Posted on by rschut1945

Beyond Faith

Most of what we hear today from pastors is about having faith in God or in Christ.  Even Luther and other reformers spoke almost exclusively about faith and how this was our primary means of salvation.  We haven’t come much further from this message although it might surprise you that both Paul and Christ did not consider faith to be the ultimate goal. 

For years Paul’s statement in I Corinthians 13 troubled me as to how faith was not the greatest way to perfection.  But even Jesus gave us a clue that we needed to look deeper into the gospels and the letters to find the perfect way beyond faith.

According to Paul it was love and not faith that was the greatest thing to seek after (1Cor 13:13)  and Jesus taught that the greatest commandment was not to have faith in God, but to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind, which was recorded in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27).

Why is this distinction so important?  I have seen over the years that many believers struggle with their faith.  “Faith alone” has created many ethical conflicts in people’s lives as well as in my own.  I have also seen people who appeared to have great faith but were missing something that prevented them from growing spiritually and becoming more Christlike.  What was missing in them was love, but this is not some ordinary love.  It was divine love (Agape Love).  It is the love that binds God to man and man to God.  This is why  1 Corinthians 13:13 tells us that love is greater than both faith and hope. Love is what actually transforms us into Christ.  This is not to say that faith and hope are not necessary, but as Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:21, one might have great faith and still not make it into his kingdom.  How is this possible? 

Faith enables us to do mighty works, i.e., healing, miracles, conversions, etc., but these are not our works, they are the works of God.  It is love that transforms us by allowing us to take God’s love and give it to others.  It is this process that God’s love flows through us like a mighty river, transforming us into his sons and daughters. 

How then do we transcend faith and reach divine love?  I do not believe that we can simply create love for God.  The source of love is not actually in the lover, but in the beloved.  It is the quality of the Beloved that draws us towards him.  Have you not heard the scripture that says, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19)?  God loved us by giving us the life of his only Son.  This is a two-pronged love; for the Father gives us his Son, but the Son gives us himself.  The two are inseparable.

But it is not just this act of God’s selflessness that draws us to love God.  It is the very character of Jesus that completes our love for God. It makes it possible to love God in the fullness of his personal character as seen in Christ.  But where do we see this character?  In the Sermon on the Mount.  It is here that we get insight into the very character of God in Christ.  This is the Christ that we must love and we do this by loving everything that he teaches.  If we exclude these teachings, we diminish the very source of our love.

So, why is love greater than faith?  Because love transcends faith.  Faith cannot take us where love can because love fulfills faith. 

Matthew 22:36-40 (KJV)
36Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38This is the first and great commandment.
39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Read this carefully and notice the order of love.  We must first love God before we love our neighbor.  Why?  Because we cannot love our neighbor with God’s love unless we are first filled with His love.  It is a misunderstanding to think that we love God by loving our neighbor.  Although many today believe that self-love is necessary for divine love, this is not the message of Christ. 

So, the whole teaching of Jesus is that you must have faith in order to enable you to come to a fullness of love for both God and men.  For you cannot have divine love without first having divine faith and you cannot fulfill divine faith unless you also have divine love. 

Posted on by rschut1945

Seek and Find (Matt 7:7-11)

These verses are a continuation of the declaration that Jesus makes when he tells us to seek God’s kingdom above all things. For if we sincerely seek after God’s kingdom as our first priority, we will find it.  And if we knock, he will answer.  Knocking is a way of letting someone know that we are waiting outside for them to give us entry.  So, we need to let God know that we want to enter into his kingdom and he will answer us by making entry possible. Each of us may knock or ask in a different way, but we must all come to that point in our lives that we know that we want to enter his kingdom and acknowledge that he is the one who must open the door. 

But exactly what is God’s kingdom? It is everything that Jesus taught in this sermon.  If this doesn’t appeal to you, than there is little point in asking to enter, but if you are moved by what you hear, than there is no other place you will find such peace except in his kingdom.

For those in Jesus’ audience who might doubt that God would really listen to their needs he compared God to a human father.  He asked what kind of a father would give his son a stone when he asked for bread or a serpent if he asked for a fish?  Of course Jesus knew that there were fathers who did not take care of their children, but notice that he personalizes the question by specifically using them as an example?  He asks, “Is there anyone among you would not help his child?”  Obviously, only a cruel and hateful man would do such a thing, and none of them would admit to such a thing.  So his challenge becomes rhetorical.  

Jesus acknowledges that men, even though they are evil, would still take care of their families.  Then it makes perfect logic that God would be even more likely to take care of us, his own children.  Jesus’ argument is that if evil people take care of their children, how much more would a holy God  take care of his children?