“The Anatomy of Faith”
Romans 4:13-25
November 30, 2008
What is faith?
• Bertrand Russell, in Why I am Not a Christian: “Faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence.” Is it?
• H.L. Mencken: “Faith is a conviction which cannot be shaken by contrary evidence.” Is it?
• A former website called faithless.org defined faith as: “adherence to a collectively held religious Truth despite evidence to the contrary and without continuing efforts to seek out, understand and weigh evidence.” Is it?
• In Miracle on 34th Street, Santa says that “faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” Is it?
Philip Johnson, in Defeating Darwinism, wrote that evolutionists exploit the supposed contradiction between faith and reason, painting all Christians as backwoods, Bible-thumping rubes whose faith in silly superstition renders them impervious to the “higher truth of science”. And thus the question, “is faith contrary to reason?”
• We all place faith in certain things; it’s unavoidable.
o Builders of this building, the chair you’re sitting in.
o Airplanes – Rain Man – “Qantas never crash”. AirTran
o Have you ever lost faith in something? Evidence!
o Qantas crashed! 11/18, two jets on tarmac collided!
• Faith is buttressed by reason and evidence.
The kind of faith that is commended in Scripture is faith like Abraham’s: a reasoned faith that, given all the factors involved, makes more sense than non-faith! Let’s deconstruct the anatomy of Abraham’s faith (read Scripture/pray).
Paul uses chapter 4 as an illustration of chapter 3, as we saw last week: the examples of Abraham and David are introduced by Paul to buttress his claims. Salvation, the rich blessings of God, come by faith, and as Paul has demonstrated already, not by works, or by circumcision.
I. The Realization of Abraham’s Faith –
:13-17a
After arguing that justification does not come about by either good works or by circumcision, Paul here states that salvation does not come about by law-keeping either. Paul writes of “the promise” God had made to Abraham; we find that in Genesis 15:5, where God tells him that his posterity will be as numerous as the stars; in this sense, and in the sense that the reign of Christ the Messiah extends to the whole earth, Paul could use the terminology that Abraham’s offspring would be “heirs of the world”; after all, the meek followers of Christ will inherit the earth, Jesus promised. It was a promise unconditionally given, and simply accepted at face value by Abraham. Keeping the law did not play into this equation at all, just as following religious guidelines or trying to “play by the religious rules” today do not. Proofs Paul offers are from three sources: history, language, and theology.
A. History
The law was not given until 430 years after God had made the promise to Abraham. Abe was long-dead and gone before the law was introduced through Moses. Abraham, as a simple matter of history, was not an adherent of the law, and so either Abraham was justified in some other fashion, or he was not justified at all. Further, because of the antithesis between salvation by law-keeping and salvation by faith alone, faith would be meaningless if somehow Abraham had been saved by the law. A promise is not an unconditional promise in the event it requires law-keeping to ensure its fulfillment—but that’s exactly what God’s promise to Abraham was in Genesis 15: an unconditional covenant.
B. Language
“Law” and “promise” belong to different categories. Galatians 3:18 says, “if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.” Law-language demands obedience; it says, “you shall” or “you shall not”. Promise-language demands faith; it says, “I will—do you believe that?” What language did God use in Genesis 15? Promise-language, for He says, “I will!” Verse 15 develops this, placing together words like “law”, “wrath”, and “transgression”; these words belong together, for law turns sin into transgression, making sin the deliberate violation of God’s standard and incurring the just wrath of a holy God. All sin is sin, but a “transgression”, in this sense, is a more serious form of sin; Douglas Moo explains by likening this to a teenager staying out too late. If his kids stay out too late, they can expect some form of reprimand or punishment; if, however, he takes pains as a father to specify that “11:00 is curfew”, and that specific law is broken, the punishment will be more severe, because a transgression of the law has taken place. This is why Paul says that “the law brings wrath”. The Jews believed the law to be to them a source of life; in reality, the law condemned them.
But in verse 16, we see words that belong together as well: “faith”, “promise”, and “grace” all fit together. We make a linguistic mistake when we try to mix words from one category with words from another.
C. Theology
The law divides into the “haves” and the “have-nots”, separating Jews from Gentiles. But Genesis 17 describes Abraham, not merely as the father of the Jews, but the “father of many nations”. He is father not only of the Jews, but of Gentiles as well who come to God by faith in Christ. But only the Jews had the law of God. If salvation came by the law, then Gentiles would have been out of luck, and Abraham would be father only of the Jews. But the gospel of Christ unites, leveling the ground at the foot of the cross and breaking down the wall that separates Jew from Gentile, making Abraham the father of the faith-ful. So what do we understand about faith? Is it reasonable, or not?
