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CHAPTER ONE

PAUL, JAMES AND HEBREWS,

ON FAITH

Introduction

James is talking about the reality of faith, that it is not just a figment, but a functionality.

Paul refers to the acquisition through  faith, of eternal life. It is not just an existential flutter, or a soul quiver, but a heart testimonial to truth, which receives it and so Jesus Christ is taken in hearts for He is the truth. Hence life being won, all things follow.

That is the emphasis of each.

If it IS faith, says James,  be sure fruit WILL follow. Nothing follows from what is hollow, but from what is authentic, based on God, has God to fulfil all  things.

Let not what is called Christian faith be nominal, says James. Set in Christ as its centre, objective and dynamic, it works and the results are His, for through it, He operates, never pleased without it (Hebrews 11:6). It is like air to the lungs, blood to the arteries. Without this operable reality, you are a system only, without life. It is His which makes us, reaches us, is available in eternal dimensions to us, and is the appeal that never fails.

Faith in the Former and Founder (Hebrews 11:1-13) of man in His work of  creation and salvation (Hebrews 9:12-28), says Hebrews, indeed leads to the phenomenal,  despatched from heaven (Hebrews 11:30 for example);  and it does so as those who have it, proceed with it to a city which has foundations, a heavenly country, for which citizenship  may be obtained in this world (Philippians 3:20ff.). In the end,  as on the way, as now, so then, results are to be obtained from the Prince of the pilgrims (Hebrews 11:13).

What then of spiritual pilgrims ? If faith IN Christ Jesus is theirs, who is and was and is to be and who made all things and freely grants salvation from His own work, and not that of anything merely created, then they proceed as rescued refugees, intent on business divine (Hebrews 11:6, incl. 18-19, 11:6,19,13-14; 6:19)

THE FASHION OF FAITH

What IS faith ?

Faith is the assurance of thing hoped for (that is, such hopes based on reality);
it is the evidential  conviction  and living attestation of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

These are the nuances of the Greek text in Hebrews 11:1. Through this, we learn, we are not acting as if things seen came from the visible. After all, how could a formed 'nature' use its properties to make the world, before it was so much as there to do it! With logic, you assume nothing, have to find everything. Things seen do not arise from nowhere; nor observably do they make themselves, but proceed on patterns or with life, or with both: creation being finished observationally and biblically. There is even a scientific law, noting matter and energy to be formed, and now conserved. It is there and the available energy runs down. That is another scientific law. It is as the Bible states: it was made, and it runs down (Isaiah 51:6), and at last will be run out! (Matthew 24:35).

This is what is the case. WHAT formed it, this falling world ? Obviously, what is NOT it, but ADEQUATE for it, and self-sufficient at that;  for from nothing only nothing comes. Back of it all, faith believes what logic insists, there is the Eternal Adequacy, the Creator. Faith does not hassle, and just assume generating equipment,  as if that needed no cause. There is no escape from either God, the Creator or from judgment, one or the other. If you simply try, and do not repent, you defy the living God (John 3:36, Hebrews 2:1-3).

FAITH simply believes it, receives it, and acts accordingly. As James point out,  faith is like that, its arms reaching out to grasp from Him whom it holds, the results that HE GIVES (James 2:20-22). When faith is genuine, since God is assuredly genuine, in Christ who has been sent to show and present God and provide salvation, God's own way, then results form as from  a seed sown in real  ground and with real energy. It is not emasculated, evanescent, a poetic fudge. It works for the One in whom it is placed, who is pleased with it. He Himself works in His creation, in foundation, in kindness as in culmination, in manifestation, as in judgment (John 15:21ff.).

God is free: He works WITHIN His creation, and indeed,  from beyond it, at will (Hebrews 11:29, Isaiah 37:28-29, II Kings 19:7,35).

THE DIRECT ACTION MODE

Such a case appears in II Kings 3, when in war with Israel, a group of soldiers from several nations fell foul of each other ? Why, it was because of a divine action, wrought through advice from the prophet Elisha, which led to confusion in the enemy camp. Dismayed, they slew one another in terror at what they saw. God acted.

