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From his page: ABC's of faith
I'm sure the image some have had of the Great Reformer, Martin
Luther, is shattered when he says that "harlots and tax collectors
and sinners have a better chance of getting to heaven than legalists
who rely on their works." There are some people that almost committed
hara-kiri when they heard me say that, particularly when I
demonstrated it by reading it out of Luther's sermons on Galatians.
The issue he is focusing on, is where you place your reliance for
salvation: on your works, no matter how much they may surpass others
in approximating or moving in the direction of the Law of God, or
whether your reliance is totally apart from those works, on God's
work of grace - which is a gift, charisma, unmerited favor - because
of something else: FAITH.
Faith equals (how many times have I told you?) 90% courage, 9%
tenacity or endurance (what the King James translates as patience)
and 1% all that other super-spiritual stuff. Courage is 90%; raw
guts. There are those who ignorantly say, "Scott preaches an easier
Gospel."
God likes courage; He doesn't like cowards. Cowardice and fear are
not synonyms. Cowards give way to fear; men of faith are like David,
who said, "What time I am afraid, I will (that's guts; reach down and
grab hold of your innards) - I WILL trust in the Lord."
This is the ABC of faith. Faith (pistis in the Greek) comes from
pisteo which is a verb; it was never intended to be just a noun in
the original language. Without the verb to undergird it, distortion
happens. The English language has conveniently separated "believing"
from the rest of faith, thereby confusing the entire stream of the
Church.
"Faith" and "belief" are not synonyms. You cannot translate the
derivatives of the verb pisteo simply with the word "belief;" faith
is more than belief.
FAITH involves Action, based upon Belief, sustained by Confidence
that that which is believed is true. By this definition, you have a
subject, you have the act, you have an object.
Biblical FAITH is an Act based on a Belief and sustained by
Confidence that God's Word is forever settled in heaven.
We ought to have a new word in our language; we ought to translate
pisteo with the verb "faithe." Then we could have the
noun "faithers." "Faithers" are the subject who are doing
the "faithing" and they produce a result, which is "the faithed."
A lot of confusion would go out of the teaching on faith if we'd just
bury the word "belief" and make it but a subordinate part of faith,
and only refer to it when the meaning of the text has to do with only
that mental activity which is belief. Belief involves the mind, and
faith involves the mind plus the will and action. It also involves
the emotions, confidence to sustain faith.
If I were a teacher on Mars Hill with a bunch of philosophers in
front of me (as I've told you probably ten thousand times since I've
been here), in the usual neutral and disengaged role of the teacher,
I would teach my students in the Greek frame that pisteo defines an
activity of mankind without which you cannot survive.
You cannot act without it being based subconsciously or consciously
on some kind of belief, sustained by confidence, including getting
out of bed in the morning. You don't think about it, but you expect
your feet to hit the floor and not the ceiling which, thought about,
is an action based upon a belief that came, probably, through
experience rather than teaching of theories, and a confidence that
gravity works.
I would have taught students in that day that nobody has a choice not
to faithe; "not to faithe" doesn't exist. The only choice you have is
on the objects to which you will attach your faithing action, what
you decide is true enough that you can have enough confidence in it
to hang your body on it in continuing action. And until Jesus came,
that would define faith.
But God, in His rightful and preemptory way (and, I believe, as part
of the fullness of time that existed when He sent forth His Son),
reached into the stream of that language which dominated the world
frame in that day (so much more precise than the Hebrew or the
Aramaic) and He grabbed this word and made it His.
Whereas on Mars Hill, as a philosopher without the knowledge of God,
I'd sit there as the teacher and say, "Okay, students, faith is an
action based upon belief sustained by a confidence that you must
maintain in order to live; and your choice in life is to pick the
object of your faith that can satisfy the truth that you feel
sufficiently to say, `I believe this;' then hang your body on it,
sustain it with confidence, start acting on it, thus trying your
theory.
"No matter what your object of faith is, it's still faith, equal in
merit and value in the abstract. You prove it to yourself, and it
will become valuable and meaningful to you to the degree that your
continued action builds the confidence, sustains the belief, and
strengthens the action by proven experience as you act on it."
By this definition, I could conveniently step back as a teacher and
say, "Now, since your choice is among the objects, plan your life and
carefully examine that which you are going to believe, have
confidence in, and hang your body on, but that's still theory -
you're not faithing until you attach your body in action to what you
believe and what you have confidence in."