II. The Reasonableness of Abraham’s Faith –
:17b-22
Faith goes beyond reason, but it has a rational basis. Faith is reasonable if its object is reliable. It is always reasonable to trust the trustworthy. It is unreasonable to trust in people or institutions or things that are untrustworthy. This modern-day determination on the part of some to marginalize faith is a canard, a sleight-of-hand masking both the agendas and the faith-filled presuppositions of its employers. We see this all the time: people who are “religious” are treated by some with a bemused patronization; as long as we stay in our little cubicles and don’t venture out into the real world, we can be marginally tolerated. Declare though, as we do, that Jesus is Lord over all the earth, that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and it’s Katie-bar-the-door. No…faith is endemic to the human condition; the only question is the trustworthiness of the objects of our faith. Paul, in verses 17b-22, gives two reasons Abraham’s faith is reasonable:
A. The Power of God
If God is powerful, then it’s only reasonable to place our faith in Him.
1. “Life to dead”
2. “Calls into being…”
The greatest fears of the existentialist involve the lack of meaning if this life is all there is and death is the end. Modern man lives life trying to vest it with meaning, but the grave is the great abrupt goodbye, the one event we can’t control nor escape, and if there is nothing beyond this world, then indeed human life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, as MacBeth suggested. Woody Allen is perhaps the wittiest of modern existentialists. Of death, Allen said, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But he will—and absent finding meaning in a relationship with Christ, he will face that eternity having never come to grips with the purpose and meaning of life. What meaning can there be if we are here as a result of a cosmic accident, if life is a product of random circumstances with no guiding hand? Nothingness and death leave modern man hopeless.
But these are the exact points upon which Paul touches here, for he says that God has no problem with either. Nothingness? God has called into existence things that do not exist. He created the world out of nothing. The materialist can only take his evolutionary cycle back so far, ultimately beaching on the shores of the reality that in a materialist system, matter—stuff—has to be eternal. The question is, “where did the stuff come from that supposedly evolved?” And if they try to answer, “it was always here”, then we can gently point out that all of their professed “reason” rests upon an assumption requiring a great deal of faith. The fair question is, “why is there something instead of nothing?” Fill in that blank how they might, no answer the materialist can give satisfies nearly as well as the Bible’s answer, that God is eternal, never beginning and never ending. Out of nothingness, God created.
And death? That proved no problem for God either, because the resurrection of Christ, God’s bringing life to the dead (:17), answers this question. Together, creation and resurrection bespeak the mighty power of God! And it is God in Christ Who must be the object of our faith. Faith is only as good as its object. If God said it, then we must believe it and act upon that belief. Abraham banked his faith in God, not only on God’s power, but also on
B. The Faithfulness of God
If God is faithful, then it’s only reasonable to place our faith in Him. Behind every promise lies the character of the person making the promise. If that person is one of trustworthy character, then we can be confident that the promises will be fulfilled; if that person is of dubious character, then we have reason to doubt the promises. Abraham had been able to count upon the character of God, and he was fully convinced that God would be faithful. He had walked with God, seen His goodness, understood His loving care. So he was faced with a decision: believe God, or doubt His promise? Note what he did:
1. Faced the problem
This was a real problem, and he didn’t try to wish it away or minimize it. The facts were the facts: he was an old coot, nearly 100, and his wife Sarah was 90 years old. 90 years old, and having a baby? It doesn’t work that way…and Abraham faced that very real problem.
And some of us face struggles and problems in life; some of us wonder whether to believe in and obey God, or to try our own way. Faith doesn’t require pretending. It’s not a cop-out, and it doesn’t require minimizing the severity of the situation or explaining it away. Abraham faced the problem, but he did something else:
2. Faced the character of God
He knew of God’s power, and He knew of God’s faithfulness. He knew God’s promise to him. He knew that God could keep His promises and that He would keep His promises. He had experienced those things.
3. Compared the two
Problem vs. power; fruitlessness v. faithfulness. And then, in light of the circumstances, this man of faith did the reasonable thing: he trusted God! Do you hear what I’m saying? Abraham’s faith was nothing, nothing like the definitions of Bertrand Russell or H.L. Mencken! And when Abraham acted with “reasonable faith”, God saw that faith, and credited it to him as righteousness! Faith is not burying my head in the sand of wishful thinking; disengaging my brain in pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Rather, faith is a reasonable trust in a reliable God!
