Why Faith?
Romans 1:13-19 for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in righteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; FOR GOD HATH SHOWED IT UNTO THEM..
When putting together the plan for our salvation, Why did God choose Faith as the necessary thing we must possess. He could have chosen many different things. But he chose faith. Over the years I’ve heard many people use the analogy of “baking a cake” to demonstrate how different things are assembled, and what ingredients are more important then others. Well at the risk of sounding redundant, I’m going to use it one more time. When assembling the ingredients to bake a cake it is important to know what is necessary, and what is not. For example, flour, yeast, sugar, eggs, milk, are all necessary. Things like cinnamon, chocolate, nuts, caramel, coconut, etc. are not. Once you assemble the necessary things, you can alter the taste, and texture of the cake with the unnecessary things. So in constructing this plan of salvation, we also have a number of ingredients. Some of these are necessary, and some are not. For example, the most important ingredients are obviously Grace, and forgiveness. This is what God puts into the mix. Now comes what we put in. Money, Fame, Power ????? No, you say “that doesn’t sound right“. Why doesn’t it? That’s the way the world works. OK, lets try some other things. How about:
ABSTINENCE for example.
Simply withdraw from the world. Withdraw from worldly things. Set yourself apart.
How about WORKS?
That would be simple. Just do A, B, and C, without messing up.
WHAT ABOUT INTELLECT. You know a good education, a high IQ.
How much better to understand the mysteries of God?
Well obviously you know where I’m going with this. So I’ll say it. HOW ABOUT FAITH!!!
Why did God choose Faith as the main ingredient that we must put in the mix?
The dictionary’s definition for Faith is: (To trust in somebody or something, ESPECIALLY WITHOUT LOGICAL PROOF.) This means then that God wanted us to practice trust in Him without logical proof. The old phrase you’ve heard many times “ Trust Me,” Comes to mind. But anyone who is street smart will tell you that anytime someone say’s "trust me“, you should run the other way. And I agree. Any time a person tells you to trust them, there should be a red flag go up. But when God says trust me it’s much different from man saying it.
So why then did God choose Faith?
I believe the answer to this question will explain a lot of other questions we have.
Let begin with INTELLECT. Why did’nt God chose intellect?
Biologist Richard Dawkins said in his book {The God delusion}, faith is a form of irrationality, what he terms a virus of the mind. Philosopher Daniel Dennett compares belief in God, to belief in the Easter bunny. Sam Harris, author of {The end of faith} professes amazement that hundreds of millions of people worldwide profess belief in God when there is no rational evidence. Biologist E. O. Wilson say’s there must be some evolutionary explanation for the universal pervasiveness of religious belief. Well there is an explanation. Rev. Ron Carlson in his writings offer us two groups of people for your examination.
One is the secular view which says: “You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach 3 ½ billion years ago. You are a mere grab bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You came from nothing and are going nowhere.”
The other is the Christian View. It says you are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are the climax of His creation. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind. Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that He gave the life of His only Begotten Son that you might spend eternity with Him.
What these men of Science don’t understand is that the believer looks around him and sees evidence. He sees proof. I can look out my living room window on a beautiful morning and see the divine hand of God in the sky, in the trees, literally everywhere. This is not understandable to the nonbeliever. God didn’t make salvation something that required a doctorate to grasp. In fact if you are a very intelligent person it can actually work against your believing. That is if you rely on you intellect alone. Intellect to an intelligent person is often like money to a wealthy man. Like Fame to a superstar. It is what sets theme apart from the masses. And the more they lean on it, the harder it becomes to turn loose and trust God. Just the way the rich young man felt when Jesus told him to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. The Bible said he went away sorrowful. It was to hard for him to let go of what he had come to lean on all his life.
You see God chose faith because everybody could exercise it. Everyone, from the most intelligent , to the simplest. From the most wealth, to the poorest. It’s kind of like this: God says you take a step by faith toward me, and I’ll show you a glimpse of reality.
