The kind of life we are saved for now – Helmet of Salvation, Part 3

As we continue studying the Helmet of Salvation this week, we have been discussing how Salvation has a Saved From direction and a Saved For direction. As I mentioned in the previous posts here and here, while we have great comfort and hope because of the promises of the Saved From direction, we actually live in the Saved For. So I thought it would be helpful for us to read some passages of Scripture about the Saved For life.  These are just passages from Ephesians, the same letter in the New Testament in which Paul writes about the Armor of God, which is what our current blog series is all about.  Hear how these passages describe the kind of life we are called to life now.

Turn to Ephesians 1:17-20 “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.”

Do you hear that?  God wants us to experience now, in our lives now, the same power that rose Jesus from the dead.  God wants us have his Spirit of wisdom and revelation so we may know him better.  Now.  That’s how much he wants to be in relationship with us now.  That means he wants us to experience salvation now.  But there’s more.

In Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul writes, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

That’s deep.  God wants us to know now how much he loves us, that we might experience his power in our inner being now, by his Spirit, as Christ lives in us, and as the Father fills us fully.  That’s now.  He wants all of that for us now.  But there’s still more.

Paul continues in Ephesians 4:29-32 “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Notice that Paul writes that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption.  In light of that future day of redemption, Paul describes the kind of life we are to live now.  We are to get rid of all kinds of sinful behaviors now.  We are to be kind, compassionate, forgiving now.  That is what we are saved for.  But there is more.

We’re moving ahead to chapter 5 of Ephesians.  Ephesians 5:8-20 (selections) “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, … Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. … Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Yes, we are Saved From.  No doubt about it.  We are saved from our sin, forgiving because of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection.  We are saved from the fear of separation from God, now and in eternity.  But the vast weight of New Testament teaching is about how to live now, focusing on what we are Saved For. 

You are saved for a mission!  I’m not saying that everyone needs to be a professional minister, like a pastor, foreign missionary, counselor or teacher.  But all of us, these passages remind us, are saved for mission now.  We are saved so that we can pursue the mission of Jesus where we live, work and play.  We are saved for the purpose of the flourishing of others, ourselves and the whole world now. 

Photo by Surface on Unsplash

God’s wonderful plan for your life might not be what you think – Helmet of Salvation, Part 2

We need to talk about the other direction of salvation.  Jesus does not only save us from terrible consequences, he also saves for something. 

We are saved for the abundant, flourishing life, filled by the Spirit, so the good things of the Spirit flow out of our lives.  We are saved to live according to the teaching and mission of Jesus throughout all the days of our lives. 

To put it simply, Jesus saves us for a new life in the here and now. 

That new life I believe is so important to understanding salvation.  Once we are saved, we do not live in the Saved From.  When we are saved, we are living in the Saved For.  What do I mean by that?  “We do not live in the Saved From, but we are living in the Saved For.”  Let me try to explain it. 

We are saved from our sinful past.  It does not have the same hold on us.  We now have access to God’s strength for victory. We are also saved from a godless eternity.  That is our past and future.  But we live in the present.  We are saved for the now.  We are saved to live the new life of Jesus, following him on his mission, now.  Further, we also have the hope of eternal life with him in the future.  But we do not live in the future.   We also do not live in the past.  We live now.

Think about the illustration of the person who was saved from the burning building in the previous post.  Should that person for the rest of their just constantly talk about how they were rescued from the burning building?  Or should they live gratefully with a new purpose? 

Do you see the two very different visions of salvation?  The Saved From, which is the past and the future, so often focuses on being saved from negative, horrible consequences.  But the Saved For, the present, focuses on being saved for the beauty, goodness and truth of the Mission of Jesus.  We are saved for living that life now. 

There are times that you might hear the phrase, “God has a wonderful plan for your life now.”  The people who say that phrase mean that God has one very specific plan for you now.  What college you will go to.  What career field you will have.  Whether you’ll be single or marry.  Where you will live.  For some reason this idea of God having a wonderful plan for our lives now focuses on the big decisions.  Usually not what socks we should wear, or what we should make for dinner. 

