Faith the Beginning, Love the End

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:13

Ignatius was not a systematic thinker, but there is one short passage in his letter to the Ephesians where he comes as close as he ever does to summing up the Christian life in a sentence. Speaking of faith and love towards Jesus Christ, he writes: “these are the beginning and end of life — faith is the beginning and love is the end — and the two being found in unity are God, while all things else follow in their train unto true nobility.” Almost every letter he wrote returns to this pair. He greets churches in faith and love, praises them for faith and love, and urges them to be perfected in faith and love. If the reality of Christ is the foundation of his teaching, faith and love are the life that is built on it.

Where the life begins

Faith is the beginning. Ignatius does not stop to define it, but the way he uses the word is clear. Faith is trust in Jesus Christ, and above all in His passion and resurrection. To the Philadelphians he calls his charter “His cross and His death and His resurrection, and faith through Him”. To the Magnesians he speaks of the Lord’s death as “a mystery whereby we attained unto belief”. Faith is the hand that takes hold of what Christ has done.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. EPHESIANS 2:8

It is striking that a writer so often read as a champion of church order should put faith at the very start of the Christian life. Ignatius knew nothing of the later debates about faith and works, and he should not be drafted into either side of them. But he knew that the life of God in the soul begins with trust in Christ crucified and risen.

Where the life is going

Love is the end — not in the sense that it brings the Christian life to a close, but in the sense that it is its goal and completion. Faith is the root; love is the fruit. Everything in the Christian life is moving towards love, and will be found at last to have been about love.

Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. 1 TIMOTHY 1:5

This is why Ignatius can say to the Smyrnaeans, in a passage about office and rank, “Let not office puff up any man; for faith and love are all in all, and nothing is preferred before them.” It is a remarkable sentence from the pen of a man who pressed the bishop’s authority so hard. The bishop matters, the order of the church matters, but faith and love matter more. No position in the church is worth anything without them.

Faith and love together

The two must be held together. Ignatius says that when they are “found in unity” they are God — a bold phrase, which seems to mean that where faith and love are joined, there God Himself is present and at work. He will not let faith be a cold holding of correct beliefs, nor love a warm feeling cut loose from the truth. The false teachers he opposed had, he said, “no care for love”; their errors about Christ had made them loveless. Real faith produces love, and real love is rooted in faith.

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. GALATIANS 5:6

In one of his pictures he joins the two to the Lord Himself. He tells the Trallians to renew themselves “in faith which is the flesh of the Lord, and in love which is the blood of Jesus Christ.” Faith and love are as closely bound together as flesh and blood in a living body, and both come from Christ.

Seen in the life

Ignatius insists that faith and love are known by their fruit. Immediately after his great sentence to the Ephesians, he adds: “No man professing faith sinneth, and no man possessing love hateth. The tree is manifest from its fruit; so they that profess to be Christ’s shall be seen through their actions.” He is echoing the Lord, who said that a tree is known by its fruit.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. MATTHEW 7:20

This leads to one of Ignatius’s favourite thoughts: that a Christian must not only be called one but be one. “It is therefore meet that we not only be called Christians, but also be such,” he told the Magnesians. And writing to the Romans about his own coming death, he asked their prayers “that I may not only be called a Christian, but also be found one.” For Ignatius, the name without the reality was worse than useless. He was impatient with people who have the bishop’s name on their lips but do everything apart from him, and with people who talk about Jesus Christ while loving the world.

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. 1 JOHN 3:18

Faith to the end

One more phrase in the same passage deserves attention. Ignatius says that the Christian work “is not a thing of profession now, but is seen then when one is found in the power of faith unto the end.” Faith is the beginning, but it must last. A Christian is not someone who began once, long ago, but someone who is found still believing, still loving, at the finish. That was the test Ignatius himself was facing as he wrote. He did not rest on his years as bishop. He wanted to be found faithful at the end.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. MATTHEW 24:13

Living between the two

What would it look like to live by Ignatius’s sentence? It would mean beginning every day with faith: trusting again in Christ crucified and risen, and not in our own goodness or success. It would mean aiming every day at love: asking not only what is right but what is loving, and measuring our lives by how we have treated others. And it would mean refusing to be satisfied with the name of Christian while the reality is thin. Ignatius was on his way to die, and he had no time for pretence. He wanted a faith that was real and a love that could be seen.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Begin each day this week with a short act of faith: tell Christ that you trust Him, and name what you are trusting Him for.

2. End each day with a short review of love: where did you love well today, and where did you fail? Confess the failures and give thanks for the rest.

3. Ignatius said that office and position are nothing without faith and love. If you hold any responsibility in church or elsewhere, ask whether it has made you prouder or more loving.

4. Where are you called a Christian but not living as one? Name one area and take one concrete step.

5. Pray for grace to be found faithful at the end, and not only to have made a good beginning.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, You are the beginning and the end of my life, and in You faith and love are joined.

Give me faith that rests on Your cross and resurrection, and love that grows from that faith and reaches out to others.

Forgive me for the times I have been content with the name of Christian while my life said something else.

Keep me believing and loving to the end, that I may be found in You when my course is finished. Amen.