Tozer for Tuesday

“The just shall live by faith,” not the just shall live by his feelings. Faith here is complete confidence. It is not an act of believing once done. It is not something you do and settle it. It is a complete confidence that remains with you all the time. Faith is a complete confidence. It is a state of confidence maintained—a state of confidence first in God. We must believe in God, then we must believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, in the work He did for us and the work He is now doing for us at the right hand of God. We must maintain a state of confidence in the promises of God and the certainty that God will come to our aid.—A.W. Tozer, Experiencing the Presence of God, 194

Trust

The [binding of Isaac] narrative is extraordinarily economical, like all biblical narratives. We are told exactly what we need to know, and no more. Abraham has been following and trusting God for so long that it has become a habit. He doesn’t storm the gates of heaven with his prayers as Job does. He is ready to submit even before he hears what the command is, because of the God in whom he believed. He seems to believe that God is within his rights. On the next day, instead of lying prostrate in bed, Abraham cannot get up too early to do the will of God.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 263 (emphasis original)

A long slow walk…

We need to remember all that happened to Abraham and Sarah in the years between Genesis 12:1 and 22:2, the first time and the last time that “God spoke to Abraham.” For a great many years, this aging man with a barren wife lived on a promise. God appeared, withdrew, appeared again, withdrew again. Sarah could only laugh at the absurdity of it all, and no wonder. But as Paul says, in spite of these trials Abraham went on hoping against hope because of the God in whom he believed. So we have before us a man who has been living with radical trust for a very long time. His response to God’s appearance in chapter 22 speaks volumes: “After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and . . . offer him . . . as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning” (22:1-3).—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 263 (emphasis original)

But without faith, if's just nonsense

Were Justin to have worried that he missed the chance to hear the prophets, the old man would have assuaged his worry immediately: “Their writings are still extant," he tells Justin. And “whoever reads them will profit greatly in his knowledge of the beginning and end, provided that he has believed in them” (Dial. 7.2, emphasis added). With this last phrase, the old man complicates the kind of reading Justin must do if he is to know the truth of which the prophets speak. While the prophets did provide a particular kind of testimony to the truth of their words—the events of which they foretold are happening even now, says the old man, and they performed miracles—more fundamentally their reliability is “beyond proof” (Dial. 7.2). The reader must not look to the prophets to provide knockdown arguments to win his trust, the old man implies, but must instead trust them ahead of time, as it were, have a basic faith in their reception and communication of the truth. Only in this way will Justin understand the writings. “Above all,” says the Christian to Justin, teaching him how to read, “beseech God to open to you the gates of light, for no one can perceive or understand these truths unless he has been enlightened by God and his Christ” (Dial. 7.3).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 157

<idle musing>
Indeed! And nothing has changed in the last two thousand years. We still need to come in faith in order to understand. If not, then it all appears as foolishness, just as it did back in the first and second centuries.
</idle musing>

Necessary but not sufficient

There's a saying that I learned while I was a manager, "Necessary, but not sufficient." It means that without that quality/substance/whatever, the business won't function. But, that by itself is not sufficient. You need that plus something else.

Scot McKnight posted a devotional excerpt on John 2 from his next book. He ends with this paragraph:

Why did Jesus refuse to commit himself to these people? Because he perceived like no other what was in humans (2:25). His signs divide the audiences (9:16; 11:45-48; 12:37). Some surrender to him because of signs (2:11; 3:2; 6:2; 20:30-31); others accept the reality of the miracle but do not see through it to the identity of Jesus; yet others repudiate him completely. To see his miracles as signs one must perceive the identity of Jesus beyond the material miracle itself. One could say then that sign-faith is a first but not final step in the journey of true faith (Thompson, John, 67–68). True faith abides over time in trusting Jesus who abides over time in nurturing the believer.

In other words, necessary, but not sufficient. I fear that's where a lot of "signs and wonders" Christians are at. They see the signs and wonders, and they believe them, but don't press on further to the point of abiding in Christ. They sit by the door, admiring, but don't go "further up and further in" to quote from The Last Battle.

It would make an intersting DMin project for someone to follow up on those who were converted via a signs and wonders presentation and see what percentage stuck with the faith. And then compare it with a control group who were converted via a mass presentation like a Billy Graham crusade.

The Billy Graham people used to say that less than 5 percent of the "decisions" made at a crusade stuck. Do you think the number would be higher in a signs and wonders presentation?

I honestly don't know.

Weighing friendship—and faith

Actually, trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person’s qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty to our fellow men.

Faith does not spring out of nothing. It comes with the discovery of the holy dimension of our existence. Suddenly we become aware that our lips touch the veil that hangs before the Holy of Holies. Our face is lit up for a time with the light from behind the Veil. Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 339

All-encompassing

Faith is not an act of thinking logically and consecutively. Its ripe fruit is not a cold judgment, valid and correct when estimated from any point of view. There may be a great deal of vagueness in faith, lacking both distinctness and precision. Its body is too fine to be retained in the logician’s sieve when sifted for formulas. Rational terms in which faith is expressed as a creed remain a varnish and do not render its essence.