Then you begin to ask God to increase you faith, and He shows you a little more reality. And after a while you see what the unbeliever cannot see. He looks up in the sky at night and says: Aren’t the stars lovely tonight. You look up and say: WOW! Can you believe the awesome power of God to create all this! After awhile it becomes so obvious to you that God created it. You realize He has honored your faith, and turned that faith into reality. If it took an IQ of a 140 to grasp the meaning of salvation, then these men of great intellect would have to explain it to the rest of us who are mentally less fortunate . So God in His infinite wisdom knew those men, being mortal men would become corrupt in there duties of doling out God’s plan of salvation to the rest of us. We can look back on the Catholic Church when in the middle ages the priest were the only people who were allowed to read the word of God. By doing so they set themselves up as the middle man between God, and man. In the years that pursued they become corrupt, and sin entered the Church, and the priesthood. At the height of this apostasy they were selling blessings from the Alter of God.
FAITH IS THE CURRENCY OF GOD!
What does that mean you ask. It means God chose faith as the thing where with we can purchase from his storehouse.
Have you ever wondered why God didn’t just place a huge block of granite, a mile high, and a mile wide smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem with the answers to everything written on it. How easy would that be? No guess work. No problem explaining things to unbelievers. Got a question? No problem, just go to the mother stone, and look up the answer. So, why did God choose to leave us in the dark about a lot of things? Why has he chose to gradually reveal his mysteries to us over time. I believe the answer is found in John 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? Or in Luke 16:31 When Jesus was telling the parable of Lazarus the beggar, and the rich man. The rich man looking up from hell, asked Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his 5 brothers. But he said unto him, If they hear not Moses, and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, thou one rose from the dead. You see we are not persuaded by miracles, or unbelievable feats. They do not produce faith.
“ THE MIRACULOUS BECOMES MUNDANE IF IT BECOMES MONOTONOUS!”
Consider the Israelites. 40 years in the desert. Food falling from the sky everyday. A cloud leading them by day, Fire by night. What happened? It became mundane. Just think, God sent manna from above. Can you imagine the first time they saw food falling from the sky. What a miracle! I’m sure they stopped dead in there tracks, dropped to there knees, and through tear stained eyes begin in unison, to thank the Lord for the miracle he had given them. But then you fast forward in time and you can see these same people grumbling about this stupid manna they have to eat everyday. Again let me say “ The miraculous becomes mundane if it becomes monotonous.” God, knowing the type creatures we are ( after all, he created us) knew we had to be fed these mysteries slowly, over time. And thus he set up an elaborate set of time release truths that He would dole out to mankind at particular intervals. But!!! And this is a big but. The only way we can see these truths as he reveals them, is through the eyes of Faith. Act 14:27 And when they were come, and had gathered the Church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and HOW HE HAD OPENED THE DOOR OF FAITH UNTO THE GENTILES. What he is telling us here is, unless He allows us to see ( opens the door of FAITH) we cannot see what God is revealing to us. That’s the reason these great scientific minds of today don’t understand what we understand. And they would never allow themselves to believe the average person can understand something they cannot. This is the reason the Orthodox Jews, “though he knows the torah front to back,” is blind to the truth. Once again we see why God chose Faith as the main ingredient and not intellect.
ABSTINENCE:
Abstinence is something we practice in our daily spiritual walk, but our salvation is not predicated on it. It’s kind of like one of those lesser ingredients. As a child I though the way to heaven is to simply abstain from bad deeds. Unfortunately there are some adults who still believe it. We see abstinence practiced by people today. Buddhist monks practice it, as well as Catholic monks. But this is not biblical. Nowhere did Jesus tell us to remove ourselves from the world and become reclusive. In fact he said right the opposite. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.
So what about WORKS?
