THE LAW

EQUALS


FAITH !






One of the largest areas of controversy in Christianity, a subject that's harped on every Sunday from pulpits all over the country, is the struggle between law and faith, the reconciliation of keeping the law with attaining righteousness through obedience. Folks are warned, vehemently, against placing any of their confidence for salvation in keeping any rules or laws. Paul has confirmed James' message that keeping the law, even one part, for salvation will end in eternal death. Acts of self will mean absolutely nothing toward our salvation. Keeping the law as a way to salvation, which applied in that day to the Jewish people, would not result in one's Salvation.

Other congregations will hear much talk and preaching justifying, in the name of obedience, the keeping of certain or all of the rituals of laid down by God in the Old Testament; the keeping of which will surely result in good standing with God.

Although there are some groups who will tell you that these are the good works that show their underlying faith, notice how much faith feels like belief when heard in that context? These are the good works that are manifested out of their underlying belief. These folks have a wrong idea about faithing, therefore they must substitute good works. How good they might be is not the question. They must substitute their good works for faith, faithing. Therefore, they justify. They don't talk about faith and faithing. As a result, their acts of law keeping can bring them salvation through their personal works, in other words, self-righteousness. This is righteousness through self-performance.

It's no wonder that there are so many folks who preach faith, the word faith, as though it were belief, and pile on a lot of good works to prove that they have this thing called faith. It's no wonder because the book of James founds most of this doctrine. James will be heard in these crowds, quoted often as saying, "faith without works is dead." Faith without works is dead.

Well, that just simply isn't correct language. Because faith is not a noun, faith is a verb. You can have a dead noun, but not a dead verb. Just that simple concept proves that James' message is in error. A "dead" verb, isn't a verb. Is there such a thing as a non-moving movement?

It makes perfect sense if we substitute the word belief for faith. Then we understand exactly what James meant. " Belief without the resulting works is dead belief, " works just fine. It works fine if its belief because belief is a noun. It doesn't work on a verb because of verb is an action. Maybe I can clarify that somewhat.

Action can be defined as work, so we can substitute the word action for the word work. The word faith, being a verb, can also be replaced by the word action. Then what do we have: action (faith) without action (works), is dead. It doesn't make much sense does it? But, let's try the word belief instead of faith. " Belief without works (action), is dead." That makes perfect sense. If a person says they have a certain belief and doesn't show it with his/her action, then the belief must not be effective enough to found any real action. It must be a "dead" belief. This error in defining faith sure muddles up a greater part of Christianity. They preach faith, and then say you gotta have works. The devil is so sly.

And yet, maybe you noticed the title of this piece, "Law = Faith". Law = Faith? Faith = Law? Wait a minute. How does that work?

The only thing that gets us into heaven is faith. Faithing. Not keeping the law. Well, I think we need to review the universal quality of faithing. Faithing is not a specific. Faithing is a formula. It's not a thing, it's an idea. It's not a specific action. You can talk about faithing without the specific action being involved. It's the abstract underpinning idea. Lets talk about that a little bit.

Faithing is the point of the pyramid of Righteousness; of righteous behavior. It underpins all the specific physical acts, which are no more than vehicles by which we faithe. Let's expand that a bit with a practical example.

Here's a four-part process that mirrors a faith act. Each part is broken into the generic description of a faith act and it's practical counterpart.

  1. There's a need critical to life/salvation. That'll be food. Food gives us life.
  2. We supply the need by going to God, faithing. That'll be going to the store; grocery shopping.
  3. How the going is accomplished. What vehicle do I use? I've got nine ways here to get to the store.You could hitchhike, take the bus, call a cab, use your car, or you motorcycle, of your bike. You might have a skate board or some in-line skates. Or you might just phone your order in. Many different vehicles/actions will get you the life-saving food; which is number four.
  4. On the faithing side, you get saved from death. In our practical example, you get saved from starvation.

But I want you to notice that these vehicles can also take us to the lake for a swim, the library for a read, or the dentist; none of which fills our bellies. Just because you can take your car to the store for life-giving stuff, doesn't mean you get that life-giving stuff by taking you car to other places. Just because you can faithingly take communion and receive Righteousness, doesn't mean you can gain Righteousness by taking bread and wine ritualistically.

Faithing is the Universal Formula (idea) that all specific acts are based on.

All faith acts are not of the same intensity, in other words, don't require as much courage, and don't contain as much risk as other faith acts. But the general formula is still the same for high or low intensity faith acts.