The perceivable and temporal we grasp with our reason, the sacred and everlasting we approach through faith. It belongs to the genius of man to believe, to look up to what transcends his faculty to know, to perceive the things in their relation to the ultimate, to the eternally valid. However, since there is no borderline that keeps apart the temporal from the everlasting, the scope of faith can hardly be circumscribed. 337

More than logic

The force that inspires the heart to believe is not identical with the impulse that stimulates the mind to reason. The thoughts that breed beauty in the songs of faith may fashion shackles around the reckless wrists of scholars. The purity of which we never cease to dream, the untold things we so insatiably love, the vision of the good for which we either die or perish alive—no reason can hold. It is faith from which we draw the sweetness of life, the taste of the sacred, the joy of the imperishably clear. It is faith that offers us a share in eternity. It is faith in which the great things occur.

We rarely manage to cross the gulf between heart’s believing and minds plain knowing. There is no common basis for comparing religion and science. It is impossible to render the visions of faith in terms of speculation, and its truth cannot be proved by logical arguments. Its certainty is intuitive, not speculative. Its apparent demonstration has often resulted in its frustration. Unlike knowledge, which is a quiet possession of the intellect, faith is an overwhelming force that enables man to perceive the reality of the transcendent. It is not only the assent to a proposition but the staking of the whole life on the truth of an invisible reality.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 336

A different fast

Some men go wIthout knowing on a hunger strike in the prison of the mind, starving for God. There is joy, ancient and sudden, in this starving. There is reward, grasp of the intangible, in the flaming reverie breaking through the latticework of notions.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 335

Faith as humility

Faith is an act of spirit. The spirit can afford to acknowledge the superiority of the divine: it has the fortitude to realize the greatness of the transcendent, to love its superiority. The man of faith is not enticed by the ostensible. He abstains from intellectual arrogance and spurns the triumph of the merely obvious. He knows that possession of truth is devotion to it. He rejoices more in giving than in acquiring, more in believing than in perceiving. He can afford to disregard the deficiencies of reason. This is the secret of the spirit which is not disclosed to reason: the adaptation of the mind to the sacred. The spirit surrenders to the mystery of the spirit, not in resignation or despair, but with honor and in love. Exposing its destiny to the Ultimate, it enters into an intimate relation with God. Faith is intellectual humility, devotion of the mind, a true offering, the finest feat the heart can perform.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 335

More than meets the brain!

The realm toward which faith is directed can be approached, but not penetrated; approximated, but not entered; aspired to, but not grasped; sensed, but not understood. For to believe is to abide rationally outside, while spiritually within the mystery.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 335

Remembrance

Faith is not a stagnant pool. It is, rather, a fountain that rises with the influx of personal experience. Personal faith flows out of an experience and 3 pledge. For faith is not a thing that comes into being out Of nothlng. It originates in an event. In the spiritual vacancy of life something may suddenly occur that is like lifting the veil at the horizon of knowledge. A simple episode may open a sight of the eternal. A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest or soft as a breeze, may swerve the mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf. God’s willingness to call men to His service and man’s responsiveness to the divine indications in things and events are for faith what sun and soil are for the plant.

That experience survives as a recollection of how we have once been blessed by the manifestation of divine presence in our life. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the pledge given at that moment are the forces that sustain us in our faith. For the riches of a soul are stored up in its memory. This is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present. If we want to understand ourselves, to find out what is most precious in our lives, we should search into our memory.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 333

But it requires vigilance…

Faith is always exposed to failure. We often submit to the forces that draw us down to where a small desire seems to outweigh the noblest aspiration. There is the network of the false into which we easily slip. There is the enjoyment of the vile that vitiates the taste for the true. We must not cease to be vigilant, careful and anxious to keep our inner ear open to the holy.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 332

The nature of faith

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but the endless, tameless pilgrimage of hearts. Audacious longing, calling, calling, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind—it is all a stalwart driving to the precious serving of Him who rings our hearts like a bell, wishing to enter our empty perishing life. What others call readiness to suffer, willingness to relinquish, is felt here as bestowal of joy, as granting of greatness. Is it a surrender to confide? Is it a sacrifice to believe? True, beliefs are not secured by demonstration nor impregnable to objection. But does goodness mean serving only as long as rewarding lasts? Towers are more apt to be shaken than graves. Insistent doubt, contest, and frustration may stultify the trustworthy mind, may turn temples into shambles. But those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind’s desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 332

Transactional faith? Not rich enough!

But here we run into an obstacle. Not only is pistis capable of a richer definition, but the transactional idea of the Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us so that it covers our unclean sins is nowhere to be found in Scripture. There are passages that urge the Christian to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14) or that affirm that “as many of you as were baptized into the Messiah have put on the Messiah” (Gal. 3:27) and so forth. Meanwhile, there are texts that speak of God counting or reckoning righteousness on the basis of pistis (e.g., Rom. 4:5, 9-11). One passage speaks of the Messiah as having become “wisdom for us from God, and also our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30), but the context does not pertain to legal declaration. Finally, several of the passages reviewed above speak of our genuine sharing in the righteousness of God as that righteousness has been manifested or made available through and in the Christ (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:8—9). But these various images are not combined.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 182–83 (emphasis original)

But how much faith is necessary?

