Desperate Faith (Sola Fide in 21st Century Australia)
Jacob should have been happy as he stood at the ford of the Jabbok, at the edge of his homeland after long years away. Instead, he was frightened, “In great fear and distress.”
He saw in the distance Esau, the brother that he had manipulated and ruined. And Esau was fast approaching with a battalion of four hundred men. Jacob saw himself butchered, and his wives, children, flocks, and herds plundered by his bitter and violent brother.
He was frightened, and he wrestled with a man all that night.
Jacob was unusually strong, it looks like an epic contest. But as soon as it was clear that Jacob could not be mastered, his opponent merely touched his hip, which crippled him, and said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
This was not as case of, “I beg you to let go of me!” But, “OK little child, the game is over, time to let go.”
Jacob, however, just held on tighter. “I will not let you go unless you bless me!”
See the nature of this battle? The man was moving past Jacob, and Jacob gripped him as though for dear life. For this was no ordinary man:
He said to Jacob, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip (Gen 32:27-31).
Here is the essence of faith. Faith is holding on to God. Not holding on to God as though your life depends on him, but because your life depends on him.
The nation of Israel, by its very name, was to be a people who strive with God, and this is no less true for the fulfilment of Israel, the church of Jesus Christ.
It is depressing that faith—so central to Christian thought and life—is at the same time so widely misunderstood. The popular conception is that faith is believing something when there is a lack of evidence, or in spite of the evidence.
So we speak of a “leap of faith.” On this side is evidence, what I know; and on the other side is the thing I’m asked to believe. In between is a yawning gulf of uncertainty and illogicality, a lack of facts and proof and evidence. “Faith” leaps over the gulf with a defiant act of the will.
We don’t have time here to trek to the source of this idea, (we would find Barth, Kierkegaard, and Kant waiting for us on the way,) but we can say with absolute certainty that this definition of faith, which is more accurately termed credulity, is nowhere to be found in God’s Word.
In the Bible, faith is always grounded in facts.
It is a truism that you can’t believe or have faith in someone that you don’t know about. “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Rom 10:14.)
However, many people heard about the resurrection from eye-witnesses, but didn’t agree with those facts. So faith is not just hearing certain facts, but agreeing with them.
Yet if we stop at agreement we still fall short of faith, because when it comes to God, “Even the demons believe – and shudder!” The demons know the facts about God, and are so convinced that they wet their scarlet lycra at the thought.
Faith is Jacob, who knew God and his promises that he would bless him and make him a great nation, and who believed those promises, and so trusted and held on to God for dear life.
Trust is the necessary crowning attribute of faith.
The Puritans helpfully distinguished these three elements of Christian faith with three possibly unhelpful Latin words: Notitia, Assensus, and Fiducia. Notitia is knowing Jesus’ claims to be God’s Saviour. Assensus is agreeing, having been compelled by the facts, that Jesus is God’s Saviour. (B. B. Warfield brilliantly described this “compulsion of belief” in 1911, On Faith and its Psychological Aspects.) Fiducia is trusting in God’s Saviour Jesus.
Unlike the Puritans, the Bible rarely analyses saving faith, and much more often shows us saving faith in action.
Faith is Noah, obeying God and building an inland ark, and getting inside when he was told to.
Faith is Abraham believing God that he would have a son, when his wife was barren and he was “as good as dead.”
Faith is the children of Israel following the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of cloud by night to the Promised Land.
Faith is Gideon attacking the Midianites, as numerous as sand on the beach, with his three hundred men with only trumpets and lamps.
Faith is Ruth swearing to Naomi that “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Faith is Hannah crying to God for a son.
Faith is David taking on Goliath with his sling and stone.
Faith is the three Hebrew teens scorning Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Dan 3:17-28).
Faith is Daniel crying out to God for help three times a day in prayer.
Faith is the pagan Magi travelling from afar to worship the baby in Bethlehem.
Faith is the bleeding woman reaching out to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe.
Faith is the desperate father crying out, “I believe, help my unbelief!”
Faith is the thief on the cross, gasping out to Jesus in tortured agony, “Remember me, when you come into your kingdom!”
Faith is knowing, believing, and trusting in Jesus Christ. And there is something energetic, something desperate, about this trust:
“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Mat 11:12).
For, as Jonathan Edwards so beautifully preached in his “Pressing into the Kingdom of God”, the “violent” are not the opponents of Jesus, but those who, like Jacob, take hold of him with desperate, single-minded tenacity.
How do we identify the faithful? Not just by their words, for many will say “Lord! Lord!” who are disobedient and were never known by Christ (Mat 7:21-23). Instead, those who love Jesus, love to obey Jesus (John 14:15). (And so Paul referred to “the obedience of faith” in Romans 1:5 and 16:26; cf. 15:18; 16:19.)
Ultimately, Christ’s faithful sheep are identified by their acts of mercy: their love for him expressed through love for the suffering (Mat 25:31-46).
So, do you have Jacob’s limp? That wound, that mark of energetic and even violent dependence on Jesus?
We are not saved by our good works, our passion for Jesus, or even by our love for Jesus. We are saved by grace through Jacob-like faith in Jesus alone. And our faith is seen by our Christ-like love.