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For Paul, the power of the new age, which is already effective in the present, is God's love – -- the love through which God has created all that is and has willed that it be sustained, and through which God has redeemed it and will consummate it. For Paul, the decisive event of God's love is Jesus Christ, where he finds established that powerful, redeeming love through which the world is reconciled to God and those who are open to receive it participate in the new creation (2 Cor 5:14-20"; Rom 5:6-11). This is God's love, to which faith is the response and by which faith itself is empowered to express itself as love in the believer's life (Gal 5:6, assuming a double reference in the verb: faith is rendered active by God's love and becomes active in the believer's love).

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Thus, for Paul, faith is faith only as it is enacted in love, which is the power of the new age present and active already in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is by the enlivening power of the Spirit that the believer is sustained and guided in her or his new life. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal 5:25) – -- the principal and inclusive fruit of the Spirit being love (5:22). If love never ends (1 Cor 13:8), this is because it is God's own power, the power of the new age, reaching back into our present, claiming us for God and endowing our existence with meaning and direction.