faith for faith

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake (Phil. 1:29).

The phrase, "faith for faith," is taken directly from the translation of Rm. 1:17 by the English Standard Version, expressly, "For in it [that is, the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith." I say, "translation," but I mean more "interpretation" for, though the literal interpretation of the passage is "faith to faith," I am thinking (though I am unsure of this) that the translators of the ESV are picking up on part of what the apostle is doing with this phrase, namely using it as an inclusio to bracket with Rm. 3:21, 22 the section of the epistle from Rm. 1:18-3:20. [An "inclusio," is a literary device used to set apart a particular section of literature, bracketing it with common phrases.]
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If I have ever been on the verge of a faith crisis, I am there now. The Big Move, or as I self-righteously call it, The Journey to Unindebtedness, has taken its toll on me, and I feel that I could snap at any minute. Financially we are a wreck, and the list of expenses that is involved in selling our house and moving to Wendell seems to be mounding exponentially.

And just when things seem that they could not get worse, they do. And it seems to get worse daily. Whether it is the heat pump that needs to be fixed or replaced ($1600-$5000), the new carpet that must be installed ($800), Uncle Sam demanding his due by April 15th ($1100), or the seemingly daily emails that report that our home value estimate has dropped yet again when we were already set to lose money six months ago, etc., etc., the bombardment of negative information has me groping for answers. “Are we not on the path that is honoring to God?” “Will God provide so that we can honor him by honoring our debts?” “Is God really in this at all?” All these questions and more continually pop into my mind and heart, and with each passing day they seem harder and harder to answer.

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Is it arrogant to claim that Pelagians (definition) misunderstand the Gospel? Yes, it is as arrogant as claiming that Catholics distort the Gospel, that the Jews missed their Messiah, and that Muslims do not serve the God of Abraham. It is arrogant in a day of post-modern tolerance, where truth is relative to the individual and where truth thereby is non-existent.

And how have Pelagians misunderstood the Gospel? They have done it by misunderstanding the bad news of humanity’s condition. For if good news is going to exist, bad news must go before it, and if extremely Good News is going to exist, extremely bad news must go before it.

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“Baptism is the most important event in the life of a child of God.” If one were to declare thus in a typical American Baptist church, that person would almost immediately be labeled a heretic or at least be charged with misunderstanding the Word of God. “Baptism is merely an outward picture of an inward reality,” they would answer. “Baptism does not save a soul.” To which I would respond, “A symbol of what?” To which they would reply, “Of dying with Christ and being raised with him.” “Which is what?” I would ask. To which I would expect an “I do not know,” or a “Being born again,” or an “Accepting of Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.”

The sad irony for most of us who call ourselves Baptists is that we bear baptism in our denominational title, yet we by and large have no clue what baptism is. In this way, we are much like the Circumcision party of whom the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5 in that we, like them, bear the symbol of God’s covenant in our title, and, we, like them, understand the symbol of the covenant with great precision, and yet we do not understand the reality behind the symbol. We, like the Circumcision party, are zealously meticulous about practicing the symbol correctly, giving lectures and preaching sermons on why baptism by immersion is the only acceptable mode of baptism, all the while neglecting to teach upon the reality of baptism. We will harp upon the mode of the symbol to such detail so as to say that a baptizer cannot hold the nose of the one being baptized because dead people do not hold their noses, yet we neglect to teach that baptism is matter of the heart performed by the Spirit of God not by the letter of the law.

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At my new job site with the security company for which I work, I have the privilege of working with a brother of Christ who comes from a Church of God denominational background, and who is presently pursuing a Master of Divinity in Christian Counseling. We have had some wonderful conversations the past two days (and will likely have many more in the future, Lord willing), and I have little reason not to believe that this man is a child of God. He loves the Lord and his Word, and he strives for holiness and likely shares Christianity with more unbelievers than I do.

However, despite these admirable and godly traits, this brother is a full-fledged Arminian and believes the very doctrines that the Synod of Dordt denounced. And while I am convinced that the Spirit of God dwells in this man, I have felt it my duty to share with him at least some differing views on his beliefs since this man aspires to one day be a full-time minister to God’s flock. Here are a few of my thoughts that I have shared with him.

