Faith —Hebrews 11:1-6

 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)

The Amplified Bible says that God is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out]. When I first launched into the Christian life, whole-hearted discipleship was the norm. In light of who God is and what Christ had done to rescue me, seeking Him earnestly and diligently made perfect sense and seemed like a manageable cross to carry. Regardless of the actual meaning, in my youth and zeal, I interpreted it like this:

 God is pleased with those who earnestly and diligently seek Him. And, without this kind of faith, pleasing Him is impossible. (Rob’s Erroneous Version)

There was a serious and costly flaw in my interpretation. In the REV, God’s approval rests on the qualitative nature of my seeking. In other words, it is not “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (as the author has said); it is—without earnest and diligent effort, it is impossible to please Him. This is a serious error because it leaves out the full council of scripture, and it is costly because of what is lost in my translation. Allow me to explain and repent.

It is a serious thing to inject effort as a qualifying attribute of faith. It does violence to the very essence of faith. The busy beavers will now rush to James so they can remind me, “But brother you know that faith without works is dead.” “Yes”, I respond, “That is absolutely true, but it is also true that faith based on works is even deader” (intentional bad grammar).

Think about this. How could God’s approval of us be based on even a tiny bit of our earnestness and diligence when we know that it was while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us? When Paul caught the Galatians trafficking in performance-based religion, he called them foolish. In the Amplified Bible, Paul is even more expansive:

O you poor and silly and thoughtless and unreflecting and senseless Galatians! (3:1)

Paul lays into the Galatians with a barrage of redundant questions to emphasize his point. Here are the main two:

 Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

 Does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

Here is Paul’s point: “Christ (not our earnest and diligent efforts) redeemed us from the curse of the Law (performance-based religion), having become a curse for us…in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 

There is also a great cost in thinking as I did—that God is pleased with those who earnestly and diligently seek Him and that without this kind of faith, pleasing Him is impossibleThat cost is rest, the truest indicator that one is living by faith. Rest and performance based works are like oil and water: utterly incompatible. Rest is the qualitative fruit of authentic faith, not the basis of it. Rest takes the whole council of scripture into account and says, “If I think of my works as qualifiers, my earnestness and diligence are as filthy rags to God; rest is trusting there is nothing I can do that will alter God’s acceptance of me as long as I am trusting that His life has become my own; rest is ceasing to work for approval because in Christ I am approved; rest acknowledges that in-Christ it is truly finished! My heart concurs with Paul when he says:

 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:24-25)

Repentance

As my youth and my zeal waned with age, so did my earnestness and diligence. Witnessing, scripture memory, serious bible study all dropped off. In fact, I ended up after years of what I thought of as authentic zeal, exhausted and feeling abandoned by God. I thought (with no small amount of bitterness), “So…this is my reward for diligently seeking you: strained relationships, failing health, financial problems, ministry and vocational disasters?”

So, how was the law (or performance based religion) my tutor? It allowed my earnestness and diligence to run their course. It allowed me to wear myself out. Exhaustion reduced me to a core awareness of my inner poverty—a place where I knew (with deepest conviction) that I could not go one step further in my own strength. There, in the epiphany of my spiritual bankruptcy, He once again found a more teachable me. Where, as a young prodigal, I was found wallowing in a debauchery-based deception, this time He found me wallowing in a religious-based deception.

Whether it is the delusion that joy can be obtained through sensual pleasure or whether it is the other delusion that our efforts can win God’s favor, it’s still darkness. In both cases, we and our fallen reasoning are at the center of our woes. What an absolute joy it has been on both occasions to find that God (while I was yet a lost son of one sort or another) had loved me all along and drawn me to Himself. How powerful it has been to accept by faith, that in His perfect life, He met all the standards of righteousness in my behalf. How healing and empowering it has been to rest in the fact that He became sin – my sin! What a stunning revelation that by enduring the shame and brutality of the cross, He has received the reward of His suffering—you and I, justified by faithqualified by His work to stand blamelessly with boldness and joy before Him now and forevermore.

Father, please break down the strongholds of deception in our hearts that reason falsely, maintaining that we can win your love and approval through our own efforts. Please let our performances exhaust us so that we can transfer all our dependence to You alone. May we enter into the rest You have purchased for us so that we can live out of the abundance of Your life before a world we have helped mislead in our own legalistic deception. Help us to grasp that being whole-hearted has first to do with Your heart, not our own. Amen.

 

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