When Eddie said faith does this and does that, it seemed to me that the complex questions of Paul’s words on faith and James’s words on work have suddenly come clear to an answer. It is that faith lives.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)
Faith, in fact, is astonishingly simple. It means “If you believe, you will be saved.” Or “Unless you believe, you won’t be saved.” Faith among the forest of commands, is the easiest of the easiest act I have been ever told.
Faith trusts
We are saved by faith, because we trust the Word of God by faith that works. To put it another way, we by faith trust God because we believe that God works. As I have said in the last essay, God is faith, not ideas or symbols about faith. Before we come to know things about faith, we first get to know God of faith, because the object of faith is God. Faith must trust. If faith fails to trust, it is no longer faith that works, but sin. We all might have countless moments of weakness and doubt that test our faith. When we trace it back to Moses’s time, we will soon find what consequences of not trusting in God bring about. Moses in Numbers 20 struck the rock twice; he disobeyed by striking it instead of speaking to it. Aa a result, God says, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honour me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” Disobedience barred their march into the Promised Land. I thought many of us have been there, at least the edge of its border, more than that have we experienced the result of not trusting Him. Eve, as we trace it further back, had the first example of not trusting in God that she would die, due to the lack of faith. Because of the lack of faith, she disobeyed God, but rather the serpent. Faith causes obedience, while the lack of it causes disobedience. The former produces faithfulness, as the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), but the latter breeds sin. Why is that? Because “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23)
Faith relies
Eddie said that faith dose not deny reality. What he meant was true. Faith is not against the reality, not the enemy of it. But it appears to be more ideal and more real than the reality. Agreeing with the fact doesn’t always mean we go against the faith held in-store. But the views of reality doesn’t always prove true outside of the Scripture that we hold on to. C.S. Lewis says, “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” Having the unshaken truth will no longer be shaken by the worldly reality. On the other hand, it is so interesting to realise that living in the midst of the changing realities makes us awake to be more keenly aware of the innate desire that always corresponds to the reality. If there is weariness, there is always rest that can restore it. If there is thirst, there must be the quest of water. If there is dissatisfaction on earth, there must be a longing heaven.
Reality helps us understand facts, yet the pursuit of which slackens us in our course of seeking to understand God. Faith goes first. If the object of faith is God, it literally means that God first. “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” (Isaiah 7:9). The Sun climbs, then we see the light: the understanding follows. Faith does not deny reality, as Eddie says. But it dose not rely on it, but on the One whose word shall not ever pass.
Faith acts
This is my favourite part. Faith is the root cause of faithfulness, from God. In this line of thought, faith lives like the “living water”, ever flowing like a gurgling stream that flows through the countless feet and knees of mountains and many other deeply cloven valleys, winding round and round till it joins into the great sea. Waters of a river can ever stay fresh and clear and clean because it has an outlet as a tube open at one end. Clean and fresh mountain water from the Mount Wellington provides a significant quarter for Hobart’s water drinking supply because it remains in a state of flowing, rather than stagnation. Stagnant water stinks, like stagnant faith that sinks. Faith needs to act, which means that faith needs to flow, out after we receive that in. To get in by faith is to be out by work. If there is faith, there must be work. James said that “faith without works is dead”. Also, work without faith is fruitless. There are so many people in our church who haver ever been giving themselves out, sacrificing themselves for Jesus, and His Church. Some are noticed, but all the more are unnoticed. They have the Word in by faith, but out by work. They are always like a tube open at both ends, from whom I always want to learn from. A toothpaste which is open at only one end only has finite amount of toothpaste. It will be eventually finished regardless of its size. But if God’s supply is infinite, why not keep ours both end open where the living water acts its own way and flows through and through.