What Is Faith?

 Click Here for Worship Service Video

1 Peter 1:3-9

One of my all-time favourite movies is The Princess Bride.  There’s a character in it named Vizzini who overused the word “inconceivable”.  He used it so much that another one of the characters, Inigo Montoya (himself known for saying, “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”) had to make the accusation, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  Sometimes we can use a word and use a word and use a word so much that in time we forget what the word actually means and instead it means what we want it to mean.  For Vizzini, he thought of himself as a very brilliant strategist who could best anyone in a game of wits.  If he made a plan and something happened that wasn’t in the plan, then it was inconceivable; meaning if he did not think of it, then it could not be thought of.  That’s not exactly what the word means.

We Christians also have a word that we use a lot about which we could and should receive the same accusation.  We use it so much that it has taken on a meaning to us that is different than what it would have meant to the Biblical writers.  The word is faith.  We use it so much that maybe we have to accept the fact that we don’t now what it actually means or should I say what it meant to the writers of the Bible.

We tend to think of faith as believing certain things or putting our trust in something.  We believe there is a God meaning we have faith there is a good.  We have beliefs about God that differ from the beliefs that people of other “faiths” have.  We trust that God loves us and will provide for us.  When bad things happen, we have faith that God has his reasons and we trust he’ll work good from it.  Here at Easter, we profess that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead and that is a historical fact and that that event is crucial to our faith. There are various different meanings there for one word.

The meaning of words change over time and this has certainly happened with the word faith.  Today we think of faith as being emotional trust in something or cognitive ascent to beliefs or realities that can’t be objectively measured or established by fact.  It’s also the opposite of doubt.  Centuries ago, fidelity or faithfulness would have been the primary way of understanding the meaning of the word faith.  Let me walk us through that.

In the last fifteen or so years in the world of New Testament studies there has been a number of people doing historical language work on what the word we translate as “faith” means.  If you’re wondering, the noun form is pistis and the verb is pisteuo.  These scholars have taken the time to do the very tedious work of finding just about every known occurrence of it we have from the first couple of centuries of the church in both the writings of the church and from general culture.  They found that the word wasn’t used very much to mean belief, beliefs, or trust the way we use it. 

These scholars found that the word applied to how one behaved in a relationship and that our words loyalty or allegiance are better words to use to describe what faith is in the Bible.  Faith primarily means being faithful rather than just believing and trusting.  Faith is what soldiers do when they serve their countries and follow the chain of command.  Faith is what civil servants do when they serve the country and its citizens.  And my favourite, faith is how the relationship works between thugs and their crime boss.  

Faith isn’t just believing in the existence of things you can’t see.  Faith is participation in a relationship to which we are committed whether it be with God or with spouse or with parents or friends or an employer.  Faith isn’t like our simply saying I believe I have a job.  Faith is that I have a job and therefore I will be loyal in my obligation to my employer.  Faith isn’t simply believing I have a wife.  Faith is that I have a wife and I will be loyal to her.

Well, when you look at the New Testament and ask what did its writers mean by faith, you find that faith isn’t just believing stuff or trusting.  The best way I can sum it up is to say that faith is our participation in the sphere of reality in which God is making his promises come about.  Faith is our participation in the sphere of reality where God has called a people to himself through whom he is and will work out his purposes for his creation.  Faith isn’t just believing there is a god or simply trusting, it is actually participating in what God is doing in this world.

We like to think that faith is how we get saved (Believe this about Jesus and go to heaven).  Faith is not how we get saved.  Faith is our participation in the salvation that God has brought about in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit; the salvation that God Big Banged into real history by raising Jesus from the dead.  Faith is our participation now in the New Creation that God sparked into being by and as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead; the New Creation that he will bring to its fruition when Jesus returns and this Old Creation will be changed to be “full of the knowing of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9). 

It says here in 1 Peter 1:3, “God in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Crist from the dead.”  Faith is our living now that new life that is marked by a living hope – not a wishful thinking hope, but a living hope - as God himself has stepped into our lives and marked us with the presence of his very self, the Holy Spirit, so that we now want to live for him as followers of Jesus Christ.  Faith is that we find ourselves having an inexplicable allegiance or loyalty to Jesus and desire to live for him and live like him.  In a world where there are competing loyalties and lifestyles, we choose Jesus and his way.

Faith isn’t just that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead as a historical fact or something.  Faith is that we are participating in that reality, the real course of historical events, that have ensued since Jesus lived, died, and was raised.  Faith is allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and loyal participation in his kingdom reign being manifest now in us as we live as hope-filled people who are prayerful, compassionate, and gracious.  Faith is maintaining the prayer relationship with God.  Giving God time and space for communication.  Faith is loving unconditionally, unselfishly, and sacrificially.  Faith is showing extravagant hospitality and generosity. Faith is love of those who would be our enemies.  Faith is seeking peace and reconciliation.  Faith is being restorative rather than retributive when it’s a matter of justice.  Faith is participating in the sphere of reality in which God is healing this hurting world.  Amen.