We can start listing actions that could be, but aren't usually thought of as, faith acts. There's generally selfless behavior, there's prayer, and possibly up above the level of prayer there might be attendance to church, also working within the church, volunteering time to that particular ministry. There are also actions of individual ministry, things that you are doing personally to further God's plan. Baptism is another act of faith. Fasting can be put on the list, along with Communion and actions taken against traditional ideas and language. There is also tithing. How about Law keeping, trying to keep the Law of God, as we know it, the Ten Commandments, et cetera? No,. that's not usually thought of as a faith act.

But all these are, or can be performed as faith acts. Let's take a closer look, applying the faithing formula: an action, depending on a word of God; which contains some discernable risk.

Selfless behavior can be any kind of community-based volunteerism. For instance, just helping your neighbor shovel his snow. That can be turned into a faith act. A promise of God's provision for the time that you spent, energy that you spent volunteering for those people can make it into a faith act. You risk not taking care of some of your own things by doing that. The risk may be fairly small, but still can be seen as risk.

Moving on to prayer. Prayer is somewhat more risky because, unlike shoveling snow, if seen from the outside world it looks pretty silly. We're talking to some Invisible Mute and expecting some kind of response. The risk, however, is still somewhat low. Prayer is a faith act, can be a faith act. A promise of God can be invoked when praying.

We can include as a separate category the objective physical things like volunteering my time and energy, even money separate from my tithes, to my church; maybe helping with the janitorial work. These acts can again be placed in the box labeled as God's Promised Provision; for time and energy spent there.

Direct contact with the public as a representative of your church is a little bit higher on the Risk shelf, but still contains the same promises of God. There's a little more risk, because you're a little more exposed when you're doing your volunteer work with other people.

Your personal ministry, what you do to "get the Word out," is definitely a faith act. The time and energy spent on writing a book, doing God-related volunteerism in the community, certainly takes the place of a faith act.

An absolutely clear faith act, but again, much more public, therefore more "risky", is baptism. Baptism is a high level, intense act of faith that, while normally happening only once, is still of a higher intensity than prayer. Baptism is a very public event. It contains much physical action. It is dependent on much physical action from others. Baptism is a Large act of Faithing.

Fasting could be considered even more intense than Baptism, but it's more on going and it puts one more in touch with God's promise of provision. By not eating I'll still be OK. That can definitely be placed in the category of faith.

And let me add here that all of these things can be done without being faith acts.
All of these things can be done as legalistic acts. Trying to gain salvation by works. That's the problem with faith and works, they look the same and no one can ever tell whether the motivation or object of faith is God's word or the person's performance. Sounds like a good reason to butt out, and leave people to their own path.

Take for example the big area of controversy in Christianity, baptism. I'm reminded that where ever there is an area of heavy controversy within the church, you can be sure that there's a truth of God underneath and Satan is covering it up with all his divisionary tactics. Over the centuries, simmering on the back burner has been this bone of contention about baptism, whether or not baptism is necessary for salvation. "Well they all did in the New Testament. Jesus said you were to be baptized. If you're not baptized your gonna go to hell." "No that's not true, because. . ." And it goes on and on. Christian talk shows probably get a baptism question once a month, on average. Same question over and over. "Do I have to be baptized to be saved?" Many folks hold rigidly to the to the idea that, "If I'm saved, I must have been baptized."

Well, is it necessary or not? Thinking it's not necessary, I don't have to do it, could put me off from a possible faith act.

If I don't have to do this, for my salvation, whether or not I do it is no big deal and it can easily turn into a show for myself or I can easily be just going through the motions because everybody else did it. "I know I'm saved without this, but I figured I'd do it anyway. " That's no more than a legalistic ritual.

But on the opposite side, saying that you must have baptism in your bag otherwise you're not saved, is an equally false doctrine.

Is it a faith act or not? I know that baptism is a faith act, can be a faith act. And if there's anything trying to separate me from a faith act, I have to reject it.

You see, whether you are baptized or not, has nothing to do with your overall Salvation. If the case is that it's necessary, then we're getting baptized in order to gain salvation. That's the wrong look on it. You see how close that is but twisted off the truth just a little bit?

We can do the baptism as a faith act. And when we do a faith act, we get a bit of righteousness, we get a bit of salvation. But see how close that is to doing baptism because it's necessary for your salvation? A faith act is necessary for your salvation. But baptism is not necessary for your salvation.

We forget that the salvation comes in the back door. The righteousness flows out of the trust, not the act of baptism. The righteousness is one step removed from the action performed. We are also victims of false logic.