What I’m trying to say is that God does have a wonderful plan for our lives now, but not about those big or small decisions.  He gives us biblical principles and wisdom and the wise counsel of godly people to help us make decisions.  We are free to make those decisions.  What God does have a plan for is that we are saved for his mission and his way of life now in the here and now, for the flourishing of ourselves, others and the whole world.

What is so amazing is that when we are saved, the Spirit of God indwells our lives so that we can have his power to serve him. The Saved-For life is a life flowing with the Spirit of God. 

God does have a salvation plan for your life. He wants to save you for new life now, and he gives his Spirit to fill you so that your life is overflowing with love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control as you follow him on his mission, inviting others to experience that same salvation plan that God has for their lives too.  

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Football helmets, good news and the…Helmet of Salvation, Part 1

There’s been a lot of research put into football helmets because of concussions. What we see in the video below is the development of a helmet that is intended to “save” people. 

In Ephesians 6, verse 17, we learn about a different kind of helmet intended to save people. This verse is part of a larger 10-verse-long section called the Armor of God.  In this teaching Paul is describing how Christians can stand firm against the schemes of the devil, when the devil tries to tempt or discourage us.  So far we have learned about the Belt of Truth, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Boots of Peace, and the Shield of Faith.  This week we learn about the Helmet of Salvation. 

As you can see in the phrase at the beginning of Ephesians 6, verse 17, Paul doesn’t tell us anything about this piece of armor. He only gives us five words, which is basically the title: “Take the helmet of salvation”

Like football helmets, the headgear of ancient soldiers, as with modern soldiers, is designed to protect, to save, the precious organs inside the human head.  Most importantly, the brain.  But also the face, eyes, nose, mouth and ears.  All organs critical to human flourishing. 

Every piece of the Armor of God, though, is not made of metal for use in physical battle.  The Armor of God are habits and practices designed to help us stand firm and find victory in spiritual battle. So what is the Helmet of Salvation?

Paul likely had the ancient Israelite prophet Isaiah in mind.  In Isaiah 59:17, the prophet writes “He put…the helmet of salvation on his head.”  The prophet is referring to the coming of the savior, the Messiah, who would lead his people into freedom from oppression.  We know that savior, the Messiah, is Jesus.

Salvation is found in Jesus.

But what is salvation?  And how do we wear it like a helmet?

I consulted one scholar who said this, “The phrase [as Paul wrote it originally in ancient Greek can] be translated as ‘accept salvation as something like a protection for the head.’”[1]

I get what protection for the head is.  A football helmet.  A motorcycle helmet.  A bike helmet.  Protection from impact.   Protection from blunt force trauma. 

But how might that relate to salvation in Christ?  Does salvation protect us? 

Yes.  Salvation protects because we are saved from something.   Here is a classic illustration describing how Jesus saves us from the consequences of our sin:

Imagine a person who is trapped in a burning building.  Fire fighters enter the building, and courageously scoop up the person and carry them to safety.  The fire fighters save the person from severe injury or death. 

The person is saved.  In Christian theology we say that a person is saved because Jesus died and rose again, defeating sin, death and the devil, and thus when we place our faith in Jesus’ victory, we no long have to face the eternal consequences of our sin.  We are forgiven by God, through the saving work of Jesus.  The is the good news message of salvation. 

Often we stop right there and say, “Case closed.  End of story.”  Except that’s not anywhere close to the end of the salvation story.  There is so much more to the story! 

In the next post, we’ll start to learn the rest of the story of salvation.

Photo by Melissa McGovern on Unsplash

[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 57.

What hidden cash has to do with the…Helmet of Salvation, Preview

A few years ago, my wife’s great aunt passed away. She lived in Michigan where my wife’s mother’s side of the family is from. My wife’s great aunt was single, had a long career as a teacher, and was also joyful and bright. As most of us do, she also had a quirky side. For example, before she passed, she left instructions for the family to search the house, as she had hidden cash in many places.

