As a result of my last article concerning faith being a trusting
commitment to Jesus, and not a commodity that you can get more of, someone
suggested that faith could be a gift from God as well. If faith could be a
gift, you still need to understand faith as trusting in Jesus, and not a
commodity. Therefore you might ask, "can the ability to trust Jesus
be received from Gad as a gift, or is it always something that is
generated from within us and strengthened through trials "? Here’s
my answer.
There is an interesting phrase in Rom. 12:3 that sheds some light on
this subject. Paul tells his readers to think soberly (good idea) "in
accordance with the measure of faith God has given you". The Greek
word merizo" is translated in the NIV as "has given". This
word means "to divide". Thus according to Paul, God
"divides out" faith, or trust, in certain measures to people. In
this sense of the word, faith, or trust in Jesus is something that comes
down from Heaven as a gift. So does this nullify my thinking that faith is
not a commodity that can be portioned out in bits and pieces? Not really.
First of all let me fill you in on a little theological history. Some
people over the centuries have believed that man is so depraved that he is
not capable in the least to have faith, or trust in Jesus on his own.
Romans 1 and 2 is where these people find some support for their position.
These people say that God needs to give us the initial faith we need to be
saved because we don’t have the ability within us to have this faith.
On the other hand, others have believed that man is capable of
believing on his own and that a certain measure of faith is resident
within everyone. They say that we have the ability to trust in Jesus
because we trust in all sorts of other things in our lives. These people
say that God doesn’t have to get us jump started with an initial gift of
faith.
So who is right? I think there is an element of truth on both sides of
the issue. From my understanding of Romans 1 and 2 it is clear that all
mankind is "totally depraved", meaning, there is no good within
man when compared to God’s standard of goodness. So it we don’t have
the ability to trust Jesus on our own, we need God’s help. If we do have
this ability, this ability is greatly defective. Either way, we still need
God’s help.
Therefore faith, or trust is "divided out" by God to all
those who call on Him to be saved. We do have the ability to cry out to
Jesus from the bottom of our hearts. You may call this crying out
"faith", or you may simply call it a cry for help. Whatever the
case, God hears us, and "divides us out a measure of faith, or trust
in Jesus" as a gift to help us get started in our new life of
trusting Jesus. I believe this is what Rom. 12:3 means.
Once receiving this measure of faith, we begin our new life of trusting
Jesus where He provides the opportunities to trust Him more. This means
trials, which is the point to my first article.
To help explain this you can draw a circle on a piece of paper. Inside
the circle are the things you trust Jesus for, and outside the circle are
the things you don’t trust Him for. What Jesus will do is try to make
your circle larger by providing opportunities to trust Him for things that
are a short distance outside your circle. He works on these things, not
things that are far from the line, so not test to you beyond your
capabilities. In this way, the circle of trust is slowly expanding
outward. The expansion of your circle is not an easy process.
There is also one other aspect of faith being a gift and that is found
in 1 Cor. 12:9. Paul says that there is a type of faith that is a
"gift of the Spirit". This faith is clearly a gift. It is
something different than trusting Jesus on a daily basis, as I have been
talking about. This is a special ability, a supernatural gift of the Holy
Spirit that enables one to trust in Jesus for something that is not
humanly possible to trust Him for. This faith is still trust (not a
commodity) and is only given to those whom the Holy Spirit chooses. This
type of trusting is clearly a gift that drops out of Heaven, but still not
a commodity.
So in one sense of the word, faith, or trust, can be a gift that falls
from Heaven. Still the vast majority of the time when the Bible speaks of
faith, it is speaking of a trusting commitment to Jesus as Lord that takes
place on a daily basis. Faith is not a commodity that we can get more of.
Remember, "we don’t need more trust. We need to trust more".
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