Isaiah 51:1-6
James 2:14-26
Matthew 16:13-20
Faith, like love, is probably one of the most misunderstood and misused words in the Christian vernacular because of misunderstanding and misuse of the very Bible which proclaims the central role that faith necessarily plays in the life of the individual and in the life of a congregation. The reason such misunderstandings occur may be due to a conflict between the concept of faith and the manifestation of our faith; i.e., “works”. And I don’t think anyone illustrates the seeming conflict better than James when he states: “Show me your faith without your works, and I will show my faith by my works.” (2:18a,b)
The Protestant reformer Martin Luther had enough difficulty with James that he would probably have preferred the book removed from the canon so that faith might not be overwhelmed by James’ seeming overemphasis on works. While I do not pretend to know the mind of Martin Luther, it does appear on the surface that an “issue” was created rather than addressed by what I consider to be a misunderstanding and perhaps a misinterpretation of what James is saying altogether. It could well have been that one single phrase that James uses: ‘NOT by faith alone …’
We should reasonably know that there can be no conflict between faith and works, they being two sides of the same coin. Each is perfected by the other, and one cannot exist without the other, not completely. According to James, one absent the other becomes void of its essence, its truest form.
It is fair to say, however, that Luther came to his understanding of faith and its central role in our relationship with the Lord honestly. The Bible is clear: it is grace, the Lord’s unmerited favor, by which we are justified before the Lord; it cannot be earned by the works of our hands. But there seems to be an element missing in Luther’s understanding, and outright rejection, of how James’ concept of works should relate to one’s expression of faith. Righteous works are not an attempt to please the Lord; they serve as a witness to others as to the true nature of the Lord Himself. And such a witness is not restricted to such obvious acts of mercy as the Food Pantry but does include how we choose to live, work, and play.
Jesus’ entire role is centered on His witness to the true nature of the Lord God; He is showing us by word and deed what the Holy Father looks like not to the eye nor even to the mind but, rather, to the heart. And if we are true and genuine witnesses of Christ as His disciples, then we understand our role in witnessing to His nature so that by the Holy Spirit others can then see the truly Divine Image, the perfection of that Image in which we are all created.
As I have stated so often, I don’t believe that Jesus ever felt a need to “prove” Himself in any way though we might think it would have made His ministry a little easier. After all, maybe many more would have come running each time Jesus turned His hand. But then we would have been left with a lot of magic tricks rather than bona fide miracles performed within their proper context. Such cheap attempts to appease man’s eyes would defeat the entire focus of Jesus’ call to repentance by faith, a call to believe that there is something much greater before us than meets the eye. A warrior messiah would have dealt with the occupying Romans, for instance, but the true enemy would still be present and just as powerful … and just as compelling.
Jesus’ followers were presumably all Jewish. That is to say, it may be a foregone conclusion that they already believed in God. Simply believing in an existence, however, merely acknowledging the reality of a possibility does not constitute faith, and this may be the challenge that Jesus is posing to His disciples, then as well as now. In fact, such a challenge should be overwhelming on any level. Think about our own concepts of the Almighty, all powerful, God: the God Of All Creation humbling Himself to walk among His own creation rather than sit on a throne?? This concept is very nearly impossible to embrace!
It is also worth remembering that Jesus never presented Himself as an “alternate” god or a co-god. His message is a constant reminder that by the teachings of religious leaders and teachers who seem to make things up as they go along however noble the intent, the gap inherently created by false or misleading doctrine such as hand-washing as a divine tradition (Matthew 15:10-20) is ever widening. By losing a true and proper focus, we become further and further separated from the one, true, living God as we create our own gods made a little more palpable to us by our imaginations and personal desires. At that point, faith is completely lost.
Jesus always spoke of the Father as the necessary point of focus and the only One worthy of our worship. This reality alone would necessarily challenge ALL Christian doctrines that divert focus, however slight, away from the One and Only Holy God. And faith in anything less is further separation from the Divine.
With this in mind, consider the seeming shift in focus in Matthew 16:13-20. By the words of this passage, the focus seems to have shifted to Jesus Himself. To further complicate things, Jesus emphasizes the divine faith displayed by Peter in identifying Him as “… the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It is that faith imparted by the Father, Jesus proclaims, that Peter was enabled to identify the true nature of Jesus as Messiah, as the “anointed One”.
Suddenly the Holy Father seems incidental to Jesus, but I don’t think it is fair or accurate to refer to Jesus as “incidental” to God. Still, there is an emphasis that is important to faith which must not be lost as we consider the implication of why Jesus is concerned about how He is perceived not only by the public but also by His own disciples.
So who is Jesus, and what purpose does He serve? Why the sudden shift? Or was there a shift at all? Why the sudden emphasis on Jesus and who He is to Israel, to His disciples, to the entire world? And how is the Holy Father glorified in all this?
Maybe we would do well to ask ourselves: why would Jesus want us to know that He is the Anointed One? And why is our faith in Him important to our salvation? Again, Jesus is not a co-god or a “new and improved” god; He IS God. But perhaps even more than this, He is the perfection manifest in the New Covenant, a Holy Promise that the Lord God our Father chose to make freely. We don’t have to like it, we don’t have to acknowledge it, and we don’t even have to accept it. Our rejection, however, does not diminish the Ultimate Truth.
There is something else to further understand Jesus’ role as the personification of the New Covenant. The Law of Moses demands atonement. Sin has to be called to account. So Jesus is the prophecy fulfilled, but He is also the Law perfected because the Law requires something of us that we humans are unable to bear. There is NOT ONE THING we could possibly do for ourselves to atone for the power of sin. And because the very “wages of sin is death”, our Father in Heaven could not bear this anymore than we can bear to watch our own children endure pain and suffering.
What would we do to spare our own children the unspeakable pain of sin and death? Well, we know what we would do and our own children have faith enough to believe that if someone means to do them harm, that someone will have to get through us first. This, my friends, is the essence of the New Covenant. And believing there is a God capable of this kind of love is what faith is all about; believing that we are loved. And the works of our hands coming from the abundance of our hearts is our joyful expression of this reality, this faith, so that others can comprehend it.
>>>>> What is lacking in our lives that we cannot embrace this and revel in it? What will it take to free us from the tyranny of our human minds and human hands so that we can see this with our hearts? It has to happen because that’s all there is. Jesus is the Holy Father perfected in a manifest way that we can comprehend; simple and perfect.
Jesus never shifted the focus from our Holy Father. He merely made Him clearer to us. AMEN.
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