She didn’t want any foreign powers to disrupt the banking system and steal her money. So she bought small sections of metal pipe, maybe four inches long, and had their ends threaded so they could be capped. Then she filled the pipes with rolled up cash and hid them all over the house. Years went by, and she forgot how many she made and where she hid them. After her passing, family members looked and looked and found thousands of dollars. They never knew if they found all of it.

My wife’s aunt was saving her money. To be precise, she was saving her money from something. She wasn’t really saving her money for anything. She could have been saving the money for a vacation, for home improvements, or to be more generous than she already was. Instead, she focused on saving that hidden cash from disaster.

My wife’s aunt’s approach to saving money has echoes to a Christian theological view of salvation. Her desire to safeguard her money, to have a sizeable amount of cash in case disaster struck, is not all wrong. I admit there is wisdom to planning. But motivated as it was by fear, I sense it got a bit out of hand, and she was perhaps too self-focused. It sees to me that a Christian theological approach to salvation can be motivated by self-focus and fear. Self-focus and fear can deform salvation into something Jesus never intended. How so?

We’re going to talk about it further this coming week on the blog as we study the piece in the Armor of God from Ephesians 6:10-20, the Helmet of Salvation. What is the Helmet of Salvation? I think you’ll find it is a piece of the Armor of God that helps us turn away from fear and self-focus. But how?

Join us on the blog next week as we talk about it.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

How to use the… Shield of Faith, Part 5

I volunteer to help with CV SEEDS English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.  During the current six-week session, I have been helping with childcare on Tuesday nights and teaching a Level 4 ESL class on Thursday nights.  In the hours leading up to childcare or class, I can sometimes feel like I want a break to just be at home and rest.   Of course, these are not 100% feelings.  We always have mixed feelings, don’t we?  But after each evening has concluded, I’m so glad I was able to help out.

My point is this: we don’t always feel motivated to be faithful. As I suggested in the previous post, faith sometimes follows faithfulness. Therefore, we would do well to keep pressing on in faithfulness, and sometimes we will find faith growing in the wake of our faithfulness. So when Paul writes, “Take up the Shield of Faith,” in Ephesians 6:16, I believe he is primarily speaking about a living an intentional, consistent life of faithfulness.

Another important way to take up the Shield of Faith is remembering that you are not alone.  You are part of a phalanx.  A phalanx was a formation in ancient warfare where soldiers would stand shoulder to shoulder, holding up their shields in tight formation, essentially creating a wall of shields.  There is a power in togetherness. 

We all practice faith together.  In those moments when one of us feeling like our faith is faltering, or that we don’t want to be faithful, when we are in close community with one another, we can help lift one another up. 

This is why faith is best practiced not individually, but as individual and together with others.  We need to be in small groups where we can check in on one another, having honest conversations about faith and faithfulness.

In conclusion, when Paul writes “take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one,” what do we actually do? 

We strive to live like Jesus did, in obedience even when we don’t always want to, knowing that his ways are good, that he is for us, and wants the best for us.  This might mean taking measures to help us defeat temptation.  Jesus once said, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. … And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.”  Jesus’ point is figurative.  Take serious action to defeat temptation. Use filters and blockers on your devices that are connected to the internet to help you avoid seeing tempting images. 

That said, we live in a world in which it is highly unlikely we will avoid all those images.  Using the shield of faith, then, means asking Spirit for strengthen us.  We pray to him, asking him for the strength we need to be faithful from one moment to the next. 

Using the shield of faith means we also connect with others.  Reminding us that we are not alone and should not try to go it alone when it comes to living out our faith. That is how we pick up our shield of faith.  It is active, not just an idea in our mind.  Faith and faithfulness will help us in the battles we face each day.

And that reminds of something that happened at a recent ESL class, something that helped me understand the connection between faith and faithfulness, and what it means to take up the Shield of Faith. The evening started out very typically for me. I was battling those mixed motivations I mentioned above. The students are wonderful, and I enjoy teaching. But I was also tired and had some desire to be home and rest. I had committed to teach, and my wife directs the program, so it would not be good on multiple levels if I decided to stay home.