Now you would think this one is simple, but you would not believe how many people believe that works are necessary for salvation. I recently heard a number of interviews taken of people on the street. The question was asked do you think you will go to heaven? Unanimously they all said they thought they would go to heaven. When asked why they thought they would go to heaven, they replied because they were basically good people, who did good things. It’s normal for people to think that in order to receive something they have to pay a price. Either by payment, or conduct. People often use the scripture {faith without works is dead}. And faith without works is dead, but what does that mean. Well It’s simple. You can’t just have faith, you have to act on that faith. You must not only believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (faith), but you must confess with your mouth. (works) It’s that simple. You can go to Church every time they open the doors. You can set in that pew believing that Jesus is willing, and capable of saving your soul, but it will never happen until you call upon Him. The calling on Him part is called WORKS. You can have faith that God will feed the needy. But Jesus told US to feed them if we know there hungry. God will provide, but we must deliver. The delivery part is WORKS. But Works along will do nothing without faith.
Some people actually think RECRUITING is the was to God‘s heart! Again the psychosis behind this is somehow to earn salvation by one’s actions. We really get a good picture of this in the Islamic world. After all that has happened since 9/11. The world has truly changed. I myself have began to study history, and how it relates to current affairs. The muslim faith has become of special interest to me in the last 2 or 3 years. I have read a number of books on the subject by various authors. One that really stands out, and I would strongly recommend it, is Robert Spencer’s “ The Truth about Muhammad”. The one thing that becomes very clear is how Muhammad advanced his religious cult. He tried to convince the Jews, Christians, and others to accept his religion as a furtherance of the old, and new testament. When they rejected him, he became incensed. With a small band of marauding thugs, and thieves he set out to force his religion on those around him. It was, “accept me as God’s prophet or die“. Over 1300 years later we see this mode of conversion still in place. A concept of a Loving God completely escapes Muhammad’s followers. What is blatantly clear to us Christians, are hid from them. Such as “God could force everyone, at anytime to believe in him by simply removing there free moral spirit.” But then all God would have is mindless robots. It is our hearts God wants. And to have our hearts we have to freely accept Him.
Some people have said, “ If God would only show himself to mankind, everyone would accept him. But if He showed himself to us physically, we would have no other choice then to accept him. His countenance would be so powerful, that we, as mere mortals, could not reject him. It is not a forced acceptance God wants. This thing of Life, is happening between our ears. And that is where God wants to be. In our hearts. When the bible speaks of the “heart.” It is speaking about our minds. We are minds surrounded by this flesh, and blood vehicle we call our bodies. The physical world we see around us is no more then the results of thoughts put into action. Whether it’s nature that God thought up and then spoke into being. Or man made objects that man thought up, and then constructed. When you really think about it, everything is a thought process, or the result of a thought process. It is there that God, and Satan vie for our souls.
God stands waiting for us to make a move. That move (if made)will be made by FAITH. It is Satan’s job to convince us not to make that move. You see we are in the camp of Satan already. If we do nothing, he has us. But with God, we must make a move, and the only way to make that move is believing without having logical proof. Thus we now understand Ephesians 2:8 For by Grace are ye saved THROUGH FAITH; I’m reminded of Peter on the sea of Galilee in Matthew 14:28 (paraphrased) when In the midst of the storm they saw Jesus walking on the water, and Peter cried out to Him saying, if its you Lord, bid me come to you. I believe Jesus did this with Peter because it is the perfect example of where we stand when we, like Peter, must turn loose of the railing, and by faith take that first step.
What have we accomplished here so far. Well we know it is:
1. Not by Abstinence
2. Not by Works
3. Not by Recruiting
4. Not by Intellect
5. Not by God revealing himself
6. Not by force
“BUT BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH”
You see it could be nothing else but faith. No other thing will work. There’s no repentance without faith. We must first believe before we can repent. So we can say there is nothing without faith. God predicated everything on FAITH. As I said at the beginning with the reading of God’s word THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH!
The fool says prove it to me God. The believer says Lord let me prove myself to you.
In closing, I will leave you with Paul words, in his second Epistle to the brethren at Corinth. When he was speaking concerning Hope he said, II Corinthians 5:6-7 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we WALK BY FAITH, not by sight.)
