lord above all and loving your neighbor as yourself-- it stands to reason that they are not forms of love, but hatred. Notice that the more we love ourselves and worldly goods, the more we hate our neighbor and therefore the Lord.
Genuine love is love from the Lord, and genuine life is a life of love received from Him. True joy is the joy of that life. Only one genuine love can exist, so only one genuine life can exist, and it gives rise to true joy and happiness, like that felt by angels in heaven.
Deuteronomy 6
Love and faith can never be separated, because they make a single unit. Some say that they believe in the Lord; but actually they had not lived as He taught. The Lord speaks of them this way in Matthew:
"Not everyone who says to Me, "Lord, Lord" shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Matt 7:21
All this makes it clear that people who have love have faith and consequently heavenly life. The same cannot be said of those who claim to have faith but do not lead a loving life.
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