That evening, as I was teaching class, I felt our curriculum and discussion was going well. When we had five minutes left in class, I felt that wasn’t enough time to start a new section of the curriculum. My class has students from Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Congo, all people who have moved to our school district in recent years, so I asked them all to tell the class what careers they had been involved in in their home countries.  They are all quite accomplished: banking, poultry farming, industrial engineering, law, and media. 

Then one asked me about my profession! After saying I am a pastor of the church we were sitting in as Faith Church hosts the classes, they asked me how I became a pastor.  I had the privilege of telling the story of how God worked in my life.  And to think that before class, I was wishing I could have a night off. I left class with a vivid reminder that taking up the Shield of Faith sometimes means that faith follows faithfulness.

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash


Sometimes faith follows faithfulness – Shield of Faith, Part 4

If you’ve been following along with this series of posts on the Shield of Faith (starting here), you might be thinking, “Whew, I’m struggling with faith and faithfulness.”  There is hope. 

True faith is rooted in who God is.  Consider what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”  God is not turning his back on you.  When we are struggling with faith and faithfulness, turn to him. 

When God seems distant, lament to him.  Lament is holy complaint.  Cry out to him. 

The ancient psalmist King David writes in Psalm 13, “How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the LORD’s praise, for he has been good to me.”

In that last verse he talks about God’s unfailing love.  That word “unfailing” can be and is translated “faithful” in other places in the Old Testament.

The Psalms are loaded with reminders of God’s faithfulness.  Psalm 89 has numerous descriptions of God’s faithfulness.  Here are just a few verses:

“I will sing of the LORD’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself. … The heavens praise your wonders, LORD, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones. … Who is like you, LORD God Almighty? You, LORD, are mighty, and your faithfulness surrounds you.”

But if you are looking around you, and you are feeling the temptations of the world, you might be thinking, I am not holding up that shield of faith very well.  My guard is down, I feel alone. The flaming arrows of temptation are hitting me and I am giving in. 

This might sound counterintuitive, but sometimes it is only after we are faithful that we have faith, belief.  I’m not talking about perfect faithfulness.  I’m talking about perseverance, faithful in our pursuit of God over the long haul, with all its ups and downs.  It seems that Jesus’ disciples are a case in point. They are following Jesus, sometimes struggling, sometimes faithful, learning to do what he did.  But at the moment he needed them most, one betrayed him, one denied him, and all but John ran away and hid for their lives.  But after Jesus rose from the dead, he restored them, assured them, even so-called doubting Thomas, and denying Peter, and they grew in their faith and faithfulness.

Sometimes it is only after we practice faithful living, doing good works over the long haul, that we believe.  Do what’s right, and often it will not feel good initially. You might not like it for a while.  You might really be struggling to believe it is worth it.  Press on. 

Why press on? We’ll find out why in the next post.

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

Why true faith cannot simply be passive, but must be active – Shield of Faith, Part 3

In our current blog series, we are studying the Armor of God in Ephesians 6, verses 10-20. So far this week, I’ve introduced the next piece of the armor, the Shield of Faith, by describing the noun version of faith. Is that noun version of faith what Paul had in mind when he taught us to take up the Shield of Faith? In Ephesians 6 , verse 16 he writes, “Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

What does Paul mean by this faith?  Biblical faith, true faith, has both a passive and an active aspect.  The noun faith, as I’ve described is generally passive, but now we need to examine the verb faith.  We see this clearly in the phrase, “Actions speak louder than words.”  It is only when we observe the choices we make, the many things we actually do, that we learn what we really believe.  As Jesus once taught, “By their fruits you will know them.” 

People might say they are disciples of Jesus, but if they did an audit of their time, it might reveal something different. People might say they believe in God and have faith, but when others evaluate how much of the Fruit of the Spirit is flowing from their lives, the results are pretty sparse. 

