Faithfulness
Faith. In Greek, pistis. It’s a word that we dwelt upon in our family time together yesterday as a church. It’s a word that for hundreds and thousands of years has been something that we, as Christians, have relied upon and has been vital in our understanding of how we relate to God.
But it is also a word that should remind us of how God is trying to relate to us. And I mean that quite literally, because the Bible speaks often about how God relates to us through faithfulness. Specifically, through the faithfulness of Jesus.
Think about the way that we talk about faith. We normally talk about faith as something that we have and that we hold, and eventually it might even allow us entrance into the people of God because we held onto faith in our lives: faith in Jesus, faith in God’s goodness, faith in God’s mercy–the list could go on and on.
But, sometimes, when we read about faith in the Bible (and perhaps more than we might have originally thought too), when the writers of Scripture write about faith, it isn’t our faith that they are concerned about. They are more moved by and more interested in the faithfulness of Jesus.
When Jesus had a choice in the desert to listen to the temptations of Satan, he chose not to. He remained faithful to what God had tasked him to do. When the Pharisees, teachers of the Law, and elders of the people of Israel confronted Jesus and accused him, he never wavered. He remained faithful to what God had tasked him to do. When he had the opportunity in the garden to reject the calling of filling the role of the Suffering Servant (who Isaiah writes about), he sticks it out. He remained faithful to what God had tasked him to do.
He did this, of course, because he was united with God the Father. He and the Father were One. They were of the same being and essence. They had the same goal and intention toward the creation.
And so later on, Paul writes about this idea of Faith. The idea that the faith that truly matters is not my own–or at least that in comparison with the faithfulness of Jesus, I can be grateful that I rely on his faithfulness rather than my own. In Colossians 2:16, Paul writes, “We know that a person isn’t made righteous by the words of the Law but rather through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. We ourselves believed in Christ Jesus so that we could be made righteous by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the Law.”
Today, I am grateful for the faithfulness of Jesus. Because when it came down to God’s desire to save you and to save me, to love you and to love me, to redeem you and to redeem me, Jesus was faithful. His faith sustains me and it sustains you. To God be the glory.
This week:
Remember to express your gratitude to God for the faithfulness of Jesus.