It is better to ask what sort of allegiance than how much, because allegiance depends on what Jesus the king commands each of us individually to do and whether he determines now and at the final judgment that you and I have given pistis. If we give pistis to Jesus as Lord by declaring allegiance, determining to enact loyalty, and showing through bodily doing that our determination was not just lip service, then we can rest assured that his death on our behalf is utterly and completely efficacious—all of our sins are forgiven in the Messiah (even our selfish acts of temporary disloyalty). And the Holy Spirit invariably comes alongside us to assist us in faithful living.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 124–25 (emphasis original)

If you confess with your mouth…

[N]otice that in the other portion of the verses under discussion, Romans 10:9—10, Paul states that for a person to be saved, he or she must “confess” with the mouth that “Jesus is Lord.” It is important to recognize that Paul does not say “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus fulfills the Davidic promise” or “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus died for your sins.” With regard to confessing, the focus lands squarely on one specific stage of the gospel—Jesus as Lord. Why? This is not mere happenstance.

Confession of Jesus as Lord is an expression of allegiance to him as the ruling king. Paul is pointing at our need to swear allegiance to Jesus as the Lord, the ruling sovereign, precisely because this lordship stage of Jesus’s career expressly summarizes a key aspect of the gospel, describes Jesus’s current role in earthly and heavenly affairs, and is the essential reality that must be affirmed to become part of God’s family. Public acknowledgement of the acceptance of Jesus’s rule is the premier culminating act of pistis. The verb that Paul selects to describe what is necessary, homologeo, refers in this sort of context to a public declaration, as is made clear by the “with your mouth.” Paul does not envision raising your hand in church or silently praying a prayer in your heart as a sufficient “confession” (nor does Paul say that such an action couldn’t initiate salvation, but he clearly intends something more substantive). Paul is talking about something public and verbal, like what might happen at an ancient baptism.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 97–98 (emphasis original)

A leap in the dark? Not so much!

Yet—and now for the way in which this leap—in—the-dark idea is a dangerous half—truth—it must be remembered that neither Noah nor Abraham launched out into the void, but rather each responded to God’s command. They acted in response to the call of a promise—fulfi11ing God with whom they had experience. Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac by the God who had miraculously provided Isaac—a God who had proven to be trustworthy to Abraham through a lengthy life journey together. One might even dare to say that in so acting Noah and Abraham above all showed allegiance to God as the sovereign and powerful Lord who speaks all human affairs into existence, but more on this later.

The key point is that true pistis is not an irrational launching into the void but a reasonable, action-oriented response grounded in the conviction that God’s invisible underlying realities are more certain than any apparent realities. Stepping out in faith is not intrinsically good in and of itself, as if God is inherently more pleased with daring motorcycle riders than with automobile passengers who cautiously triple—check their seatbelt buckles; it is only good when it is an obedient response to God’s exercised sovereignty. We are not to leap out in the dark at a whim, or simply to prove to ourselves, God, or others that we “have faith.” But the promise—keeping God might indeed call us to act on invisible realities of his heavenly kingdom.—Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 19–20

What do we mean by faith-based?

Faith or belief was being put forward as the opposite of reasoned judgment in consideration of the evidence. Indeed such evidence was deemed immaterial in advance! Faith was reckoned not just an alternative but a superior way of knowing what is true and what is false. Judgment could be rendered on the basis of inward feelings alone. For these women, and they are not alone in our culture, faith is defined as something one simply must privately and personally affirm regardless of whatever contrary public evidence exists. In short, for many today faith is defined as the opposite of evidence-based truth. This is neither a biblical nor a Christian understanding of faith.—Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 17

New Book!

The needed surgery involves not just an excision of “faith” language but also a transplant. With regard to eternal salvation, rather than speaking of belief, trust, or faith in Jesus, we should speak instead of fidelity to Jesus as cosmic Lord or allegiance to Jesus the king. This, of course, is not to say that the best way to translate every occurrence of pistis (and related terms) is always or even usually “allegiance.” Rather it is to say that allegiance is the best macro-term available to us that can describe what God requires from us for eternal salvation. It is the best term because it avoids unhelpful English-language associations that have become attached to “faith” and “belief,” as well as limitations in the “trust” idea, and at the same time it captures what is most vital for salvation—mental assent, sworn fidelity, and embodied loyalty. But we do not need to avoid the words “faith” and “belief” entirely. For example, they do carry the proper meaning in English for pistis with regard to confidence in Jesus’s healing power and control over nature; moreover, these terms are suitable when pistis is directed primarily toward facts that we are called mentally to affirm. Our Christian discourse need not shift in these contexts but only with regard to eternal salvation.—Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 5