YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)
Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
We have taken a leave from the sayings and parables of the Master to have some discussion about Love and Faith. Both these words have a special importance in the Christian life, the one from the Master’s perspective and the other from man’s perspective. We tried to show yesterday the importance of Love as an aspect of God and as the leading virtue for man to possess and to use in all his interactions with his fellowman and with his God. The previous day, we tried to show the level of Faith that is possible to us as True Sons of God, that is Sons that are accounted worthy to be in His Presence and in His Kingdom; the Faith that can move the mountain.
Today we are back on the subject of Faith as we continue to explore the words of the Master and we start where we left off with Jesus telling the disciples of the power of Faith should they be able to attain it. We discussed the saying from the Gospel of Mark that ends with that infamous Christian saying, infamous because of the way it is interpreted and used, regarding believing and getting. We missed however the beginning of this segment; let us look now at the whole thing beginning with the Apostle Peter’s comment to the Master:
“And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither willy our Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark 11:20-26).
There is so much said here in these few verses; so much more than “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” which part has become the most noted and the most used. When we discussed this last we used this saying of Jesus, as recorded by the Apostle Mark, in a comparison to the same event in the Gospel of Matthew and with emphasis on the idea of doubt, comparing it to having “faith as a grain of mustard seed” (Matthew 17:20). Today we will focus on the first part of Jesus’ answer to Peter’s comment when, talking to the twelve He says “Have faith in God“. Now having Faith in God is a good thing and it is, in essence, KNOWING that HE IS but there are translation issues in this statement. Footnotes in the King James Version tell us that this can also be translated “have the faith of God” which is a much more functional statement when reading it with the rest of the verse; the Faith of God would leave nothing doubting. Several translations of the bible do translate this as have the faith of God and Young’s Literal Translation states it as “have faith of God“. This is not a minor difference and perhaps it is a reason that some of these verses are misunderstood. To have the Faith of God goes well with some of the other sayings of the Master. One that we discussed yesterday regarding Love finds Jesus saying “that the love where with thou hast loved me may be in them“(John 17:26); and this is, of course, the Love of God, the Love that IS God. Another that we have seen in our posts is “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) which saying tells us that this is possible. So we can see here that the Faith of God, the Love of God and the Perfection of God are all within us and possible for us to manifest should we be so focused on and dedicated to the Lord.
We must remember that the Master is speaking to His disciples here and their understanding is as disciples and not as the multitudes. These ideas of Faith and believing and moving mountains are the subject with which He is dealing and the level of Faith is such that it is the Faith of God and the Faith to move the mountain and for us who aspire to be His disciples, or who consider that we are, this should be our focus. That the world has chosen to see this as a way to gain by believing is of no consequence to us; what we believe for and have Faith for are things of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit; the Faith of God, the Love of God and His Presence, all of which will come to us, by degree, in His Presence and in His Kingdom. As we said in an earlier post, there are many today who preach the lower aspect of this is the truth and that by believing, in their undefined terms, that we can achieve what we desire. Again we should ask ourselves; would this be the concern of the Master, the Son of God, that He should teach His disciples in the ways to get what we want in this world when so much else of what He says is contrary to this?
The above should set the stage for our next thought for this post and that is the idea of Hope and an understanding of Hope as it relates to Faith. The Greek word generally translated as Hope, elpis, is not used by the Master and is not found in the gospels at all. A related word elpizo is used twice by Jesus, once with the idea of trust and the other in this reference: “and if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive” (Luke 6:34). The lexicon says or these:
- Elpis has the meaning of: expectation of evil, fear; expectation of good, hope; in the Christian sense, joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; on hope, in hope, having hope, the author of hope, or he who is its foundation, the thing hoped for2.
- Elpizo is the verb form elpis and has this meaning: to hope; in a religious sense, to wait for salvation with joy and full confidence; hopefully to trust in2. and is generally translated as trust by way of its usage in the gospels.
Strong’s gives generally the same ideas as we have above from the lexicon. Elpizio is an active doing; hoping in or for, or trusting, while elpis is a noun and is a thing spoken of much like Faith. We can have Hope and we can have Faith as things to possess. Noting the differences we should wonder why the Master never uses the word elpis as Hope and uses the other verb form only in the context mentioned above. Faith on the other hand is used by Jesus frequently as a testimony to its possession by others and as something that He tells us we need to have. The lexicon says of the word translated as Faith, the Greek word pistis: conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it; relating to God, the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ; relating to Christ, a strong and welcome conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God; the religious beliefs of Christians, belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same; fidelity, faithfulness, the character of one who can be relied on2. As you can see this is a very Christian based definition which seems to define the word by its presumed usage in scripture. Looking at the three words from Webster’s dictionary we find this:
- Elpis or the noun Hope: A desire of some good, accompanied with an expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable; an expectation of something which is thought to be desirable; confidence; pleasing expectancy. One who, or that which, gives hope, furnishes ground of expectation, or promises desired good. That which is hoped for; an object of hope1.
