“I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit…” (Rom. 9:1-2)
“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.’” (Rom. 1:17)
A good friend and I have been walking through Jerry Bridge’s classic, The Pursuit of Holiness recently. Jerry is very big on something I have spoken of many times in articles over the years: the partnership that is born between God and man when the two are united at the cross. Ephesians 2:8-10 states this partnership well. We are saved, re-created in Christ and given good works to do through a sovereign work of God, not of us. Ah, but then we must walk in those good deeds, something He demands and will not do for us. Paul goes on to tell the Philippians we are, through obedience, to work out that salvation derived in Him alone in fear and trembling (Phil. 2) and fight the good fight of the faith if we wish to take hold of that salvation (1 Tim. 6). There are many such examples in the Scriptures of these amazing gifts wrought totally in, and given sovereignly by, God but that we must act upon to bring them to fruition in our lives and the lives of others.
In a number of places, Jerry speaks of the necessity of us accepting the fact that God is holy and demands holiness from us. As my friend and I were discussing this, it struck me there is a similar partnership paradigm: the connection between fact and faith. God says His Word is true. The definition of truth is simply “to exist.” This is why, when Moses asked God who to tell Pharaoh sent him, the reply was, “Tell Him the I AM sent you.” The Great Truth, the One that above all others and everything else Who “exists” sent Moses. In John 8, Jesus makes this same claim of Himself when He says, “Truly, truly I say to you, ‘before Abraham was born I AM.” God is the first and greatest “existence” and thus fact, and His every word is true and therefore also fact. Our minds must accept these facts if we are to engage our will to be obedient to Him.
So, where does faith come in? For, just as we are to know that we know that we know God and His Word are fact, we are also told to walk by faith, (2 Cor. 5) and without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11). While we know God is truth and fact, yet we do not see Him. While we know Jesus abides in us yet we do not see Him, and while we know the Spirit indwells us yet we do not see Him. It is in engaging with the Spirit we walk in faith so our obedience and good works do not come from a Pharisaical foundation. So, just as the partnership between God and man exists, there is a partnership between faith and fact that works within that construct. Why does that matter?
I believe it comes down to how the triune man [spirit, soul, body] God created lives in partnership with the Triune God [Father, Son, Spirit]. We must accept the Word of God as fact if we are to act with our will [soul], but we must believe in faith if we are to act in accordance with the Spirit. Too much will without faith, and we become slaves to the law. On the other hand, faith without will results in too little obedience. James says even the demons believe in God and faith without works was useless (Jas. 2), yet Jesus told the Pharisees their continual pursuit of the Scriptures without simply coming to Him in faith would leave them without salvation (John 5).
By example, if my boss tells me I can get a substantial raise if I go back to school and get a certain degree, will I not engage my will to do that? I can do that by acting on the fact he said it was so without any faith at all. In the same way I can say yes to Jesus by an act of my will because some evangelist promises me heaven and think I’m saved, but if that “yes” does not then result in me pursuing the kingdom by faith and bearing fruit that proves my “yes,” that’s not going to please God and therefore save me. Most have heard the story of the highwire artist with the wheelbarrow walking across the tightrope over the canyon. He comes back and asks, “Did you see me do that? Do you believe I can do it again?” They all nod in the affirmative because, having been witnessed, his claims have turned to fact. Then he asks, “Who will get in the wheelbarrow and go with me?” To this he gets no takers because that would take faith inasmuch as they never saw him do it with another person and don’t want to risk it. We can say we believe in Jesus because people have shared their stories with us, but not have the faith to jump all the way in the wheelbarrow, forsaking everything on Him being who He says He is.
Jesus says every branch “in Him” that bears no fruit is going to be uprooted and “cast into the outer darkness” (John 15). If people accepted as fact they weren’t going to heaven if they were not obedient to keep Jesus’ commands to bear fruit, do you think we’d have so many filling the pews of churches bearing no fruit, yet believing they were going to be saved? And what of the folks in Matthew 7 Jesus told to “depart from Him because He never knew them,” whom He called “lawless,” yet who said they had done many things that would fall under the gifts of the Spirit: “prophesying, casting out demons and performing miracles?” HMMMM. Keeping Jesus’ command to love one another means engaging both the will and the spirit, not in one to the exclusion of the other. Again, a partnership where imbalance can lead to disaster.
Fact or faith? No, not “or.” While standing in the flesh as a man who existed, a fact we could touch and watch and hear, Jesus said of those who truly want to walk with God, “He is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Walking with Jesus in His kingdom of heaven on earth means fact and faith go hand in hand. During His incarnation, Jesus had full faith in His Father, for how could He not? They were “One and the same” (John 10). And yet the Scriptures tell us Jesus “learned obedience through the things which He suffered and was thereby made perfect,” and this because of two facts He understood: first, the Father “was” and, second, this was His predestined course from the beginning of time.
We act on fact through our will and are thereby perfected through enduring obedience while on earth, and we “live by faith” through His Spirit working in our spirit to guide us through that which we cannot see, and thereby live in a kingdom the world cannot faintly understand yet is more real to us than theirs is to them. I believe God made us as He did for just that purpose. Faith and fact. Together, the two make a powerful partnership where, as Paul says, “We present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, which is our spiritual service of worship” (Rom. 12).
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