Faith might start as belief and trust in the intellectual sense.  But faith, to be real faith, cannot remain only intellectual.  Yes, we are right to say that we believe things, ideas, concepts, such as theism, that God exists, or the resurrection of Jesus.  That one, the resurrection, is a bonkers idea to many people.  A man died, really died, and then came back to life?  It is amazing, and because of that, some people find it irrational or crazy. 

But we Christians say we believe in the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus.  It is not easy in this world to say we believe in the resurrection.  Yet the Apostle Paul, as we learned in our blog series through Acts a couple years ago, was constantly talking about the resurrection.  He didn’t just believe it as a concept in his mind.  His actions spoke louder than his words. 

What actions?  He constantly faced persecution and ridicule for this idea that a man, Jesus, died and came back to life by the power of God, thus defeating sin, death and the devil.  What Paul wrote and taught and lived was the reality that a belief in the resurrection of the Jesus changes everything.

Paul demonstrates for us how passive noun faith will show itself to be true by active verb faith.  Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-9, “it is by grace you have been saved through faith, not by works, it is the gift of God.”  Jesus did the work that we could never do.  So we place our faith in him.  We believe in him, as Paul writes in Romans 10:9-10.  We believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead. That inward belief is the passive noun faith.

But true faith doesn’t stop there.  We show our faith to be genuine faith, Paul writes in Romans 12:1-2, by offering our bodies as living sacrifices to God.  This is why Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, right after he has said that we are saved by grace through faith not by works, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” That is the active verb faith.

Faith, therefore, is not true faith if all it does is reside in the mind. Faith, to be true faith, does not stay passive.  Faith leads to action.  That’s why we describe people as faithful or unfaithful.  When we say that a person is faithful, we are not talking about what they believe in their minds.  We are saying that they are living in such a way that they show by their choices that they are striving to follow the way of Jesus.  They do this, Paul writes, by doing good works. 

This is why James the brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem would write, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”

Likewise Paul wrote to the Galatians, chapter 5, verse 26, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” 

Or like Paul said, in 1 Thessalonians 1:3, “We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

True faith produces faithfulness. 

True faith is active.

If you’re hearing this thinking, “But I’m struggling with faith and faithfulness,” there is hope. We’ll find out about that hope in the next post.

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

Which religion is most pleasing to God – Shield of Faith, Part 2

In the previous post, I described faith as a noun.  The noun version of faith is our ideas, opinions that we believe.  But there is so much more to faith.  Back to the writer of Hebrews.  In the previous post we read his definition of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. He goes on to write in verse 6 that “without faith it is impossible to please God.”  

What does he mean?  That God wants us to have faith opinions?  No.  All humans have opinions.  But we know that not all humans please God all the time.  If all that was required by God was for us to have opinions, we’d be in good shape.  Some of us more than others! 

The kind of faith that pleases God has to be more than just having opinions.  Maybe, the writer of Hebrews is saying that we will please God when we have the right opinions.  Maybe you’re thinking, “Good, because I have a lot of correct opinions.”  When it comes to faith that pleases God, though, how can we determine what opinions are in line with God’s opinions?

The Bible, I’m guessing is the answer that jumps to mind.  In the Word of God, we learn the truth about God, so that we can have the correct opinions about God.  A. W. Tozer wrote in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, “What you think about God is the most important thing about you.”  He’s right.  If we have the wrong opinions about God, we will likely have the wrong faith. And our actions or nonactions will flow from that faulty view of God, that faulty faith.

Throughout human history, there is debate about which religious faiths have the right ideas about God.  Likewise, within Christian circles there is disagreement about which kind of Christianity is correct.  I’m simplifying, but the three main choices are Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant.  If we go with Protestant, the three main branches, historically-speaking, are Lutheran, Anglican or Evangelical.  If you go with Evangelical, there are so many options: Baptist, Mennonite, Pentecostal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Fundamentalist, Independent Bible.  We could go and on.  Whose thoughts about God are right? 