In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son into a language frame
providing the word pisteo and He made it His for His Word. Real
FAITH, saving Faith, became Action, based upon a Belief in God's
faithfulness to His Word, sustained by Confidence in God's own nature
of faithfulness - that He's not a man to lie, nor the Son of Man to
repent; what He says He'll do, what He speaks He'll make good; that
God, as Jeremiah said, "will hasten His Word to perform it," as a
magnifying glass grabs the rays of the sun and penetrates by focusing
on the object, He'll bring every strength as Lord of Hosts to focus
and cause His word to come to pass. That confidence in God's Word
will cause you to act, hanging your body on a Promise made by God,
forever settled in heaven, even though time has not yet adjusted to
it.
At faith encounters with time/space conflicts, you have the choice of
letting the stream of time and circumstance defy God's Promise, or
reach up and grab God's Word and say to yourself, "I am that catalyst
point which will reach through the stuff of time, and grab this
Promise of God because forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled. When God
spoke, not-a-thing became everything; He will again speak on future
time, and everything will rearrange. God's Word was, is and shall be,
before and after the earth that now is. His Word, forever settled in
heaven, is where I will put my grasp, and no matter what the
circumstance says, I will hang on to it. If I die still hanging on,
I'm translated instantly into the realm where there's no friction
with, `Thus sayeth the Lord...Forever settled in heaven.'
"Until that time comes - with Luther - though the whole world be
against the Word, a "faither" will be against the whole world,
hanging on to God's Word."
That is what God chose to identify as FAITH. Action based upon Belief
and Confidence, that "Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven."
I repeat that God will hasten His Word to perform it. Any other
action, no matter how meritorious the object, is not
Biblical "faithe." Unlike the professor who can stand back and
say "choose among many objects," the preacher of faith knows that
only those acts of man based on a belief in God's Word, sustained by
a confidence in God's nature to be faithful to His Word - that and
that alone qualifies as "FAITHE."
Everything else is apistis. Greek has a nifty little verbal
transmission: there is no neutral gear. Pistis or apistis. Pistis is
going in faith, apistis is opposite, or wrong direction. That means
your object of faith can be bad, or your object of faith can be good,
in the human, horizontal, ethical evaluation frame. It'll be
saving "Faithe" only if it is "faithe" focused on a Promise of God,
sustained by confidence in God's nature to be faithful to His Word
and to Himself. Every other act, no matter how bad, and how far down
the spectrum in that direction, or how good, just qualifies as
apistis (not faith - even "against faithe").
If I were to use adjectives, such "other-object-faith" would be "not-
saving-faith" - but God doesn't use adjectives here. God saw the
word "faith" and He made it His, just like the word logos. To those
in the Greek world who believe in a personal being behind all
reality, logos was the word they used to identify the mediator
between man and that heretofore unknowable Ultimate Being of reality.
God made the word logos His, and Christ became "the Logos." God took
faith over, and everything else is a kind of apistis.
Now, our nature is such that we just really don't want to be lumped
into a pot with an Adolph Hitler or a Saddam Hussein. And you don't
have to be lumped in a pot with them in the horizontal sphere of
relative ethics and good and badness, measured by the performance of
men. But from God's view, there is that which saves eternally, and
there is that which doesn't do anything, that has its rewards down
here, and doesn't do a thing for you in terms of eternity and
relationship with God.
Faith - action on God's Word - gets you eternal life, God's spirit in
you, salvation. Everything else gets you things down here. It doesn't
mean you say, "Then nothing matters, relative distinctions down here
make it not worth pursuing any ends designed to help mankind." Go to
that extreme and you become an Antinomian.
You know the Greek word for law, nomos; Antinomians were anti-law to
the nihilation of grace as power to change. They were those who made
the preaching of grace an excuse for sin, caused Paul, Jude and Peter
to combat this heresy in the New Testament. This same heresy (the
Antihuchisons) divided colonial Massachusetts, and includes the
present-day people who believe that since works can gain nothing for
you in eternity, then works are unimportant, and go sin all the more
that grace may abound.
I am now approaching that place in the book of Galatians that many of
you have been waiting for with bated breath. "What's he going to do
with the phrase, `Faith working in love'?"
I'm going to tell you a little history about it for openers, and the
fights during the Reformation where the Papists said, "See, even Paul
finally had to concede that works of love save and undergird faith."
Sorry, that won't fly. But I'm not to that verse yet. Or, "I wonder
what he's going to do when he gets to the lusts of the flesh?"
Well, there are about fifteen different lists. And going out the
gate, adultery is not even in the list of the earliest manuscripts,
and it leads the list in the King James. "Oh, goody!"
Fornication is pornea in the Greek. You don't have to stretch your
brain too much, or become a semanticist to know the cognate of pornea
do you? Porno? Now just maybe the good old King James that "Michael
handed Moses on Mount Sinai" (whoa!) might need a little help.
Contrary to what a lot of you think, I'm going to scare the bejesus
out of you. I'm going to scare your britches off. It's obvious that
some of you need it. Every preacher of grace from Paul to Luther to
Gene Scott, and anyone else on the current scene, has to deal with
the problem of grace as a message producing license.