- Elpizo or the verb Hope: v.i.; To entertain or indulge hope; to cherish a desire of good, or of something welcome, with expectation of obtaining it or belief that it is obtainable; to expect; To place confidence; to trust with confident expectation of good. v.t. To desire with expectation or with belief in the possibility or prospect of obtaining; to look forward to as a thing desirable, with the expectation of obtaining it; to cherish hopes of1.
- Pistis or the noun Faith: Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony. The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what he utters; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth. (Theol.) (a) The belief in the historic truthfulness of the Scripture narrative, and the supernatural origin of its teachings, sometimes called historical and speculative faith. (b) The belief in the facts and truth of the Scriptures, with a practical love of them; especially, that confiding and affectionate belief in the person and work of Christ, which affects the character and life, and makes a man a true Christian, — called a practical, evangelical, or saving faith. That which is believed on any subject, whether in science, politics, or religion; especially(Theol.), a system of religious belief of any kind; as, the Jewish or Mohammedan faith; and especially, the system of truth taught by Christ; as, the Christian faith; also, the creed or belief of a Christian society or church. Fidelity to one’s promises, or allegiance to duty, or to a person honored and beloved; loyalty. Word or honor pledged; promise given; fidelity; as, he violated his faith. Credibility or truth1.
We could gather from the above that Faith is a much more complex issue that is Hope. They are both are similar in their effect and seemingly work together in their result which is believing, another word with many facets. We could divide this by saying that Faith is a spiritual endeavor while Hope is a more practical measure and we could see this through in the terms of what it is that we have been putting forth in these posts. The instance of Faith in our lives, that is by the definitions above and not what we may believe it to mean, comes only when there is a source of that Faith. For example, the carnal man who is ONLY wrapped up in his life in form and who has NO light from within, neither knows of any light of conscience, would have no source of Faith and thereby no Faith that we could speak of. Any man who is awakened by the prompting of the Soul, no matter how he interprets it, is going to have some degree of Faith in what it is that is moving him from behind his conscious personality. It may be moving him to superstition as in the older Old Testament times or it may be moving him to any of the multiplicity of approaches to God but this movement, this prompting, is the source of Faith and something to have that Faith in. This is, of course, Faith on a spiritual level; there can be other forms of faith which may be better defined as trust in a person or a thing. We do not have Faith in a airplane but we trust that it will do as it is intended; more than Hope but less that True Faith. All of these do however result in believing.
Hope is, as we said, a more practical thing though there are many kinds of Hope. There is Hope that is whimsical and there is Hope that is expectation that something will happen for us or to us and there is an infinite range of values in between. But real Hope, as it is intended in scripture, is to do with spiritual things and so is on the high end of this range as expectation. We expect an outcome and that is our Hope. We know that it can happen and in Hope we can visualize it as happening. We Hope that a thing will happen or not happen and in spiritual terms as this is its nature in scripture; a review of the uses of this word by the Apostle Paul gives clarity to the spiritual intention:
- “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth , why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it” (Romans 8:24-25).
- “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing” (Romans 15:13).
- “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith” (Galatians 5:5).
- “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:5).
- “That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7).
This is the nature of the Hope of which we speak in Christian terms; this is spiritual Hope and not the Hope that we bandy about in our daily lives.
We did say in earlier posts regarding Faith and Hope that “Knowing a thing Can come to pass is hope; that it Will come to pass is faith.” This perspective was based on the context of the posts which included that saying from Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). In this saying we get a glimpse of the reality of Faith and Hope as it plays out in our daily, conscious lives. There are things hoped for and, as we see from the sayings of Paul, these are things of the Spirit and not carnal things; these are examples of things that a man seeking the Kingdom and the Presence of God will Hope for and in that Hope is his expectation that they can happen. Faith takes us beyond expectation to KNOWING that these things will come to pass. Faith, as we said and as Jesus alludes to, is a matter of degree; not the degree in which we can possess this spiritually because we know that “God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Romans 12:3), but in the degree of which we can use it. By the strength of our focus on the Kingdom depends the degree of Faith that we can display and use in our conscious lives ranging from the little faith of which the Master speaks to the Faith that can move the mountain; the Faith in which there is nothing doubting, the “faith as a grain of mustard seed“.
In Faith is our Hope perfected. Faith takes the idea of expecting a thing to KNOWING it, without doubt and without question depending, of course, on one’s ability to draw on that Faith what we have and to use it through his personality consciousness. Faith is from above, is spiritual; Hope is the practical application of Faith in our lives. We will finish our discussion on Faith and Hope and Love in the next post and then get back to the parables of Jesus.
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen (Ephesians 3:14-21)
It was intended that we would discuss Paul’s prayer in smaller pieces beginning with this post but this will not happen today. We will begin this in the next post. This is an excellent meditation and prayer for ourselves and for our loved ones. There is much here that passes us by in our casual reading.
- 1Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
- 2 New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