What Is Faith?

1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-29

Click Here for Worship Service Video

One of my all-time favourite movies is The Princess Bride.  There’s a character in it named Vizzini who overused the word “inconceivable”.  He used it so much that another one of the characters, Inigo Montoya (himself known for saying, “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”) had to make the accusation, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  Sometimes we can use a word and use a word and use a word so much that in time we forget what the word actually means and instead it means what we want it to mean.  For Vizzini, well, he thought of himself as a very brilliant strategist who could best anyone in a game of wits.  If he made a plan and something happened that wasn’t in the plan, then it was inconceivable; meaning if he did not think of it, then it was inconceivable.   

We Christians also have a word that we use a lot about which we could and should receive the same accusation.  We use it so much that it has taken on a meaning to us that is different that what the Biblical writers would have it to mean.  The word is faith.  We use the word faith so much that maybe we have to accept the fact that we don’t now what it actually means or should I say what it meant to the writers of the Bible.

We tend to think of faith as believing certain things or putting our trust in something.  We believe there is a God.  Christians have beliefs about God that differ from the beliefs that people of other “faiths” have.  We trust that God loves us and will provide for us.  When bad things happen we have faith or believe that God has his reasons and we trust he’ll work good from it.  Here at Easter we profess that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead is a historical fact and that that event is crucial to our faith.

Well, in the last ten or so years in the realm of New Testament studies there has been a number of people doing historical and language work on what the word we translate as “faith” means.  If you wondering, the noun form is pistis and the verb is pisteuo.  These scholars have taken the time to do the very tedious work of finding every known occurrence of it we have from the first couple of centuries of the church in both the writings of the church and from general culture.  They found that the word wasn’t used very much to mean belief and trust the way we use it. 

These scholars found that the word applied to how one behaved in a relationship and that our words loyalty or allegiance are better words to use to describe what faith is in the Bible.  Faith primarily means being faithful rather than just believing and trusting.  Faith is what soldiers do when they serve their countries and follow the chain of command.  Faith is what civil servants do when they serve the country and its citizens.  And my favourite, faith is how the relationship works between thugs and their crime boss.  

Faith isn’t just believing or trusting in the existence of things we can’t see.  Faith is participation in a relationship to which we are committed whether it be with God or with spouse or with parents or friends or an employer.  Faith isn’t like our simply saying I believe I have a job.  Faith is that I have a job and therefore I will be loyal in my obligation to my employer.  Faith isn’t simply believing I have a wife.  Faith is that I have a wife and I will be loyal to her.

Well, when you look at the New Testament and ask what did its writers mean by faith, you find that faith isn’t just believing stuff or trusting.  The best way I can sum it up is to say that faith is our participation in the sphere of reality in which God is making his promises come about.  Faith is our participation in the sphere of reality where God has called a people to himself through whom he is and will work out his purposes for his creation.  

We like to think that faith is how we get saved (Believe this about Jesus and go to heaven).  Faith is not how we get saved.  Faith is our participation in the salvation that God has brought about in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit; the salvation that God Big Banged into real history by raising Jesus from the dead.  Faith is our participation now in the New Creation that God sparked into being by and as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead; the New Creation that he will bring to its fruition when Jesus returns and this Old Creation will be changed to be “full of the knowing of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).  

It says here in 1 Peter 1:3, “God in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Crist from the dead.”  Faith is our living now that new life that is marked by a living hope – not a wishful thinking hope - because God himself has stepped into our lives and marked us with the presence of his very self, the Holy Spirit, so that we now want to live for him as followers of Jesus Christ.  Faith is that we find ourselves having an inexplicable allegiance to Jesus and desire to live for him and live like him.

To use an offhanded example here, a few months ago a virus common to bats somewhere in Asia mutated and jumped species to an exotic rodent that was captured and brought to a wet market in Wuhan, China.  There, the virus did it again.  It mutated and jumped species but this time into humans.  A global pandemic has ensued.  It is a deceptively contagious respiratory virus.  You can have it and not know you have it and you are contagious days before you start showing symptoms. Its effects can be very mild to very severe.  To some it is lethal, particularly the elderly and those weakened by other medical conditions. Regardless, pretty much everyone on planet earth has had to make dramatic lifestyle changes to live accordingly.  The corona virus has created a new reality in which we must live differently to prevent its lethal spread.  Something very small and seemingly insignificant happened and has changed reality for everyone and things will be different now and we have to live accordingly.

