SOURCE OF FAITH Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Faith does not come through natural genetic processes. Faith truly has a vital link with blood—the blood of Christ, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith (Romans 3:25). But an individual does not inherit faith through a natural bloodline; God did not see fit to encode faith in human DNA, so that it could be passed to offspring. Christs disciples, in asking Him to increase our faith (Luke 17:5), exhibit their understanding that God, not genetics, is the ultimate source of faith. Because God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34; see Romans 2:11), He has no proclivity to limit His giving and increasing of faith to a particular racial stock. For that reason, faith as a characteristic does not belong to a particular race as, say, a set of facial features is peculiar to a given race. In His time, then, God made faith available to the Gentiles and with it, spiritual salvation, which has its taproot in faith: Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, . . . [so] that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Galatians 3:13-14). Peter says as much to the church gathered in Jerusalem. In Acts 11:17-18, he connects the gift given to the Gentiles with belief—faith—in Christ: If therefore God gave them [Gentiles] the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard these things they became silent: and they glorified God, saying, Then has God also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life. Gods Israel crosses natural racial or ethnic distinctions; the faithful of any race make up the Israel of God. These are the faithful who receive the blessing of Abraham (Galatians 3:14). First, in the spiritual sense, eating occurs primarily when one hears and reads. A person ingests messages and concepts into the mind through words, which establish and nourish his pattern of life. Those words, if one permits it, create a faith upon which one bases the way he lives. This faith is almost entirely dependent upon the quality of what is heard and whether a person believes it enough to follow it. These verses reveal only the words of God or Christ, His gospel, His truths, will form the faith that leads to salvation because they will form the correct beliefs and thus the correct way of life. This is the faith of Christ; the person who has it believes what Christ believes. This is a simple, understandable, true formula. Zephaniah 3:1-2 shows what happens when a person rejects or disbelieves His words: Woe to her who is rebellious and polluted, to the oppressing city! She has not obeyed His voice, she has not received correction; she has not trusted in the LORD; she has not drawn near to her God. That person comes to great dismay. This does not mean we cannot have words other than Gods in our mind, but the children of God must filter everything through Gods words to test their validity before they allow themselves to believe them firmly enough to make them part of their belief system. Put another way, there is faith and then there is the faith, the faith that brings salvation. This faith arises from believing Gods words. What we believe will determine our conduct and attitudes whether or not we stop to think about those beliefs because what is contained in the heart will come out (Matthew 12:34-35). Only Gods words truly produce spiritual strength. In our recent past, eating and believing the wrong words set the church up for the scattering that has occurred. For quite a while, worldly things gradually corrupted the spiritual health of Gods children, weakening them through spiritual malnourishment and changing their faith. I Corinthians 1:10 provides a first-century account of a congregation suffering from this process of ingesting the wrong words: Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. Division troubled this congregation because the members held dissimilar views on beliefs that are basic to spiritual unity. I Corinthians shows disorder, confusion, argument, and offense as symptoms of spiritual weakness. Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Faiths importance to salvation is accentuated by this verse. Faith plays a role in the entire process until we enter the Kingdom of God. It is the sum of what God is doing in our lives: Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent (John 6:29). In the fourth and fifth chapters of Romans, Paul mentions faith a dozen times, almost all concerning justification, being made righteous or having access to grace, and thus, having the hope of the glory of God. The faith that saves has its beginning when God, on His own initiative, calls us (John 6:44) and leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). He does this by His Spirit guiding us into all truth (John 16:7-14). Stirring up our minds to knowledge, His Spirit enables us to perceive from a perspective we never before seriously considered. This, combined with the confrontation that occurs with the carnal mind when we are forced to choose what to do with this precious truth, gives birth to a living faith, a faith that works, a faith that walks in godliness. This would never occur if God did not first do His part. We would never find the true God on our own or understand His gospel of the Kingdom of God. We would never be able to choose the real Jesus, our Savior and Elder Brother, from the mass of false christs created in the minds of men. Not knowing what to repent of or toward, we would never repent. As miraculous and powerful as Gods liberation of Israel from bondage was, even more so and of greater importance is the breaking of our bondage to Satan, this world, and human nature. This is why Ephesians 2:8 says the faith that saves is the gift of God. Israels release from Egypt was Gods gift too. Regardless of how much they cried out to Him, the Israelites would never have left Egypt without Him. If God had not been merciful and faithful, if He had not been trustworthy, they would never have been freed.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 16:36:39 +0000
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