Monday, September 22, 2008
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Faith from First to Last
"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness" (Colossians 2:6).
When we first received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we did so by faith. We had no real physical evidence to back up the good news that we heard, but the Holy Spirit witnessed in our hearts that what we were being told was true. We recognized the fact that we were sinners bound for hell. That we were without hope and without God. Jesus had come and died on a cross to take away our sins and get rid of the barrier that existed between us and a holy God. He was raised to life defeating sin and death and winning for us the gift of forgiveness from our sins and eternal life. And, when we prayed and asked him to forgive our sins, and enter our lives as Lord and Savior, we knew by faith that we were saved. And I sincerely hope that each of us know that we are saved and don't just hope that we make it some how.
That is the way that each and every one of us begin the Christian life. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8). We begin by faith, believing what we have been told Jesus has done in the past and what he will do for us today and in the future. We don't somehow earn it or work for it, we simply receive it by faith, as a gracious gift of a loving Lord. And we are saved by faith.
The big question is, what do we do after that moment of conversion by faith? If we were being taught correctly, nothing at all would change and we would continue in the faith in which we began. The sad fact is that many of us from the time of the New Testament onward, try to continue the Christian life in another way. We are wrongly convinced that it depends on us. Paul says to the Galatians, "Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" (Galatians 3:3). And the sad fact is that, having begun in faith, we want to try and work it out on our own after that. And then we wonder why the Christian life is so difficult, maybe even impossible. Simply, because it was designed to be by faith from first to last and we are trying to live it out in a way that it was never intended to be lived.
Are there things that we need to do? Absolutely. But the difference lies in whether we are depending on the things that we do to maintain our Christian life or whether we are doing things simply as a response to our faith. It is absolutely true that faith without works is dead. But works on their own without any faith are even more dead. James says that it is absolutely impossible to show your faith without deeds. And in the same passage, he says,
"In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17).
We could write the verse in reverse and demonstrate its meaning even more powerfully. "In the same way, any action however Christian we might believe it to be by itself, if it does not arise out of faith, is dead." Works without faith is the most dead that anything could be!
We started out by saying that we receive Christ in the first place by faith. That is how we are to continue. By grace, through faith. Everything and anything that we do from the moment of our conversion to the moment of our death should be the same. We are saved in him. We must continue to live in him. We must be rooted, founded, and built up in him. It is all about him. And as we grow and are strengthened in that same faith in which we began and are taught more and more how to continue in faith in all things, then and only then will the Christian life be for us what God intended it to be.
And then, rather than complain about how difficult the Christian life is or the walk of faith can be, we will overflow with thanksgiving because we are finally living out our relationship with God the way that he designed it, by grace through faith from first to last!
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