I've told you the story of Bond Bowman in Detroit, Michigan, who had
prayed for four years and said to me when he called me, "Gene, God
has only shown me one man and I know it's you that must succeed me in
Detroit."
He told me all the reasons why, and I told him that he'd prayed for
four years and I'd had four seconds to hear it, and I needed some
more prayer; but I had enough respect for Bond that I went and filled
in for two months while he took a leave of absence. God didn't want
me to pastor there, but Bond was so sure he turned loose completely,
which he hadn't done for forty years, and that enabled him to relax
sufficient to get the strength to come back and have some of his best
years.
But I shared with you the long discussions Bond and I used to have.
He said, "Gene, the message of grace is the message, I know that. But
when I preach it, my congregation takes advantage and it turns into
license, and I have to get the Law out to whip them back in line."
I determined then, thinking I probably never would pastor, if I ever
pastored, I would dare to give grace its full chance to work. I'd
dare to give God the chance to do it without me creating a temporary
corral to beat you into sufficient insensibility that I could start
over with grace again, and hope that somehow God would show up before
you wrecked yourselves this time around.
I want it clear, even before I get to the passages which follow
(which is Paul's attempt to deal with Antinomianism - those that took
the message of grace and abolished all moral restraint because the
Law was dead); I want it clear that I am deliberately hammering the
Law into the death insensibility that it should have, not to
resurrect it again as the cure for Antinomianism, but to teach
through these verses that follow, when Paul finally comes to that
phrase and says, "You've been called unto liberty, brethren, only use
not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, to understand the life in
the spirit which is the antidote to Antinomianism.
Not once in the history of the Church has any church yet transitioned
through this stage. Luther didn't. Paul didn't. And I'm camping out
on the closing passages of the fourth chapter and the opening of the
fifth chapter because I want the Law so dead that it can't resurrect,
at least until I get through the next phase.
Now I've put this foundation up here because I want you to just
recognize the only thing that will save is Faithe, period. That's
all. Faithe in a Promise of God, like plugging a cord in a wall
circuit, causes the current of God to flow from God. That current
flows, and the faither, when he contacts a Promise of God, hangs his
body on it with the guts to hang on no matter what; he is plugged in,
if you will, to God's own life. The manifestation of God's presence
may be different than the reality of God's presence in eternity.
But those manifestations of God's presence, that omnipresence of God
and that born again presence in-dwelt which God implants in Faithers
occurs the moment that the grip of faith kicks in and, at that
instant, God gives the gift of salvation - seating you in Christ in
heavenly places - and the judicial act of imputation is done; God
puts on the spectacles of Jesus Christ and looks at you as though you
were Jesus.
Instantly, when Faithe takes hold of God's promise, the kaporeth or
covering (which is what `atonement' means) is there in place, and
between you and God's Law is that fulfilled Law incarnate in Christ
which died on Calvary; and we, our old man, died with Him. God now
looks at you (the Faither) as though you were Christ. That's
justification. You're taken as just like God, and imputed to you is
the righteousness of Christ, and God views you as though you were
Christ, with those spectacles he looks at you, and you are seen as
seated in heavenly places with and in Christ, already there.
But beyond the judicial act is the born-again, life-changing
experience. You don't have to vibrate, your hair doesn't have to
stand on end. The reason the Resurrection is the basis of the faith
is that if you can believe that Christ came through a locked door,
through that rock (molecular displacement meaning nothing, or the
putting them back together again); and if you can believe that the
Life that raised up Jesus from the dead, took His regenerated body
through a locked door, through the rock, and ascending off into the
blue occurred, you aren't going to have any trouble taking the next
step with your mind, that God can, through that same Word that raised
up Christ from the dead, place a deposit of Himself in You.
Withdrawn when Adam sinned, barred by the barrier of our sins, walled
away by the swords of the cherubim, God having no access to us
without being inconsistent with Himself, by His own voluntary act
broke the wall of partition between us that Ephesians talks about. He
ripped it apart (symbolized by the veil torn from top to bottom when
Christ died) that He might now, on the basis of Christ, send to us
the deposit of His life.
And God places in you, the moment faith connects, a deposit of His
life. And that Life in you makes you a dual creature; a new creation
in Christ Jesus, placed in you, capable of affecting your whole
being. You don't have to see radioactive material carried around to
know your very cell structure will change. This is the reason I said
earlier that I may be the only preacher on television (and now on
shortwave radio world-wide) who really believes in the born-again
experience.
God places a substance of Himself in you, and that new life in you
comes as God's gift because of faith's connection - an act on the
basis of God's Word, sustained with confidence that defies every
circumstance, and wherever you're doing it, that keeps you in contact
with God.
