



                           Observations on Faith
                             by John R. Marler

    We need today to be reminded that the Kingdom of God does
not consist of rituals, works or any outward observances of any kind or
manner.  The Kingdom of God consists of righteousness, peace and joy in the
Holy Spirit.  This kingdom, moreover, is a gift of God, not a human
accomplishment.  Its foundation is the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ
on Calvary.  It was carried forward by the great outpouring of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost.
    The disciples before Pentecost were only disciples.  They tried to
follow Jesus and His teachings as best they could, but they did not know
true faith.  It was only at Pentecost that they were truly made Apostles.
At that time, each of them experienced the power of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ.  At that time, each of them was emboldened by the Holy Spirit
to bear witness of Christ in public.  Whereas previously they were
disciples of the One whom they saw as the Messiah of Israel, now they were
ambassadors and heralds of the risen Christ.  Instead of seeking faith that
is a dead work of the law, they now had the faith that empowers and
redeems.  Previously they had the faith of servants, now they had the faith
of sons of the Living God.  Previously they were plagued by timidity and
fearfulness, now they were ready to die for the sake of their Master and
Savior.
    Faith includes intellectual assent, but its essence is a personal
relationship with the Living Savior, Jesus Christ.  It consists, basically,
in a living union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  True faith means
being before doing - being in the favor of God before doing the will of
God.  It means being grasped by the Spirit of God.  It is an opening of our
inward eyes to the reality of God's incomparable love poured out for
sinners in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ.
    Yet, faith is not an almighty action of the Holy Spirit on the soul, it
is also in our action in the power of the Spirit as we are sent forth into
the world as witnesses and ambassadors of Christ.  Faith entails both
radical passivity and radical activity.  Luther once observed: "Faith ...
is a living, busy, active, mighty thing ... so it is impossible for it not
to do good works incessantly."
    The deficiency found in many churches today is an empty formalism or
barren biblicism, either of which degenerates into an oppressive legalism.
Other churches that seem more vital are plagued by perfectionistic
enthusiasm or frenetic activism that borders on humanism.  What is needed
is a recovery - a revival - of the depth and breadth of Apostolic faith.
    A revival must start in the heart of one individual - me.  Each
believer, with God, can work the miracle of revival -'Breaking up the
fallow ground' only in their own heart and life - then God can use that
person to spread His revival to the world!
    It is imperative that we bear in mind that Jesus Christ is not just a
moral ideal or prophetic genius - He is a LIVING SAVIOR.  He is not simply
the human representative of God, but God Himself in human flesh.  It is not
enough to know the historical facts about the life of Christ, how He lived
and died, each person must know that Jesus died for them personally!
    True faith does not consist of imposing our views on others, but in
sharing the light given to us.  In our evangelistic task we must not
approach others with any pretension to greater virtue or intellectual
acumen.  Instead, we present ourselves as fellow sinners whose eyes have
been opened both to the gravity of the human predicament and to the reality
of God's unconditional grace and love.  The word that we proclaim stands in
judgement over our lives as well as the lives of our hearers.  We are
beggars telling others where they can get food.  As "fishers of men" we are
instrumental in advancing the Kingdom of God, but it is not through our
cleverness that people are won to Jesus Christ; our task is simply to let
down the net of the Gospel.  As the vehicle of the Spirit, the Gospel
itself brings in souls for the kingdom.  (Luke 5:2-10)
    This is not to imply that Christians should never use apologetic
arguments in defense of the faith, but our purpose in doing so is not to
induce a decision of faith. (Only the Spirit does that through the
preaching of the Word.)  Rather, our aim is to intensify the hunger for
faith in the human soul and to help those who already believe to better
understand their own faith.  We can show the intellectual relevance of our
faith by argumentation, but faith's concrete relevance to the human
condition can be grasped only by those whose minds have been touched by the
illumination of the Holy Spirit.
    Our witness is not to some "zapping" peak experiences of the sacred,
but to the incursion of the sacred into the secular which we see in Jesus
Christ.
    Our appeal is not to external evidences for the faith but to evidences
that faith itself provides:

 o   The empty tomb.
 o   The transformed lives of the disciples.
 o   The interior witness of the Holy Spirit.

    In carrying out the evangelistic mandate, we must bear in mind that
Holy Scripture is its own best interpreter, that is to say, Scripture
illumined by the Spirit of God, its author.  Holy Scripture in the hands of
Spirit directed believers is sufficient to "demolish arguments and every
pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God." (2
Corinthians 10:5 NIV)
    We should never confuse religion with techniques for cultivating
spirituality or programs of church growth.  It is God who gives the
increase, though it is up to us to plant the seed.  (1 Corinthians 3:6-7)
Our responsibility is to hear the Word and then share the Good News.  We
can serve the Kingdom of God, but we cannot build it.  The kingdom is a
gift from God that can only be received with thanksgiving and gratefulness.
    There is a difference between believing that Christ is the Savior of
humankind in general and coming to know Him as one's own Savior.  Faith,
understood as an interior awakening to the glory and meaning of the cross,
is a gift of God.  It is a work of the Holy Spirit within us.  If we do not
have this kind of faith, let us seek it.  Let us pray for it as the
Apostles did.  (Luke 17:5)  The key to discipleship is given by our Lord:
    "Ask, and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it
will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7)
    True faith is inseparable from the experience of divine holiness and
divine love.  Sometimes that experience will take dramatic form, such as
when the apostle Paul was lifted up into the 'third heaven.' (2 Corinthians
12:2)  Yet those who have such experiences do not dwell on them.  People of
faith are not spiritual exhibitionists, but heralds and ambassadors of the
Lord Jesus Christ.  Living on a 'religious high' is not serving the glory
of God and advancing his kingdom.  John the Baptist furnished the model of
true spirituality and faith when he declared: "He must increase, but I must
decrease." (John 3:30)
    Humility such as this is an indispensable mark of authentic piety.  No
one can be confronted by the Holy God without having a poignant sense of
one's own creatureliness and sinfulness.  (Isaiah 6:1-5)  What shows us the
depth of our sin and the magnitude of God's grace is not just an awareness
of God as the Holy One, (which all people have to some degree) but the
knowledge of the Holy Love of God reflected in the life and death of Jesus
Christ.  Humility is the key to the love of other human beings for God and
for one another.  Proud people cannot love, because love means to be
emptied of self and dedicated to the glory of God and the welfare of his
creatures.
    The cardinal evidence of true faith is works of self-giving love which
are visible to the world as shown in Matthew 7:20, John 13:35 and other
scriptures.  Such works, however, are not visible to those who do them, for
the focus of the faithful doer is never on their deeds (to which they are
more likely oblivious) but on Christ and His great, completed work of
Atonement.
    The essence of true religion, the righteousness of faith, is known only
to God.  True faith will be manifested in fruits, but before we can bear
fruit we must be rooted in Christ, engrafted into Him.  We must be born
again from above by the Holy Spirit.  (John 1:12-13, 3:5-8, 1 Peter 1:3)
    Frank Kafka once wrote:  "The fathers of the Church were not afraid to
go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts.  But
we, with richness all around us, are afraid because the desert is in our
hearts."
    Let each and every one of us, today, make the commitment to be His
servant and to seek the knowledge of His Grace and Mercy.  Let us become
the vessels of His workings in this world.  Let us have the richness in our
hearts.  Let us have FAITH that will set us apart from the world and that
will make the world want to know more about our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ.  Amen
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