False logic will say: All faith acts are actions. This is an action, therefore it's a faith act. This logic founds false salvation by resulting in the following train of thought:

  1. Righteousness comes from faithing.
  2. All faith acts are action.
  3. This is an action; therefore, it's a faith act.
  4. Righteousness comes from faithing.
  5. "I'm saved." "I get baptized every Easter. I'm saved."

So it's really a fine distinction, and both sides of the argument, if you may have noticed, lead you away from a faith act. That you have to be baptized is salvation by works. That you don't have to be baptized, takes all the importance out of it. And the Merry-Go-Round turns on.

The devil's playground is God's truth.

Another ongoing act is communion. Communion is definitely a faith act. Somewhat more intense than prayer, for instance, because in the process, along with talking to God, we have the physical acts of taking the wine and bread.

On that same level, a less specific or more general category would be breaking of tradition; acting against traditional behavior. That doesn't sound like much to start with does it? But one should consider the different sides of tradition that you come up against. If you are at all connected with Christianity, organized Christianity, you're going to buck up against a lot of their traditional Christian behavior, ideas and doctrine. That's pretty obvious. But you may say, " Well God just turned me around in the middle of the street and I was never really affiliated with a church, so I don't have to worry about people who think that stuff about Christ being born on Christmas and being crucified at Easter."

But that doesn't take into account the traditional beliefs of the world. If you put yourself in the place of those Christians, with their traditional doctrine, it's easy to see the secular reaction of world to the Church. We know what they think. There is no God and we're stupid for believing there is. That sums up a lot of secular thinking. It shows up in a lot of places, you know? The boss that you have in the workplace might discriminate against you because you're a Christian. So you have to buck up against secular traditional thinking, and religious traditional thinking. Again, God's truth is the devil's playground.

The Devil's main, main workplace is the church. He keeps covering up God's truth, dividing the congregation over how many angels can ride horses on the head of a pin. Vain disputation, Paul calls it. Even informing some fundamentalist that Christ was born in the fall and not December can be very risky behavior. No one likes to be laughed at. And when you become a true faither, you go against everything. I mean everything, but God. Everything from the world in general, to your friends, family, husband, wife, even your kids. It's a one-way street against everybody else. As Luther says, "the world, the flesh and the devil." And we don't want to be laughed at.

Any converted Christian, any Christian who has converted to Christ, will know that the move means going against mountains of traditional Christian thinking and teaching. Lots of risk involved there, high level, high intensity acts of faith. You'll have to fill out your own list of tradition breaking acts or traditions that need to be broken.

Tithing. Tithing is a very high level, intense act of faith, because of our strong connection to our survival, and the money that supplies that survival. It's hard to see the means of our survival going to activities that aren't directly related to that survival; like food and shelter; or at least pleasure.

Tithing is one of the highest-level faith acts. It puts you in touch with more than just God's promise of provision.

Even more intense than tithing, because it contains tithing, is Law keeping. Law keeping.

We have to make sure that we make a distinction in Law keeping. The motivation for keeping the Law can be broken into two categories. One, Law keeping for the sake of Law keeping and performance, individual performance, individual satisfaction with a performance, a performance base for obtaining Righteousness. Notice that the faithing category will physically appear to be exactly the same.

The other category is doing each of the specific acts of law as an individual and wholly contained faith act based on a promise of God. This is the concept that wasn't openly promoted in the Old Testament. We always saw a lot of obedience training by God. It even sounds that way when Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac. God said nothing about faithing. He talked on "not withholding your son." Taken in the context of God's direct order to kill Isaac, this statement comes across as a lesson in obedience. Only when we go to the greater context can we see the faithing.

God's directive wasn't a promise of any result. It was just a direct order. "Go kill Isaac." The greater context includes two major elements. One, God had earlier promised Abraham a multitude of descendents that had to issue from Isaac. Two, Paul explains Abraham's thinking when he tells in Hebrews 11:17-19 that Abraham knew that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead. But even so, you have to put it together with the insignificant sounding eighteenth verse, "Of whom it was said, "That in Isaac shall thy seed be called."

The way to really understand the faithing involved, it would be clearer to read, "Of whom, God gave a specific promise that a multitude of descendents would issue from Isaac." Additionally, a small change in the following verse is appropriate. It could read, "Accounting that God would have to raise him up, even from the dead."

There is one tiny clue to Abraham's real attitude, and seeming lack of concern for killing Isaac. He tells the "young men" that accompanied him and Isaac to wait and, "I and the lad will go…and come to you again." Abraham knows that Isaac will return with him in spite of his resolve to kill him. He's going to go up and kill him.

