Audio Recording
When talking about what faith is we
Christians have to admit that we are children of a philosophical movement known
as the Enlightenment or The Age of Reason that began roughly with Martin Luther
and the Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s and came into its own in the
1700’s. Being overly simplistic, the
Enlightenment understood faith as the opposite of reason, as intellectual
assent to religious matters that cannot be proven by rational and objective
methods. In essence, to the thinkers of
the Enlightenment faith was irrational and subjective and therefore should be
kept a private matter for the individual.
And moreover, institutions such as the Church should not be telling
people what to believe especially with an “or else” tacked on to it. Though the Enlightenment had its roots in the
Reformation, its idea that faith is the opposite of reason is not what Luther
and Calvin and the other Reformers meant by faith. I want to introduce Luther’s definition of
faith as an example, but you need a little background first.
The Roman Church of Luther’s day proclaimed
a message of salvation by works of penitence and used the fear of Hell as a
means of furthering the political and economic interests of the Church. This dreadfully affected Luther. He was inwardly tortured by it because he
felt there was nothing, no act of penitence, he could do to take away his
heightened sense of his own sinfulness. Then
one day in the midst of a tortured debate with the devil (which he had
frequently), Luther came across Romans 1:17 which simply said “The righteous
shall live by faith.” Realizing himself
to have faith he suddenly knew his eternal situation was secure. His bouts with the devil ended that day only
to be replaced by bouts with the church as he began to adamantly oppose the
Roman Church’s anti-Gospel of salvation by works of penitence.
In his introduction to his commentary on Romans Luther defines faith as
such: “…faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from
God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different
people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It
brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and
powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It
doesn't stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it
already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this
manner is an unbeliever. …Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so
certain of God's favour that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in
it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and
bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this
happen through faith. Because of it, you
freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all
kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace. Thus, it
is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and
light from fire! Therefore, watch out
for your own false ideas and guard against good-for-nothing gossips, who think
they're smart enough to define faith and works, but really are the greatest of
fools. Ask God to work faith in you, or
you will remain forever without faith, no matter what you wish, say or can do.”
[1]
So, for Luther faith is not something we of our own abilities to reason just
up and decide to have. Faith is
something God creates in us as a response to his grace. If you remember a few
weeks ago in a sermon on Esther I defined grace not as God’s courtroom
judgement to be merciful to us guilty sinners on account of what Jesus has done
but, rather as God’s bringing us into his presence, extending his favour to us,
and acting for us for our good. What
Jesus has done is an extension of grace.
Indeed, God’s most gracious act towards us is adopting us as his own
beloved children in Christ ensured by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus, faith arises in us when God encounters
us with his grace.
To push this a little further, Karl Barth in his commentary on Romans said
it good when he wrote that faith is what arises when the faithfulness of God
encounters the fidelity of men. Fidelity
is active loyalty – faithfulness. God reaches
out to us in grace and by this he rightly directs our innate ability to be
faithful towards himself. Indeed, we
cannot talk about faith in a way that is biblically accurate unless we realize
we are talking about faithfulness.
Looking quickly at James, Luther thought that the Book of James should
not have been included in the Bible because James’ emphasis on works played
very well into the teachings of the Roman Church about earning salvation by
works of penitence. But as we read James
we find that he and Luther were saying very similar things and it is
unfortunate that James got unfairly pinned into the faith verses works-righteousness
debate that defined the Reformation, a debate that has proven to be a seedbed
of schism in the Church ever since.
In our passage from James here, what’s at play is not how one attains to
salvation but how one lives out that salvation.
In the early church they believed that when Jesus came he inaugurated
the Kingdom of God. He, the Messiah,
died to put to death sin and death in the old humanity and was raised to
constitute a new humanity that eventually when Jesus returned would be
ultimately free of sin and death. Jesus’
act of righteousness fulfilled the requirements of the Law of Moses freeing the
people of God from its requirements. Yet,
in Jesus’ Kingdom there is still a law, the law of liberty – It is to be lead
by the Spirit to “love your neighbour as you love yourself.” When Jesus
ascended he promised he would soon return and establish the Kingdom of God in
its fullness and until then we do works.
What James means by works is doing things now in the present that
exemplify the way things will be when Jesus brings the Kingdom in its fullness. For James, true faith is living faithfully
now in the power of the Holy Spirit according to the ways of Jesus’ Kingdom coming.
As we look at this passage in James we find that his point is that his
people were not living in faith/fulness but rather in doubt. You see, God promised the poor a special
place in the Kingdom but in their fellowship James’ people were discriminating
against the poor by showing partiality to the rich and powerful, who were
incidentally persecuting them. When they
showed this partiality they showed themselves to be actually doubters of God’s
promise for Jesus to come back and finalize the Kingdom of God. They weren’t living now according to the ways
of the Kingdom coming, which is what James means by faith.
James brings a hefty word to us too.
We the Western Church are very good at keeping to our Enlightenment
faith. We claim to have faith meaning we
rationally/irrationally accent to privately held, subjective ideas about God
things. Sometimes in times of trouble we
cling a little harder to this intellectual accent as some sort of emotional crutch. But when it comes to faithfulness, to living boldly
and publically now by the law of liberty, the law of the Kingdom, as living
witnesses to the promise of truth that Jesus is coming with his Kingdom, as
living witnesses to the fact that by the working of the Holy Spirit in us Jesus
is now present with us extending his reign – when it comes to faithfulness, to
living according to that promise we really fall short. For example, we, the church in North America,
show as much as if not more partiality on Sunday morning than James church. Without a doubt the most racially,
economically, and ethnically segregated hours in the world are the hours
between 9 and 12 on Sunday mornings when Christians worship!
Friends, we are the beloved children of God. God has acted graciously in and as Jesus
Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to adopt us as his own children. God
does not call his children to live as the Enlightenment would have it, simply as
good moral people who undergird good order in society because of our private
beliefs. God calls and enables us to live
faithfully as his children, the bearers of his DNA so to speak in Christ Jesus
by the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the heirs of the coming kingdom of God where
the one law is love your neighbour as you love yourself. Faith without faithfulness is dead. So ask God to work faithfulness in you. Amen.
