Living the Christian Life: Righteousness through faith
Published August 24th, 2006 in Romans: Living the Christian LifeThere were a lot of big words on Sunday night!
Righteousness, justified, grace, redemption and atonement - and all of them within the space of a few verses in Romans.
We looked at Romans 3:21-31 which is one of the key passages in Paul’s argument and perhaps a summary of the gospel he preached. Remember that this guy was as close to the perfect Pharisee that you could get, and thus considerd the law (all the rules that the Jews had to obey) as the only way to be made right with God. But after his encounter with Jesus, not only his life was transformed, but his message too.
Now faith was the all important thing. We are made righteous with God through faith alone.
Perhaps it’s not that unusual for us to hear these words, but for Paul and his companions, it was ground breaking. Little wonder it was so difficult for Jewish Christians to get their heads around it.
Being made righteous through faith rolls of the tongue easily for us. But what does it mean? What actually is faith? When I was in Sunday School I was told, “Faith is asking Jesus to live in your heart.” It seemed wierd then and still does today. I need more than some fluffy, hard to grasp Sunday School concept. I want to know what faith is in a far more real way.
So, this is what we explored. I suggested a few things to help in our journey:
1. Faith is believing what the Bible says about Jesus and the Christian life is true.
I’m not going into the ‘what is truth’ or the ‘how to interpret the Bible’ arguments here.
This is more simply a call to take the time to be familiar with the story the Bible tells. To believe it, you have to know it. To know it you have to study it. There’s simply no way around this.
We can base our faith on Jesus, but what we know of Jesus, we learn through the four gospel accounts of his life. Faith is believing these stories are true historically and tell a truth that is eternal.
Take the time to get to know the Bible in gathered worship times, in small groups and in your personal devotions. Living the Christian life means we believe what the Bible says about Jesus.
2. Faith is acting on what you say you believe.
Believing the right things is not enough in itself. James 2:19 makes that abundantly clear. Faith is believing what the Bible says about Jesus, but it also means acting on those very same things.
I can believe that my trusty old Corolla will get me from one side of Australia to the other without breaking down. But faith is getting behind the wheel and driving.
If we believe that Jesus told us to feed the hungry, then we feed the hungry.
If we believe that Jesus told us to get baptised, then we get baptised.
I there’s anything we believe Jesus told us then faith means we act on it. Faith without actions is dead (James 2:26)
3. Faith grows in time
I wish I had more faith.Â
I know all about the spiritual disciplines - those things that I can do to put me in the best possible place for faith to grow.
But I can’t make it grow.
God makes faith grow. And that takes time. All journeys do.
Faith, in one sense, is a partnership between you and God. God does his part using the Spirit to shape and change you, and you do your part by being open and responding. Belive what the Bible says, act on that belief, but recognise that God will do the ‘faith-growing’ and that will take time.
I find elderly people the best source of stories for how faith grows with time. They’ve been around for ages and have the benefit of being able to look back and see how their stories have unfolded over the years. The oldest person in my congregation at the moment (99 years) often says to me, “I’m still learning”. Her faith is still growing, even though she has so many years of faith and life experience behind her.
Perhaps patience is the key. We live in an instant society, but faith isn’t an instant thing. If we expect it to be so, we’ll become disappointed and frustrated.
Belief, action and time. Three key ingredients in a life of faith. Let me know if you’ve got any others you’d like to share.Â
This is going to sound incredibly geeky, but I’ve been studying recursion at university, and I think it applies here. Recursion basically is splitting up a problem into subproblems, till you don’t need to think about solving the simplest one, solve it, and then go back up, solving the problems till you solve the original problem. The catch is that you have to solve all the problems in the same way.
All that geek stuff to say: you need faith to have faith.
or, to look at it another way: You need small faith in order to build up to large faith.
I love to read biographies of people and everything I’ve read about Paul paints him pre-conversion asa Zealot and a fanatic - he was totally ruled by the law, he knew the law backwards, and he persecuted any jews who might break laws. His mad-dog personality is what made him such an effective evangeliser when he swung the other way. Remember he went to jerusalem and called Peter and the others hypocrites for not followingJesus’ teachings about gentiles in the temple yet he never actually met Jesus.
this is what makes his words on love even more compelling - he’s a difficult personality trying to express what was now in his heart. Essentially he founded the Eastern Orthodox church, which we Roman christians almost totally ignore.
i think ur right alison, you need faith to have faith. i like it! =) it makes u think!
The words that you gave in your first point were almost exactly the words God said to me when I was searching my faith. I was in Houston alone in a very large church and fell asleep on the pew while asking God to speak to me about the essence of faith. I woke up angry that God had not spoken to me when out of the back reaches of my mind a very small thought said, “Faith is living as though what Jesus said is true. It is strange to see someone else with almost the same words. Thank you.
G’day Grady,
I’m reading through Philip Yancey’s “Reaching for the Invisible God” at the moment with my interns. He says a lot about faith, doubt and following a God that seems absent, and sometimes even hostile. At one point he says that when we feel faithless, acting out our faith can help make it real once again.
Obviously Yancey says and explains it a lot better, but it might be worth a read sometime.
MG
Hello Matt Glover,
I have a couple of questions for you about Righteousness from God through Faith:
There is a simple command from Jesus Christ to everyone in Matthew 6 that Paul expounded on, primarily in Romans and Galatians, especially his summary in Ro 1:16-21: “But seek ye first His (God’s) Kingdom and His (God’s) Righteousness.” What is it, exactly, that we must find?
In Jn 2, when Jesus Christ changed the water into wine He revealed His Glory, the Glory He had from the Father before the beginning of the world. Do you know what He revealed in Jn 2:1-11?
Thanks,
anne
Hi Anne,
I think these deserve a post of their own! I’ll get on to it…
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Faith is ultimately a gift of Grace. See Eph 2:8,9. It is not us grimmacing and gritting our teeth and through them shrieking “I believe; I believe”. That’s us at work, not our having faith. Faith in Jesus is believing IN him.The amplified version “amplifies” “believe” in John 3:16: “…trusts,clings to, relies on”. Naturally there has to be an intellectual assent to the truths of the Gospel or there is no basis to trust. I am simply trusting what Jesus did for me in his life (total and perfect obedience in place of my disobedience) and what he did for me in his death as my atoning sacrifice to make me acceptable to the Father. I cannot offer my works, before or after I became a Christian. I have nothing to offer the Father of my own, nothing nothing nothing. If Jesus does not stand in for me in his life and death, I am eternally sunk. I have no where else to go, but Jesus. Praise his Most Glorious Name. What a wonderful Saviour!!!!
It is written that GOD has giving or dealt to each man the measure of Faith.
Read Romans 12:3.