A couple years ago for the Wednesday devotional that I send out by email, and I send a video version by text, I worked my way through my denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church’s 25 Articles of Faith.  I tried to show how Scripture undergirds the Articles, but I also gave my opinions where I think Scripture disagrees with the Articles  Mostly, I agree with the Articles, but not all. Whose thoughts about God are right? Mine or my denomination’s?

Also we need to be cognizant of the reality that people in the same church family have differences of opinion about faith.  Does that mean some people in your church are pleasing God, because they have the right opinions, and some are not pleasing God because they have the wrong opinions?

Maybe there are people who have a high percentage of the right opinions, and they are pleasing God about 95%.  But others of have fewer right opinions and they are only pleasing God 80%. 

Of course, I am being ridiculous here.  Facetious.  Because when the writer of Hebrews says “without faith it impossible to please God,” he is not saying that there is one exactly right version of faith that every person who wants to be right with God has to figure out and hold to.  That is viewing faith as a noun far beyond what God ever desired. 

I’m reminded of the time one of our former staff members was walking downtown Lancaster City on a First Friday. During First Friday, the city is bustling with crowds of people looking at art exhibits, eating food, and experience festivities.  That makes it a perfect place for people who want to share their faith by talking with people.  So as our former staff member was walking and enjoying First Friday, they were approached by a stranger asking them if they were going to heaven when they died.  Our staff member explained that yes they believed they were going to heaven.  They also described that they had gone to Bible College, and was serving on staff at a church, and felt good about their faith and walk with Christ. 

Guess what?  That answer didn’t cut it for the stranger.  Maybe our former staff member didn’t say the right buzz words that stranger felt needed to be said.  Words like “I prayed the sinner’s prayer” or “I’m a sinner saved by the blood.”  The stranger proceeded to tell our former staff person that they needed to hear the truth about faith in Jesus.  For the next 15 minutes they wouldn’t let our staff member go on their way.  That stranger is an example of when viewing faith as a noun has gone wildly off track, as if all God cares about is intellectual consent to some very specific words and phrases.  That’s not what the writer of Hebrews is getting at. 

What kind of faith, then, is pleasing to God? In the next post, we’ll find out what Scripture has to say.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Why we need to see faith as opinion – Shield of Faith, Part 1

What is faith? There are many ways to describe faith.  Faith can be a noun, an idea, and faith can be a verb, an action.

When we think of faith as a noun, we might think of a religion.  The Christian faith.  The Muslim faith.  The Hindu faith. There are many, many religious faiths.  A religious faith is a formal institution. 

In recent years, you may have heard of the rise of the Nones.  Not nuns who are women who pledge themselves to celibacy and ministry and live in convents.  I’m talking about Nones as people who, when filling out a survey, and they come to the question that asks them “Which religious faith are you?” and they choose, “None.”  Meaning that they are not associated with any institutional religion.  In the USA more and more people in the last 20 years have been identifying themselves as None.  30% of the country. 

Though they might not have an association with an institutional religious faith, that doesn’t mean they are without faith.  So we might also think of faith, in its noun form, as a set of propositions that we agree with. In that sense, some people argue that every single person who has ever lived has faith.  Every single person believes something. 

Faith, writes the author of the epistle of Hebrews in the New Testament, “is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)  That surety and certainty does not mean we have proof beyond the shadow of a doubt.  If we can prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt, then we no longer need to have faith.  We don’t need faith in that case, because we have proof.  So the writer of Hebrews is correct that faith is confidence in an idea, an idea that we hope for and do not currently see. 

It seems to me that every human who ever lived has at least some faith.  There are certainly people who claim that they have no faith, or that the concept of faith is impossible.  They claim that they only agree with what they see, touch, smell, hear.  But when pressed, I suspect they cannot possibly have answers for every question, and will have to admit, “I don’t know for sure.” 

For example, “Where did the universe come from?”  “I don’t know for sure,” they will have to admit.  They might have opinions, and they are certainly entitled to them.  But those opinions about, especially the big questions of life like origin, meaning, morality and destiny, must be seen as opinions. Opinion, while it might be based in evidence and some facts, ultimately cannot be proven, and thus is held by faith. 