I can't help wondering what was going through Abraham's mind. There you have two completely contradictory concepts that involve life-moving procedures. What was Abraham thinking about? He knows that God has the ability to raise the dead. He knows, that in order to keep his promise of many descendants to come out of Isaac, that God will have to raise him from the dead to fulfill His word. Do you think maybe he was saying, "Why is He making me do this? This is a long way around here, you know? I'll go do it, but what's this all about?" Poor Abe.

When the Israelites had to depend on, had to keep God's law, none of the language that I know of in the Old Testament indicates that they should be done as a faith act. It was a commandment, straight and simple to be obeyed. God says, "If you keep my statutes…." One day a week, Saturday, no work. You can't work on your survival on that day. "Honor the Sabbath, keep it holy." "For six years you may plant and harvest. The seventh year you may not. You must let the land lay fallow and regain its strength. No planting, no harvesting in the seventh year."

God could have just as easily said, "If you will trust that these commandments will provide the vehicle for you to depend on Me, that dependence will result in not just physical well being during life, but in your ultimate salvation from the final Death." That's clear and to the point.

God could have said it that way. Funny, that's the way he said it to me. That's what he told me. He said, "make everything you'd do a faith act, and you'll be saved." He could have told them the same thing.

Planting and harvesting starts to get more clearly into the faith act area because there is some language in Scripture that indicates it will be OK if you don't plant the seventh year. God will give you double, or maybe even triple. At least that's what I remember.

He still wanted them to faithe, the same as He wants us to faithe. Regardless of Jesus' advent, God's purpose has always been to get faithers. To get Abraham to faithe, to get Noah to faithe, to get humans to faithe has always been one of God's sub-objectives. God's looking for faithers. And the Old Testament is no different.

God played a joke on those Old Testament people and fooled them into faithing through keeping the law. The law was made up of acts of faith based on His word. They knew that His Word said when they sacrificed certain things would happen, certain things would be wiped away, or okay. They acted on God's words with the confidence that He had the power to back them up.

They were doing faith acts plain and simple. But they hardly thought of them specifically as faith acts. They weren't taught specifically as faith acts.

But don't get me wrong. I don't mean to present the picture that nobody in the Old Testament knew that they were depending on God. That's not true. I'm sure that was part of the teaching. My point is, that it wasn't the focus. God didn't talk about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Hardly at all. One time he talked about it in connection to Gideon, but it was a whole different thing. The Holy Spirit clothed Gideon. Covered him around the outside. At the beginning of the faithing covenant, we're promised the Spirit inside our body. It's a whole different trip. The Holy Spirit was just not generally part of what was happening in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, It's the whole thing.

But with just a little bit of a nudge, Satan was able to establish the Law and Law keeping as righteousness. The more Law you kept, the more righteous you were. And pretty soon you'd be as righteous as God. And the Devil had successfully shifted your focus from dependence (faithing) on God to dependence (faithing) on you, your performance.

Keeping the Law is not about Righteousness. Keeping the law is about faithing, and Faithing is about Righteousness.

So, knowing that the individual acts of keeping the Law, at the risk of losing some part of your energy, money, or provision, can be faith acts, you might decide that you will have some kind of a little party for God on Rosh Hashanah, and celebrate Christ's birth. There has to be some risk involved, but at the risk of what ever you come up with, you claim God's promise of provision and you do this little Rosh Hashanah celebration. That's a faith act. Keeping Rosh Hashanah can be a faith act.

You see, the specific isn't important. But that's where we want to spend all our time, because it's a tangible thing that we can get a hold of. It's a known entity. An abstract concept like a faith act, some act based on Gods word, doesn't give me anything to do but sit around and be muddled over my inability to make up some faith act. The only thing that comes close to being specific in the formula for faithing, that we have to hold onto, is God's word. That's the only specific. That's the only thing that's specified, because all acts are faith acts. It doesn't say, "These acts over here can be faith acts, and those acts over there can't be faith acts." "If you run a mile, its a faith act. If you run two, its not." The action is any intrusion on the physical reality. ANY. It just means an action, a movement. But what that action is based on, even though it's still somewhat general, can be specified. The action is based on some word of God that applies to whatever are the circumstances. It's got to be an action based on God's word. It can't be an action based on anything else and help in your salvation. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing. It either works for your salvation, or it doesn't.