III. The Relationship of Abraham’s Faith to Ours :23-25
This truth of justification by faith is not for Abraham’s benefit alone, but for ours as well. Paul ties everything up by saying, essentially, that the Scripture, this story of Abraham and the rest, was written for our benefit. He ties our stories together. Abraham’s faith looked ahead, forward to the providence of God despite incredible odds, forward to the fulfillment of God’s promise, trusting God in the face of Abraham and Sarah’s own woeful inabilities. Our faith, by contrast, looks backward in this sense: Jesus Christ has fulfilled the work of salvation. We trust God in the face of our own sinfulness and declare our belief that He is bigger, that I can be justified on the basis of God’s grace through faith alone because God says it is so. And we can have confidence because we know
A. Jesus was delivered up because of our transgressions
We remember this in baptism and in the Lord’s Table, that the Father God willingly handed Christ over to pay our sin-debt. Chuck Colson tells the story of Humaita Prison in Brazil. Twenty years ago, it was a rotting building where prisoners were tortured. Then three Christian men went to the government and asked permission to take over the prison. They got permission. And they started to run Humaita as a Christian prison. They did not restrict it to Christian inmates, but you couldn’t stay there very long without coming to know Christ.
When an inmate arrives with handcuffs on, they take off the handcuffs and say, “In this prison you will no longer be chained by steel; you will be chained by the love of Christ.” They assign people to a buddy system. Each new inmate is assigned to an elder who loves the Lord. And at every single meal, they stand before the meal and recite the Lord’s Prayer in Portuguese.
If anyone ever asks whether Christ makes a difference, send them to Humaita Prison. For all those years, while the government of Brazil has had a 74 percent recidivism rate, Humaita’s rate is 4 percent.
One inmate showed me Humaita’s secret. This inmate was convicted for murder, but he was my guide through the prison, walking around with all the prison keys hanging from his belt. He asked whether I’d like to see the maximum security cell. So we walked down a long hall of steel doors toward the cell in question. He said it used to be the punishment cell where they tortured people. “We still use it for punishment,” he said. “We have one inmate in there.”
He took me to the door and looked through the little peek hole. “Are you sure you want to go in there?” he asked. “I have been in maximum security holes all over the world,” I told him. I wanted to see. He said, “Okay,” and then unlocked the door. As he swung the door open, I saw a crucifix–Christ hanging on the cross. My guide pointed to it and said, “This is the prisoner who is taking the punishment for us.” A sign on the wall above the crucifix said, “We are together” in Portuguese. They understand that they are joined with Christ, who suffered. Jesus was delivered up by God for our transgressions.
B. Jesus was raised again for our justification
Yes, Jesus died—but everybody dies. His death was for our sins, but what did a death prove? How could we know that what He said was true? The resurrection, an event skeptics have been unable to explain away despite repeated trying, validates everything that Christ said.
God took the initiative in both events. He delivered Christ for our sins, and raised Him again that we may be saved. And faith in that provision of a faithful and powerful God is the most reasonable response that a person can make!
Lessons for Life
• How big is your God? Abraham’s faith was the reasonable response of a man utterly convinced that God was Who He said He was. Faith can be strong, or weak (:2); what is your faith like? Insecurity…defeatism…worry…self-pity…pessimism…the belief that you are alienated, that nobody cares, that you’ll never change, or that someone else is beyond change: do you struggle with any of these? How big is your God? Powerful? Faithful? All-knowing? Caring? Able?
• How does faith grow? Faith can be weak or strong (:19,20). God grows our faith through the faculty of our minds. As our minds are renewed by the Word of God, and as we trust God and He meets our needs, our faith grows. And this is fundamentally reasonable, because it happens on a human plane as well. The longer a person proves trustworthy, faithful to his word, a keeper of one’s trust, the more one’s faith in that person grows.
• Where is your focus? We are faced with decisions to either allow the problems or the promises capture our focus. The challenge is to focus on God’s good promises instead of on the problems we face—but we grow in our faith as we trust and obey God even when the problems loom large.
Some of the promises/commands of God:
o “My God shall supply all your need…”
o “I will never leave you…”
o “I can do all things through Christ…”
o “Bless those who persecute you…”
o “Wives, submit to your husbands; husbands, love your wives…”
o “With humility of mind, let each regard one another as more important than yourself…”
o “God loves a cheerful giver…”
o “Cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you…”
At a burning building in Harlem, a blind girl was perched on the fourth-floor window. The firemen had become desperate. They couldn’t fit the ladder truck between the buildings, and they couldn’t get her to jump into a net, which she, of course, couldn’t see. Finally her father arrived and shouted through the bull horn that there was a net and that she was to jump at his command. The girl jumped and was so completely relaxed that she did not break a bone, or even strain a muscle, in the four-story fall. Because she trusted her father completely, when she heard her father’s voice she made a reasonable choice of faith.
Faith—is it unreasonable? Is it contrary to reason and evidence? Not Abraham’s kind of faith. Not the Bible’s kind of faith.
Table Talk
• Have you ever spoken with anyone who told you that faith in God was contrary to reason? How did you respond? How would you respond now?
• Abraham’s faith looked forward, trusting in the fulfillment of God’s promises on the basis of God’s character. Ours looks backward at the finished work of Christ. Considering all the factors involved, do you think it’s more, or less, difficult to have faith in God now than then? Why?