Christians also have these kinds of opinions. For example, did Jesus rise from the dead?  As Christians we say a rousing, “Yes!”  But we are only saying that as an opinion.  We have evidence for our opinion.  Very good evidence, I would posit, such as the fact that the religious leaders who desperately wanted to shut down the early church’s claim that Jesus physically rose from the dead, simply needed to produce his body.  But they never did. Why not? We don’t know for sure, but one option is that Jesus rose from the dead.

So we have evidence.  We are trusting in the words of the Bible and in other historical sources which provide us the evidence.  But does our evidence mean that we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus rose from the dead?  No. We must admit that we have an opinion based on evidence, and that opinion is called faith.

Likewise, those who do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead also cannot prove their opinion beyond the shadow of a doubt.  We all must admit that our opinion is an opinion.  It takes faith!  Christians have all sorts of opinions like this.  That a Triune God exists.  That a spiritual realm exists.  That there are angels and demons.  That God took on a human body, Jesus.  That the Holy Spirit lives in us who truly believe.  That Jesus died and rose again, defeating sin, death and the devil.  These are all what we would call Articles of Faith. 

Faith Church is a part of a denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church, which has a document called The 25 Articles of Faith.  In those 25 statements, the denomination declares what it believes, its opinions about God and his interaction with humanity. 

So far, I have been describing faith as a noun, as ideas, as opinions that we believe.  But there is so much more to faith.  In the next post we’ll continue investigating faith as a noun, and later in the week, we’ll talk about faith as a verb.

Photo by Victor Sauca on Unsplash

Why I’m not upgrading my cell phone, though I really want to – Shield of Faith, Preview

I recently received an email from my cell phone provider with an offer to upgrade my phone.  My current phone is three years old, and it is a base model.  The more advanced models have larger screens, better cameras and other features such as facial recognition.

The email tugged at my desires.

I desire a phone with a larger screen, a better camera and facial recognition.  But my current phone is working fine.  Maybe it’s showing signs of decreasing battery life, but barely.  My conclusion is that I don’t need a new phone, and I deleted the email.

Then a few days later I received a mailing from the car dealership where we’ve purchased our last three vehicles.  Mostly the mailer was offering specials on service.  But it got me thinking about our older vehicle.  Like my phone, my vehicle is working mostly fine, though with some signs of aging.  Of course I want a newer car, and I start to rationalize a variety of reasons why it might be a good idea to get a new one.  I’m especially enthralled by electric vehicles.  Or at least a hybrid.  But I throw the mailer in the trash.

I could go on and on, talking about the many times throughout the day I think about stuff that I want but don’t need.  Maybe you know the feeling.  I’m talking about the sometimes confusing battle we all struggle with, the complex mix of our desires, lusts, wants and needs.

Desires are not automatically evil.  Actually, desire is often neutral.  But desire can turn into something extremely selfish, evil and harmful.  There are so many desires.  Desire for money, power, sexuality, peace, security, ease, comfort, taste, position, prestige, reputation, relationship, family, friends, truth, revenge, happiness.  Think about all that you desire.

Where do desires come from? We contemporary Americans live in a culture filled with companies who intentionally target our desires, often in hopes that we will indulge our desires by purchasing their goods and services.  Also our bodies are created by God with natural desires.  Finally, I’m guessing it will come as no surprise that the enemy of God also targets our desires.  The Evil One is the great tempter.  As we continue to study the Armor of God, Paul writes in Ephesians 6:16 that the Devil shoots burning arrows at us.  That’s Paul’s way of describing Satan’s work of tempting us.

What tempts you?  How do you fight temptation?  Paul says that we fight temptation by taking up the Shield of Faith.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could actually have a device or piece of metal that would help us defeat temptation all the time?  Unfortunately there is no such thing.  Instead Paul is speaking figuratively about faith.  How does faith help us defeat temptation?  Join us on the blog next week as we talk about it.

Photo by Matteo Fusco on Unsplash