Trusting upon God's Faith

Trusting upon God’s Faith

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

March 13, 2019

People calling themselves Evangelicals often quote the epistle reading from last Sunday’s Lectionary and label it as “the heart of the Gospel”:    

“‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’” (Romans 10:8b-13). 

The idea is that professing faith in Christ is the defining act of being saved.  This is why Evangelicals are so concerned in asking “when were you saved,” meaning, “when did you make a profession of belief that Jesus is your Savior?”  Often part of theology that argues for “salvation by faith, not by works,” this use of these verses often practically means, “if you do NOT confess with your lips and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will NOT be saved.”  But this makes the profession of faith an act, a work through which salvation comes, supposedly.  It thus is a contradiction of salvation by faith, not works. 

This understanding of these verses is a terrible distortion of what Paul is arguing here.  When Paul makes a distinction between works of the Mosaic Law and faith in Christ, he does not deny the importance of one’s deeds, but rather affirms the greater importance of where you place your heart.  Deeds follow the heart, while deeds without the heart, without proper intention, tend to be corrupted and remain on the outskirts of our beings. 

The Greek word usually translated as “believe” or “faith,” actually means trusting, just as “faithful” can mean “trustworthy.” 

Key here is verse 11, a citation of Isaiah 28:16:  “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”  This is a mistranslation that profoundly distorts the meaning:  “believe in him” sounds like what is demanded is signing up to a program of belief, and particular affirmation, meaning something like “believe that he is son of God.”    But again, “believe” here is best translated by “trust.”  Had Paul wanted to say “believe in him” he would have used a particular construction that had “him” as in indirect object of the verb “believe, or trust.”  Rather, he uses a prepositional form “upon him” describing not the object of the verb, but rather its ground and cause.  The line is best translated, “No one who trusts based on him will be put to shame.” 

We trust God because God is trustworthy.  We trust others because our trust is rooted in the reliability of Jesus.  “The faith of Christ” that Paul talks about so often is thus not “belief about Jesus,” but rather “the trust that Christ has and elicits from us.” 

This is why Paul elsewhere talks at length about being alive “in Christ.”  Christ is the ground and source of our trust and faith, not merely the object of some kind of required propositional affirmation.   

Reducing Jesus to an article of some Creed and demanding submission to this article as the quintessential act of salvation is at heart an idolatry where we put doctrines about Christ before Christ himself, and the work of signing up to a party platform before the almost irresistible response of trust evoked in us by Christ’s trustworthiness. 

Grace and Peace.  Fr. Tony+