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Having come to the end of Paul’s epistle to the church at Rome, the apostle clarifies that which can be surmised throughout his letter, namely his very purpose in writing the letter. Everything that the apostle has written in the letter tends to a particular end, and he emphasizes that end by calling forth the same language that he used to begin the letter and thereby neatly bookends his purpose.

The great purpose of the apostle in writing his letter is this: “To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among all the nations” (Rm. 1:5). We know this is the great purpose of the apostle for he ends his letter writing:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith–to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen (vv. 16:25-27).

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Upon leaving Christian Philosophy class somewhat perturbed and despairing after having listened to the teachings of Scripture trampled by the philosophies of men again, I came to a sad realization, namely that we as Modern American and Evangelical Christians have absolutely lost the great doctrine of Justification by Faith. I am sure that there are many who are standing by quick to object to such a charge, but I am fully convinced that the justification by faith that we preach today is not the same Justification by Faith that was heralded by the great reformer Martin Luther neither does it resemble anything taught by Christ or the apostles. Additionally, since this great doctrine is by necessity one of the great pillars of the Christian religion, its loss has had profound effects on subservient doctrines, so much so that our tainted minds cannot even begin to fathom the depths of their distortion. I am not quite sure of the goal of my writing this, for I am nearly convinced that we are so blinded by our presuppositions on the matter so as to beyond retrieval. I pray that God might grant grace to me as I write and to you, the reader, as you think upon this most weighty of doctrines.

Justification by Acceptance rather than Justification by Faith
As those who claim to be Evangelical Christians–those who bear the very word Gospel (euangelion) in our self-made title, one would think that we would be quite sure about the Gospel to which we claim such allegiance. Yet in spite of our nominal allegiance, we find in modern Evangelical Christianity in place of the Gospel call given exclusively in Scripture by Christ and the apostles, namely, “Believe and repent!”, there is now almost exclusively the call: “Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and ask him into your heart.”

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I am not a worrier. When it comes to sinful deficiencies, an anxious heart is not one of my natural vices. I do not claim this boastfully, for I know that my lack an anxiety comes more from my natural disposition toward apathy than it does from my faith in God. For in my life thus far, I have lived my life with little care about the particulars of my future and have self-righteously chalked my lack of planning to my trust in the sovereignty of God. And while it is indeed true that “The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9), God, in a demonstration of the greatness of his power, has chosen to allow men to plan their steps and yet sovereignly ordains and orchestrates all things pertaining to humanity through the wills of men.

Yet the Scripture’s unabashed proclamation of God’s meticulous sovereignty and his great power are never presented as justification for a “que sera, sera” attitude toward life. Proverbs 16 exists as a demonstration of this, holding together that which cannot be comprehended by the human mind, namely that a godly man plans and commits his steps to the Lord, yet the Lord has already established his steps. The apostle Paul puts it this way: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12, 13). Therefore we are to work, for God is working in us.

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By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward (Heb. 11:24-26).

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” was the declaration of our Lord to those who would listen on the Sermon on the Mount, and it is the testimony of countless lives of men and women who have looked upon the offerings of this world and upon the suffering that comes with Christ and forsook the former for the latter.

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By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God (Heb. 11:5).

The story of Enoch is one of the more interesting in the Genesis narrative, not necessarily because of his life, but because he did not see death. We find in Genesis 5 that Enoch walked with the Lord, and he did so all the days of his life by his faith in the Lord. Therefore God was pleased with Enoch, and, in his good pleasure, took Enoch so that he would not die.

The testimony of the life of Enoch is a great one indeed, for Enoch’s taking from this earth by the Lord at the relatively young age of 365 demonstrates, first, where Enoch’s hope rested. Had Enoch desired this life and its present luxuries, he would have likely lived, at those before and after him, past nine hundred years. However, as it was, Enoch’s greatest treasure was the Lord, and the Lord saw fit to give him the desire of his heart, expressly God himself.

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