But the only specific that we can come up with, is the general category of God's word. Faith is not specific. We have to stay out of the specifics and realize that, any act, any action can apply to faithing. If that action happens to have been vilified by a lot of church members as some old legalistic ritual, that shouldn't prevent us from celebrating it as a faith act. After all, I don't ever remember being in charge of what other people think.

Going to church is a much less intense kind of a faith act, but it's in the same corner of the box as keeping Rosh Hashanah. It's just a lower level, in ongoing, rather than once a year. I'm sure that you can see how going to church Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, sitting in the same pew, can easily fall into the non-faith act category. You're not overcoming anything. There's no risk involved.

Where's the risk involved in getting up, putting on your clothes and going to church? You might be able to make some kind of a little quibbley case about provision. You're using the gas in your car to get there, and that costs money, whatever. That seems pretty slim to me.

Now, if your car breaks down and you live ten miles from church, and you say, "OK, I'm going anyway. God, will you please direct my path, under your promise of guidance, and give me your promise of provision for the transportation? I'll assume that you want me to get there if you provide the way. If you don't provide the way, then I'll assume that it is OK if I don't get to church. But this is all on you God, I'm going to start walking." You wouldn't sit and wait for God to drop a tow truck out of the sky, would you?

That's a faith act, going to church like that. Getting in the car and driving ten miles, sitting in a pew and singing a couple songs can easily not be a faith act.


It's not what you do, it's how you do it.



Now it's time to refocus our attention to the lowest common denominator. Out of this list of specific actions that we can do, that can be made into faith acts, the lowest common denominator, the thing that relates all of them to each other, is faithing; the formula for faithing. Remember? An Action, based on God's word. There're plenty of God's words to go with our list of actions.

Prayer is talking, fasting is not talking. They don't have that in common. Communion and prayer have talking in common, but not some other things. Each one of the things named in the list can be faith acts. So now what we can do, is draw an upside down Pyramid. We need to visualize an inverted pyramid so that the point will be brought home that ALL our truly Righteous acts are based in faithing.

The point of the Pyramid is labeled faithing. The two blocks of the pyramid that rest on faithing can be labeled law keeping and tithing; pretty intense faithing acts. On top of that, the three blocks that make up the next level can be labeled fasting, communion, and no tradition. There are four blocks above that level; these things are less intense. This level contains simple participation in the worship services, and activities within the ministry of your home church. The other two blocks can be labeled baptism and personal "ministry". Personal "ministry" is what you do on an individual basis for God, outside of the church that you belong to. On the next level above are five blocks, one of which is the general category of selfless behavior; helping your neighbor. Donating to charity and prayer are two other blocks on this level. I'll leave the last two blocks on that level for you to fill in.

So again all these specific physical acts are no more than vehicles by which we faithe, can faithe. Trying to keep law, is one way of faithing, can be. Tithing is one way of faithing. Acting against traditional thinking is one way of faithing.

Given that virtually any specific act can be "made" into a faith act, certain portions of the Law can also be attached to a promise of God. Law can equal Faith.

Does that help clear away some of the confusion surrounding the Law-Faith controversy? If it does, pass the word around. It's time we all came together in Faithing.

Earlier I said, and now I repeat, it's impossible to discern the faith object, object of dependence, of any action. No one can say that due to Saturday worship a person will or will not be pleasing to God, or go to hell.

We need to concentrate on improving our own faithing, constantly on the lookout for opportunities. Don't we have to remember that faithing is not only about over coming circumstances that show up, but that God continually places opportunities for faithing in our path? They're not obstacles. They are opportunities.

If we don't take advantage of the opportunities, non-obstacle opportunities that God provides, He'll have to provide some obstacles, to force us to faithe. Wouldn't it be better to take the road of Challenge rather than Crisis?

I've told you many times that we're in training here in the physical life. God is training us to trust Him 100%. We can take the initiative and act on present opportunities, or we can sit there until God gets tired of waiting and "provides" a crisis that pushes us into a position to faithe.

True, when we take the initiative, it's a lot of hard work. But the energy output in dealing with a Challenge, even though considerable, probably won't be as much as what we'd use to relieve the crisis. The big difference between the two is in the stress accompanying the action. There's significant stress in a "Crisis", and virtually none in a challenge.

God continues to work in both areas. It's up to us to find a way to recognize the challenges that God comes up with, so we can act on those instead of living in the Crisis Zone.

We've listed many clear ways to faithe. You can at least shut your eyes, hold your nose and stick your toe in the faithing water.

Come on in. The water's fine.

Pyramid of Faithing








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