I cannot sever your relationship with God as long as faith is
connecting. He places that unit of Himself in you, and left there
long enough - more correctly said, maintained there long enough
(because as the Hebrews letter said, you remain the house of God the
same way you became the house of God, by continuing the faith
connection), that spirit in you maintained will change you.
As the Bible says, that which is created of the spirit cannot sin;
there is a new life in you incapable of sinning; there is an old life
in you dominated by the desires of the flesh. Paul picks a wartime
phrase, that these two are dug in like military trench warfare, for a
fight to the finish. The outcome is pre-determined: let God's life
stay in, the flesh will be displaced and the new life will bring
forth fruit. You don't get the fruit of the spirit by will-power
copying of the dead Law any more than you can get apples by shaking a
tree. It comes from within; it is an out-growth.
Spirituality, by definition in the Greek, is the expression of the
spirit. The spiritual person, by definition in the Greek, is the
Spirit's person. When that power is in you, it will change you. You
can't keep it from happening if it's there.
"Well, what if the surface portrayal of behavior shows that if it's
there it ain't doing much?" You need to renew the connection. This is
the tragedy of the Church (and I'm anticipating the teaching of the
end of the fifth chapter and into the sixth chapter). The tragedy of
the Church is, they do what's necessary as an act of faith to get the
Spirit in, and then when they see the slow growth, particularly with
the buzzards looking on, they panic and seek to pound it from the
outside on, instead of reinvoking the steps that keep God's spirit
there, renewed and outflowing.
How did you get the spirit in? A simple act. What did Paul
say? "Christ is formed in your heart by faith." Christianity has
always had a problem in the Grecian world over one thing, and that's
Aristotle's logic: "A" cannot be "A" and "not A" at the same time,
when the Christian faith starts out in defiance of Aristotle's logic
by saying in Christ (in the incarnation) you have "A" and "not A" all
the time, in every way. He's man and not man at the same time, He's
God and not God at the same time, all the time, everywhere, in every
way.
And the deepest truths that Jesus teaches are paradoxical truths: you
go up by going down. You don't go up because you went down in order
to go up, you go up by going down - concomitant, simultaneous,
paradoxical happening. You don't even think about going up. You go
down, God puts you up. You get by giving. You live by dying; you
become first by being last; you become great by being least.
Paradoxes. Aristotelian logic confuses it and tries to make it
logical when it's a paradox.
Likewise, the confusion of the Church when it wedded itself to Greek
philosophy is they have forgotten that you become righteous by not
trying to be. You get righteousness by seeking something else, or
more accurately, activating another track. You become righteous by
faithing. God does the "righteousing," we do the "faithing." When
righteousness wanes, instead of beating yourself to death, find an
object of faith in God's Word, get out on that front line with
courage, and go for it! Forget about your righteousness. The more
righteous you become, the less you'll be aware of it.
How many of you came to this church, probably because I said to
you, "You will never be told by me you have to change!"? How many of
you in this congregation hadn't been to church in five years until
you came to this one? How many of you hadn't been to church in ten
years? Hallelujah! Thank God we're saving souls and not transplanting
saints. How many were told you didn't have to change, that we don't
make you change as a criteria for coming here? How many of you are
surprised, you changed? How many of you didn't try to change? How
many of you changed in spite of yourself? You're a success.
As we close the fourth chapter of Galatians, Paul compares those who
go back to Sinai and pull the Law off that hill, and come to some new
Jerusalem as the interpretive center, and from that new Jerusalem
begin to lay the Law on you as an added necessity of being a
Christian, Paul compares that to Abraham going into the tent and
fornicating with Hagar. He says Hagar is Sinai, and Sinai is "new
Jerusalems" which are now, and they produce children of bondage.
And he then says we are the "children of the free" as Isaac was, born
of faith in the promise of God, a miracle that cannot be done by
human effort, and then he draws that conclusion that no church has
been able to live with to the present day: Then as now, the children
of bondage, who have resurrected off Sinai new rules to add to your
relationship to God, will persecute the children of the free. They
cannot live in the same house together.
From the Textus Receptus to the present, every major accepted text in
the Greek adds the first verse of the fifth chapter to the last of
the fourth chapter, because it is the conclusion, saying, "What shall
we do, then, to these persecutors of the free?"
Throw them out! Separate from them! Because those who rely on works
will continue to persecute, they cannot live in the same house
together with those who derive righteousness from FAITH and are the
children of the free (Isaac's).
Then Paul says, as the closing verse of the fourth chapter in the
original manuscripts rather than the opening of the fifth, "Stand
fast therefore in the liberty - or freedom - wherewith Christ has set
us free."
― Mark Barton, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
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