I know that’s a bad example, but using that image of something small changing everything; roughly two thousand years ago God the Son jumped species, so to speak, and became human, the man Jesus of Nazareth.  God did this in a backwater region of the Roman Empire known for its tendency to revolt. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, he took our two primary diseases of Sin and Death to himself and died setting in motion their eventual death and our cure.  God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised this Jesus from the dead and thus started something new, a New Creation; and, one could say a Global Pandemic of new life, hope-filled life, has ensued.  Creation is now changed.  Humanity is now changed. People have changed the way they do life because of this new birth into a new life.  This new life is contagious.  Not everybody gets it, but hopefully, at the end, everyone will.  Those who got it display symptoms from mild to severe, but at the very least they find they have the sense that they are beloved children of God and that things are different.  They have a hope and a joy.  That sense of being loved by God develops into a love for others that changes the way people relate to one another.  This pandemic of the love of God is the cure for God’s good Creation particularly for broken, hurting humanity.

Faith isn’t just that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead as a historical fact or something.  Faith is that we are participating in that reality, the real course of historical events, that have ensued since Jesus lived, died, and was raised.  Faith is allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and loyal participation in his kingdom reign being manifest now in us as we live as hope-filled people who are prayerful, compassionate, and gracious. Amen.

Lift up the Cup of Salvation

Text: 1 Peter 1:3-9

          Last week we looked at the first two verses of First Peter where the Apostle uses very few words to say a lot about who we are in Christ.  I closed with saying, “we are the chosen ones, chosen by God the Father and made holy by the Holy Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ in faith and works as we have been given access to God by the sprinkling of Jesus blood so that the purpose of God for his creation can be made known.  The life of the Trinity in us and upon us and our being brought into it makes us strangers, exiles in this world.  Our home is in God, in his coming kingdom, which we taste of now in Christ through the Holy Spirit that the will of the Father may be made known.”  This week Peter adds a bit more to our understanding of who we are in Christ as well as what we do and this of course is in light of who God is as the Triune God of grace and what he has done and is doing for us through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.  Today we will touch a bit on worship, faith, God’s protection, and suffering.

          Verse 3 reads: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who in accordance with his great mercy has re-sired us into a living hope by means of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  This verse is probably the most important sentence in the entire letter.  The first thing I would like to highlight in it is worship.  Peter says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord.”  Blessed be God.  In my limited knowledge of the Bible and Christian theology being able to say “Blessed be God the Father” represents the perfection of humanity.  To say those words from the very depth of the entirety of our being, from our soul, is what humans were created to do and the ability to do so is what was most corrupted in us by sin.  

          God created humanity to be the priesthood of his creation.  As such our role is to lift up the cup of the goodness of the vine with thanks and praise for God’s goodness that everywhere surrounds us.  The Jews every Friday with the Sabbath dinner lift up a cup of wine and say, ”Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu, meleck ha’olam…Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe.”  They go on to praise him for choosing them, making them holy with the Commandments, and giving them the Sabbath rest.  God chose and called forth the Jewish people to say this blessing in the midst of his creation, indeed to be this blessing and to teach it to the world.  They did and they do, but the praise was incomplete, not yet perfected, because they had not yet been born or begotten of God the Father of Lord Jesus Christ so that they could say it with the adoration of children as to their Father.  We also are just supposed to give thanks and praise to God for this wonderful gift of life in his creation, but worshipping God seems so foreign to us.  Some in the church even think it is a waste of time.  

          Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Israel and her worship.  Indeed, he is the perfecting of it.  He fulfills the temple, the Law, the sacrifice, the voice of the prophets, and in him is the Sabbath rest.  In him we lift up the cup of salvation in adoration of the Father because by Jesus Christ he has made us his children and will give us a glorious inheritance.  Paul says in Ephesians 1:13,14, “In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory.”  God’s presence with and in us now as Jesus Christ present through the Holy Spirit is the foretaste of our coming inheritance of salvation.  We’ve really got reason to say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  The Trinity is with us.  He is here.

          Peter goes on to say that our heavenly Father in accordance with his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope.  Our Father is a merciful God.  Yet, what do we mean by mercy?  When I was a child we used to play a game called “Mercy” where two people clasped hands interlocking their fingers and tried to bend one another’s hands back until one person fell to their knees in excruciating pain and cried out “Mercy” to end it.  That’s not what we mean by mercy.  God’s mercy is not that he bends us over in punishment with the pains of life until we submit to his Lordship by begging his mercy on our sins.  God’s mercy is his favour, the blessing of the reality of his love, his very self, poured upon us undeservedly in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  Our heavenly Father is free to be merciful to whomever he chooses to be and he chooses to be merciful to humanity even when we’ve done nothing to deserve it.  He has simply chosen to pour his favour, his loving presence upon us to cure us of sin and death.

