The Just Shall Live By Faith

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 01:17, NKJV).

This highlighted phrase appears four times in the Bible; once in the Old Testament, and three in the New (Hab 2:4; Ro 1:17; Ga 3:11; Heb 10:38).

It has been said that the prophet Habakkuk introduces the concept, contrasting those who live by pride; that here in Romans Paul defines who “the just” really are; that in Galatians he explains how the just should live; and in Hebrews what “faith” means.

Now, the word for “just” conveys two meanings, “righteous”, and “acceptable to God”, and is therefore the perfect summation of a believer's standing in Christ. We are made righteous by Jesus having taken our sin upon Himself at the Cross, and, in exchange, He gives us His sinless righteousness. Because of that transaction, we are cleansed and made acceptable to God.

But, and this is extremely important, we are made righteous and acceptable by faith, and this is in direct opposition to the idea that we earn our way into eternal life.

Do you see how magnificent those six words truly are, now. Think of it as both a promise and a command. We are made righteous by faith in Jesus Christ, and because our sins have been forgiven through His death on the Cross, we are no longer under the penalty of death. We shall live, and not die.

But there's more. Faith is not only the means by which eternal life is granted to us, it is how we are to live now, day by day.

What does this mean, living by faith?

Paul says it this way:

For we walk [live day by day] by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).

Proverbs puts it another way:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5, 6, NKJV).

And again in Corinthians, Paul writes:
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17, 18, NKJV).

This echoes how Hebrews defines faith itself:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV).

To live by what we believe rather than merely by what we see or experience is the distinguishing characteristic between believers and unbelievers.

When we allow the Spirit of God free reign in us, our view of the world and of our circumstances goes beyond what is obvious and apparent, and focuses on the underlying purposes and meaning of even of all the events surrounding us.

We understand that nothing is by accident, and that all things work together for good, although we may not be in a position to see that good all the time.

That is why in the New Testament and throughout church history we read of men and women who undergo horrendous pain and loss and yet find themselves able to praise God for His grace and mercy.

It is not that we Christians are masochistic (deriving pleasure from one's own pain), but that we, living by faith, see past the moment into eternity.

I have lived life from both sides of this equation, as a non-believer and as a believer.

I can attest from years of personal experience that there is no comparison between living by sight versus living by faith. The latter is so far superior to the former that the contrast is almost inexpressible.

And this is not something that I have achieved through my own puny efforts. In fact, it has often been despite my natural tendency to focus outward on my circumstances rather than upward upon my Savior – the author and finisher of our faith.

I believe that faith sees the truth of things underneath everything, like a kind of x-ray vision, or what artists see when they look at a simple bowl and observe so much more than the bowl itself, but also light and patterns and shadow and infinite color.

C.S. Lewis thought that until Heaven, we live in something he called the Shadowlands. It looks real enough and full-bodied, but once seen in the True Light, it becomes as vapor and silhouettes.

And this is what the gift of faith provides, True Light, not as some magical incantation, but as the ability to perceive as we have always been meant to perceive; as Adam and Eve did in the Garden before The Fall.

And one day, perhaps soon, that kind of sight will be as natural as breathing again, as much a part of us as our skin.

Until then, He gives us glimpses into the True World, like Gehazi, Elisha's servant:

And Elisha prayed, and said, “LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6:17, NKJV).

Remember this, Little One, His love for us knows no bounds. He is noble and virtuous in ways and to a depth that we can only imagine.

But living by faith, we come close to seeing who He really is, and in seeing that, our hearts are filled with joy that never fades.

Love,

Dad

From Faith to Faith

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 01:17, NKJV).

“But what does that mean?” I asked a beloved brother in the Lord early in my walk as a Christian.

I was referring to the highlighted phrase in the verse above.

“Faith first and last,” he said. “Faith beginning to end.”

That satisfied me for the moment, but now, years later, I think it means even more than that; more than faith alone; more than some ancient colloquialism (a word or phrase that is not formal or literary).

You see, when the object of faith is God, and in this particular context, God's righteousness being revealed, the phrase “from faith to faith” is an indication of the self-replicating nature of faith. By this I mean, faith in God becomes broadened and deepened by itself.

Faith is that thing or activity which, when directed to its proper focus, becomes more of itself. In other words faith is nourished by faith.

I conclude this for two reasons. First, Scripture exhorts us repeatedly to be encouraged by one another's “mutual faith”. Earlier, in verse 12, Paul has alluded to that very effect; that being around those of like-minded faith builds up our own.

The writer of Hebrews says more or less the same thing, that “we should not neglect the assembling of ourselves together.” Why? Because the church is designed by God to keep herself going, needing nothing from the world, but only her Head, Christ, and the spiritual gifts that He distributes for the edification (building up) of itself in love.

Secondly, faith is the first step in understanding spiritual things. The Bible, without being mixed with faith, is merely a collection of ancient writings, but with faith, it becomes alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Faith recognizes that God is, and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.

Here is a word picture of what I think of as the Divine Spiral. It is painted like this:

The smallest measure of faith gives us a glimpse of God, a tantalizing understanding that He IS there and knows each one of us. If we nourish that faith with even the slightest acknowledgment, it grows and blossoms, causing us to hunger for more of His presence, more knowledge and understanding of Him, which increases our faith, which gives us a greater hunger, and so on.

I picture it as a beautiful, increasingly vast upward spiral leading to the very gates of Heaven.

Faith in God, like His grace towards us, changes everything.

It starts on the inside and works outward, transforming a cold-hearted sinner into a lover of God through Christ, His Son.

It makes the blind see, the lame walk, and cleanses the leper, and the more we exercise the measure of faith we are given, the larger, broader, and deeper it becomes.

