A few months ago, we explored what πίστις meant. It is not a mere acknowledgment or belief, but an ongoing and active commitment. Do you have faith in God? If so, then it will lead to a life of commitment to God. It is not a mere ‘Lord, I believe.’ It is a ‘Lord I will live my belief.’
If faith is our daily commitment, then there is no different between ‘faith’ and ‘the faith’ in the New Testament. We have seemingly drawn a line between belief (faith) and our Christian religion (the Faith) but were the New Testament writers, men who lives in the ancient world when the Christian faith was daily exercised, seeing a difference? Recently, a fellow blogger started to discuss something similar. As one commenter said,
I have a friend (Gentile) who works for a Messianic Jewish ministry in Ohio. He has mentioned to me on many occasions on how the Jewish people in the Old Testament had zero concept in separating faith from other aspects of their life. It would have been totally foreign to their way of thinking; something that they wouldn’t even be able to fathom.
If faith was meant to be a one time action, then nothing else would be needed. There would be no call to holiness, no sacraments, nothing. Instead, we would find a weekly venture to a congregational setting, mandatory bible reading, and a few good deeds here or there. But if faith is a daily commitment in which we live what we believe, we find ourselves in daily worship, in sacraments, in holiness because our practice, our living liturgy, exercises our spirit towards God.
The same author made mention that it is possible that due to such things as the Protestant Reformation, many Western Christians have allowed themselves to stop interacting and reliving the divine reality. There are always extremes in social movements, and while you can lay at the feet of Zwingli and others the end of a daily interaction with the faith, you cannot do so with Luther or Calvin. When things simply become a human ritual, such as baptism and the Eucharist, then they loose their intrinsic worth and value; however, if one was to live their baptism daily and enjoy the Eucharist as a true memorial of the Cross then an exercise of faith has occurred.
During the early persecutions, the Church was under constant attack and many Christians lapsed and sacrificed to pagan gods. Because of this, there was a movement to excommunicate these people. Eventually, a sort of compromise was reached in which Communion was withheld from those souls who had lapsed, but upon their death-bed, they could once again receive it. Such was the life of the Christian that the denial of communion was heart wrenching – not in some idea that the bread and wine was some how magical, but that it was mystical, that it was a mystery which the saint knew and could experience with others and to have it withheld was damaging. Yet, we know many who would wait out their lives in solitude from the communion, waiting to experience once more the presence of God as the congregation gathered around the death-bed to administer what was the symbol of the blood and the body of Christ which had been broken – which the lapsed had denied as cowards. This was more than a one time belief or acknowledge, but a life lived in anxious anticipation of the body of Christ.
Many times, I find that when people get ‘out of practice’ of serving God they began to lose their hope in God. Yes, they acknowledge God, but with their mouth while their hearts retreat. Faith is not about church service, but about communing with God. It is a daily fight, a daily walk, a daily baptism and a daily communion. Peter warned us not to lose our ’secure footing’ (2nd Peter 3.17) in the faith but to grow in ‘grace and knowledge’ (2nd Peter 3.18). How do we grow? By daily exercise. This is the faith of our Fathers. We look at the Patriarchs and God gave to them a divine year, centered around remembering the things that He had done for them. (Exodus 12-13) Why? Because it grew the people together to collectively remember God. It was a daily walk for the Israelites. And for us? Do we not have our daily walk with God? Do we not have our memorials and our remembrances?
If faith for you is a one time event, if the Cross is a distant memory, than your faith is dead and can give no works. If, however, your faith is one which moves you forward and one which you daily interact with, one in which the Cross is never far from your mind and heart in which whether you look to the side to the front of even behind you, it is not peripheral, then your faith is living. Christ is not dead but alive; He has risen and He walks with you; He has ascended and yet He walks with you. Exercise your faith (1st Timothy 4.7-8)
Tags: faith, πίστις