          The Father pours his mercy, his favour upon us in the form of giving us a new birth, regeneration, or a re-siring.  The Greeks had a more complete understanding of the birthing process than we seem to do.  Birth had two moments; first, the birth or begetting that happens at conception and second, the birth that happens when the baby comes forth from the womb.  Humanity was born anew, sired anew, the moment God the Son was conceived in Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit to be Jesus the Christ, was born, lived, died, and raised from the dead.  Jesus' incarnation and resurrection and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost brought into existence a new humanity, one born of and desirous of the Father’s will rather than born into and desirous of sin.  When Christ Jesus returns and all are raised from the dead, an event akin to birth from the womb, being born again will be the reality experienced by us all.  

           Peter here carries through on this thinking. The Greek word Peter uses here in verse three for “given a new birth”, anagennao has the same root as the word for begetting or siring, which is gennao.  Gennao has more to do with the paternal side of the birthing process than the maternal side.  New Testament Greek has a word for a mother giving birth, tikto, which Peter does not use here.  He uses anagennao which means again-sired.  We in Christ through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in us are re-born or re-sired of God.  Peter also means the same when he says later in the letter that we have been born of imperishable seed where seed also connotes lineage more so than semen.  We are born anew into the will and identity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, into the lineage of the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ and this is the life of living hope.  Another way of saying this is that we have been adopted into a new family.  Our new family identity marked upon us by the Holy Spirit is the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ, God’s Son whom he raised from the dead.  We are the Father’s beloved children in Jesus Christ through the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit in us.  This is who we, each and every one of us, are.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

          Moving on, by means of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead we have all been born again into a living hope.  We live in the hope of receiving the glorious inheritance God the Father promises to the children whom he has chosen and indeed a foretaste of that inheritance, the Holy Spirit, is with us now making us alive so that we can live in that hope and so we rejoice.  Our hope is our faith and our faith is our hope.  Our final outcome is determined by God, our Father who extends to us his favour in love by our union with Jesus by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.  It is his resurrected life that we receive now in the Holy Spirit who re-sires us and also protects us to that day in our embryonic form.  Our inheritance, the final remaking of each of us in the image of Christ is being kept in heaven for us and Peter says that we are being protected by the power of God through faith until that day.  God is watching over us, he is here with us; he’s marked us with his Spirit.  Have faith.  Entrust yourself to the will and care of the Triune God of grace and mercy.  Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

          We are those who have reason to lift up the cup of salvation in praise even in the face of trials, persecution and suffering.  Worship in the face of such things refines our trust in the Father’s love and proves our faith as genuine.  In our sufferings we find that Jesus is present with us, teaching us himself and his way by giving us himself through the Holy Spirit.  When we suffer praising Christ Jesus, the one who suffered for us, helps us to love him all the more even though we cannot see him.  Our heavenly Father does not abandon us, rather he provides for us.  When those closest to us abandon us and betray our friendship, Jesus is with us. Suffering for others and on account of others leads us not only to understand what Jesus has gone through on account of us, he is here.  He is the faithful One we can sense as present with us though we cannot see him.as the faithful one we can’t see.  In the midst of it he finds unique ways to speak to us personally.  He sends Christian friends who understand.  He opens doors and gets us where we need to be.  We truly are born anew into a living hope; hope that is alive.  We truly do receive now the promised outcome of faith.  

          Finally, that promised outcome is the salvation of our souls.  What exactly is the soul is a much talked about topic these days as science has begun to understand the human brain.  We tend to think of the human soul as being a whiff of energy that exists the body upon death to go either to heaven or hell.  That view of the soul isn’t really biblical.  The soul is the entirety of who each of us is as individuals.  It includes our emotions, our minds, our bodies…it is the entirety of who we are as a living person.  When we are raised from the dead at the resurrection every bit of who we are will be raised and glorified, most importantly our bodies, which will become imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.  The uniqueness of us as individuals is why the Christian faith has no place for reincarnation.  All this stuff on past life regression is nothing more than a monkey’s diaper.  Why would a loving God keep sending living souls into bodies to suffer again and again until they figure out what they are supposed to learn and ascend to a higher existence.  Those who believe in past life regression and reincarnation truly need to consider that God actually does love them.  Indeed, we are the ones who proclaim that message.  We have the blessing with which to bless this world.  The Lord has chosen us, made us his children, and poured his favour upon us.  He’s placed the cup of salvation into our hands for us to lift up and say, Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe for you have chosen us and made us holy with your Holy Spirit and given to us the rest of faith that we might live in living hope before this broken world and share this cup with it.  The cup of life anew is in our hands.  Don’t keep it to yourself.  Share it.  Rejoice always in front of everyone who sees you.  Invite your friends and family to come and be a part of the worship.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.