Now be prepared for the world to attempt to corrupt and pervert this glorious progression, dismissing it as magical thinking, or misdirecting it toward, not faith in God, but faith in faith.

To protect against such attacks, just remember what it was like to believe in Jesus when you were a little child. Back then, there were no cynical complications, no pernicious (harmful) doubts, no recognized outside pressure to disbelieve. There was just you and Jesus, and it was as natural a breathing to know He was there and loved you.

The world thinks that Biblical Christianity requires us to check our brains at the door, but that is not so at all. What it really requires is to examine the evidence that God has provided in His Word, in the world, and in a changed heart, with the purity of a little child, as yet unscarred by the ravages of sin.

When we are confronted with doubt, or with things we don't understand, we need only to fall back on the things we do understand, and ultimately, to come back to the Cross, for that is the destination that faith intends us to reach.

Consider this magnificent prayer that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian believers:

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19, NKJV).

Faith in Christ is not something that you grit your teeth and break out in a sweat to experience. It is something far deeper than that, far more basic, like breathing air.

But unlike breathing, it is possible to deny faith by stubbornly refusing to believe that which your conscience, all of Creation, and that still small voice within urges you to accept. If you reject Him long enough, if you refuse to see, then there will come a time when that is all you can do, and He will grant you your wish to be left alone for all eternity.

That is one of the very definitions of Hell.

Love,

Dad

The Righteousness of God

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 01:17, NKJV).

This concept, the righteousness of God, is important to understand primarily because it is often called into question by life itself. It is also frequently the opening salvo in human attacks on the character of God, in the form of, “how can a righteous God... [fill in the blank with whatever excuse or circumstance apparently justifies the question]?”

The best definition I can give is that righteousness is the “state of someone who is as he or she ought to be”. That is, that the person possessing this characteristic is aligned with the universally understood qualities of moral correctness.

Now, morality is a squishy beast in this day and age. It has become victim to the forces of relativism in that instead of representing an intended absolute, it is now subject to the winds and currents of human thought and imagination. That is almost never a good thing.

But in the case of morality, it is all a show of smoke and mirrors to bolster the logically untenable position of denying God's existence, for even the most devoted follower of Relativism is personally offended by unfairness or injustice when, let's say, someone cuts in front of him at the line for the doctor's office.

If morality at its core where truly relative, or circumstantial, there would be no universally perceived offense since it would be entirely possible that, to the rude perpetrator, it was moral to put himself first.

In fact, this innate sense of fairness or justice that is shared by all functioning humans, is inexplicable in purely naturalistic evolutionary terms. Where did it come from, the primordial goo from which we all supposedly originate?

We humans behave as if there is indeed some universal standard of justice outside ourselves, imposed from some external source that wrote all the rules beforehand. We are merely players on the field, aware of, and sometimes even following, those rules, but clearly not the author of them. Even the most depraved psychopath knows (and delights) in breaking them.

These rules of right and wrong come from God, who is Himself perfectly “as He ought to be”. And he wrote them in our DNA and conscience so that we are without excuse when we break them.

This aspect of His character, this perfect righteousness, is one of the many reasons He is trustworthy, for as far back as Genesis 18:25 we discover that the “Judge of the earth” will only do what is right.

For us, this righteousness of God means that if we obey Him, we are protected from His justifiable wrath against human depravity and sin; and to obey Him, we need to know and understand what He commands.

Fortunately, miraculously, mercifully, graciously, the single most important command in this regard is to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”.

It need not have been that way. His righteousness could have demanded our own perfect righteousness with the slightest misstep disqualifying us from eternal life and guaranteeing our entrance into eternal punishment.

If that were the case, we would be bereft of all hope, and it would have been better for each one of us never to have been born.

But instead, His righteousness, His perfect judgment has been tempered by His measureless mercy and grace. He made it possible to gain entrance to Heaven not by our own righteousness but by way of His Son.

In His brilliant and glorious plan of redemption formulated in the eternal counsels of the Godhead before the foundation of the earth, God declared the penalty of sin (missing the mark of His standards of right and wrong) is death, and that the soul that sins must die.

He created Adam, as our representative, and gave this creature made after God's own image every opportunity to obey the one restriction placed upon him, and when Adam failed (as God knew He would), we all failed in him.

But He promised there would come another representative, a Last Adam, who, through perfect obedience, would fulfill all of God's righteousness and thus, as a Man, qualify for Heaven.

And then came the most incomprehensibly glorious aspect of this plan: instead of showing us the way and leaving us to our own devices leading to inevitable failure, this Last Adam, this sinless representative, took upon Himself our death. He died in our place, taking our punishment, not only on the Cross, but in being separated from God.

You see, God had declared that Adam's sin would result in death for himself and all his descendants after him. He likewise made provision for that required death to be satisfied by the substitutionary sacrifice of His own beloved Son, and thus grant life to all those who, by faith, become Christ's descendants; who by belief in that provision would become children of God rather than children of Adam.

But God's righteousness demanded that Jesus must die for that exchange to take place.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21, NKJV).

The world asks how can a righteous God allow the evil so evident all around us to exist? How can He allow babies to die and the innocent to suffer?

But the real question that should be asked is this: how could a righteous God place upon His sinless Son the punishment that we sinners deserve?

And the only answer that satisfies is perhaps the most famous verse in the world.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16, NKJV).

So, when you find yourself unsure of His love for you, remember this:

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32, NKJV).

Do not think for one nanosecond that He does not love you, for in giving us His Son, He proved for all eternity that His love for you knows no bounds.

You know the old saying about how someone can “love you to death”.

There is only One who has, and in doing so has really loved you to life.

Love,

Dad