Again, in II King s 18-19, with Isaiah 37, we learn that when the mighty assailing force of Sennacherib loudly bombasted its way to terrify Israel, it was God who in answer to prayer, as He predicted, would "send a spirit among them (II Kings 19:7), and so they were overcome.

Were they moved in their own spirits, as by an influence, or was an actual, active spirit sent to mislead their invasive hearts ?

It is not important which applies. The results we know; and it was done by what ultimately ? It was  done just as in many things, events are wrought: namely by a SPIRIT send among them, from God, individual or influence. Was it one of vainglory, mistrust and hence vying and safeguarding oneself, and so over-reacting ? Whatever, this invisible activator among men, who have spirit and display this for good or evil constantly, was both the mover in their ideas and hence use of their military powers, and the cause of their calamity. Was it an active spirit, beyond influence on the spirits of man  ? Very possibly the latter, as in Matthew 12:43-45.

Whether however in the realm of influence direct, or that by spirits with their own direct action, the result was the same. God acted. He transcended material nature, He used invisible participation, whether in individual spirit forms, or more direct; He moved. Catastrophe for Sennacherib resulted, and the consummation concerning his coming death, was in due course also wrought, he being killed by his own sons in his own temple in God's own time!

 As God told Isaiah, so He did, as normal in such cases (Isaiah 44:25-26). Indeed, the battle was the Lord's and He acted on many fronts (as in II Chronicles 20:15).

ACTION ? FAITH IS FOUNDED ON HIM WHO ACTS, HAS ACTED AND WILL ACT, FIRST IN CREATION, THEN IN SALVATION, THEN IN JUDGMENT AND  ALWAYS AS HE PROMISES TO DO for all who call upon Him in faith.

He also  acts in the select ways He chooses and often announces in things small or sublime. It is as in Isaiah 64:5, He is the God who ACTS for those who wait upon Him, who remember Him in His ways, and rejoice. Saving faith in GOD means real, functional connection, and since God is delicious, joy is the natural outcome, whatever the trial (I Thess. 5:16-17).

To revert to  creation as in Hebrews 11: it is by faith, we grasp that the visible is not its own author, but a result of that unseen world in which we participate and which is the origin both of our power so to act, and of the whole matrix of things you can see, God the sole majesty and ruler of it. Our creations are smaller; but creations there also are.

We see things invisible to the molecular eye, and so can speak and act with vision (Hebrews 1:1-4), where light and logic point. GOD has seen ALL things before He made any,  the visible a daub;  and has so  spoken and acted: so that all thing were framed by the word of God (Heb. 11:3). He spoke salvation and acted accordingly (Heb. 1:1-3). We need to speak and act in return (Heb. 2:1-3).

Through saving faith in Him, a host of hallowed deeds and acts of fortitude have been wrought (Hebrews 11 to the end). These have transformed the testimony of this drab because stricken and sinful world, and inspire the children of God.


 

THE JOINT TESTIMONY

Let all make sure of Christ through repentance and faith (Acts 17:30, Romans 3:23-27), says Paul, and so receive eternal life (Romans 6:23, 10:9). Make sure your faith is in fact and not fiction, and is real and not illusional, says James, and so find its reality in practice, says James.

You are saved without works, but not without faith, says Paul; and faith works, adds James.

It works in heart and hearth alike; yet, James declares, every good and perfect work comes from God (James 1:17), in whom is no shadow of turning. The very laws of physics and chemistry are manufactured by Him, along with the form and force of it all. HE does not change, and so is trustworthy, no 'maturity' changes Him, no staleness diminishes and no confrontation overpowers. He is the same, and faith in Him is surer than any in any part or portion of the universe, which depends on Him. Let us then who have spirits, as all mankind does, use them to depend on Him, for He IS dependable, and the source of it.

For such reasons, we do not wear this world and so growing weary of it, lag and decay with it. Rather we shrug it off, and so in Christ gain Victory (I John 5:4, I Cor. 7:31, II Cor. 1:5, II Tim. 417-18, Romans 12:2). Saving faith is like a season in one way: when it bursts, like Spring, onto the scene, the wonders available burst with it.

See also, in SMR pp. 520-532