The effect or influence that a particular thing has on us depends largely on where that thing falls on the scale of our values. It’s one thing to lose your folding fan in a foreign country and quite another to lose your passport.
Similarly, the influence of a person in our lives depends on the place that person occupies at the table of our soul, or the role that person plays in the flow of life. With this in mind, we will look at the impact that faith has in our lives in relation to its place on the scale of our values.
Simon and the sinful woman (see Luke 7:36-50), although under the same roof and before the same Person, react very differently. A debtor loves according to the size of the debt he has been forgiven, so Simon thinks he has been forgiven little compared to the woman. That’s why he doesn’t shower Jesus with love when He comes to his house. You cannot understand the value of salvation and truly appreciate it until you understand what you have been saved from and what it cost.
Often our values change with experience or revelation. For the apostle Thomas, the risen Jesus was neutral news that he was determined to ignore. He told himself that he would believe nothing but what his own senses and judgement told him, that he would believe no one but himself and his own experience. All this until, to his shame, his wish was granted—he touched the wound. Suddenly, the One he had seriously questioned, the One he had been indifferent to, the One he had even perceived as the source of his unhappiness and unfulfillment, became for Thomas “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28).
Where, then, on the scale of your values, does your life of faith stand and, more specifically, where does Jesus stand? Is your faith your greatest joy? Or is it a heavy burden that you secretly blame for your unhappiness and failure in life?
Back to the shame of believing
For many people, faith is a more or less necessary appendage of life, which may or may not be there, without any sense of the difference. It’s good to believe in something, it’s good for the family, for society, especially as a countermeasure to the negative segment of the world or of personal life. A kind of placebo. Sometimes even scientific circles recommend it as a kind of old-fashioned cure. It is a kind of tranquilliser for difficult situations, a kind of opium for the masses, especially for the poor and ignorant. Paul says this about the church of his day: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” (1 Corinthians 1:26). Why is this so? Because the life of faith has no meaning in certain circles? Was it designed only for these social and economic categories? Would other categories really not need it? Far from the truth. It is about the receiver, not the sender. “For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed” (Hebrews 4:2).
The difference is even more evident in the life of Peter, for whom Jesus was not always held in the same esteem. There were times when Peter was convinced that Jesus needed to be taught and corrected: “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!'”
(Matthew 16:22). Although his understanding was totally rejected by Jesus, conviction did not enter his soul. On the night of Jesus’s betrayal, standing by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest, Peter is a victim of his own image of Jesus. He is so overcome by the thought that he is witnessing something that must not happen that only the rooster awakens him from his spiritual agony. How differently he speaks of the same Jesus after he has received the challenge of love and the prophetic revelation of the fiery trial of his faith! Now Jesus is for him “the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11), or “the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to Him” (1 Peter 2:4). If his faith in Jesus had remained at the level of the night of denial, Peter would never have been able to give his life as a martyr for the Lord.
The story of faith in the Gospel cannot be told without the infamous figure of Judas Iscariot. His despicable sale must be understood not in terms of the thirty pieces of silver, but in terms of the cause of this “price”. It is not the product of greed for money, but of contempt for Jesus: “And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord”
(Zechariah 11:13). In Judah’s eyes, Jesus was worth no more than a common slave. Had he been confronted with such a perspective, Judas would have been horrified and would have defended himself vehemently. Under no circumstances would he have believed that his deficient image of Jesus and of faith in general would lead him to occupy the most undesirable place in history. But this is the natural course of contempt or low esteem for the great gift of faith and the One who is its object.
Cataract
What is the place of faith in your life? None other than that which is dictated by the value you place on the One in whom you are called to believe. Do you want to know how much you value Jesus? Look at the place He occupies in your thoughts, in your concerns, in your life. Do you want to understand this deeper and further and see the direction of your faith and where it is going? You will never know how much you value Jesus until you understand how much He values you. Compare how He cherished you with how you cherish Him. The law of cherishing is identical to the law of love: we love Him because He first loved us and, by extension, we cherish Him because He first cherished us.
While for some people faith has been or has become the most precious treasure of their lives, for others it has come to be regarded as the misfortune and misery of life. The name of Dudley Canright, one of the most prominent Adventist evangelists and apologists of the nineteenth century, is well known among Adventist Christians. After a period of incredible growth, his life began to decline and ended tragically. Where did his downfall begin? It is where the downfall of each of us can begin, with little appreciation or contempt for the means God has used to bring us to where we are today. Here is the testimony of D. W. Reavis, Dudley Canright’s critic and secretary: “One Sunday night, in the largest church of the West Side, he spoke on ‘The Saint’s Inheritance’ to more than 3,000 people, and I took a seat in the gallery directly in front of him, to see every gesture and to hear every tone, form of voice, emphasis, stress, and pitch, and all the rest. But that was as far as I got in my part of the service, for he so quickly and eloquently launched into this, his favourite theme, that I, with the entire congregation, became entirely absorbed in the Biblical facts he was so convincingly presenting. I never thought of anything else until he had finished. After the benediction I could not get to him for more than half an hour because of the people crowding around him, complimenting and thanking him for his masterly discourse. On all sides I could hear people saying it was the most wonderful sermon they had ever heard. I knew it was not the oratorical manner of the delivery, but the Bible truth clearly and feelingly presented, that had appealed to the people—it was the power in that timely message. It made a deep, lasting impression upon my mind. —I saw that the power was all in the truth, and not in the speaker. After a long time we were alone, and we went into a beautiful city park just across the street, which was almost deserted because of the late hour of the night, and sat down to talk the occasion over and for me to deliver my criticisms. But I had none for the elder. I frankly confessed that I became so completely carried away with that soul-inspiring Biblical subject I did not think once of the oratorical rules he was applying in its presentation. Then we sat in silence for some time. Suddenly the elder sprang to his feet and said, ‘D. W., I believe I could become a great man were it not for our unpopular message!’ I made no immediate reply, for I was shocked to hear a great preacher make such a statement, to think of the message, for which I had given up the world, in the estimation of its leading minister, being inferior to, and in the way of, the progress of men, was almost paralysing. Then I got up and stepped in front of the elder and said with much feeling, ‘D.M., the message made you all you are, and the day you leave it, you will retrace your steps back to where it found you'”.
Deep wisdom and inspiring, powerful truth in Reavis’ words! How do you view the hand of God reaching out to you today? What does He who called you out of darkness into light and from the pit of destruction into abundant life look like in your eyes today?
Back to true shame
The shortest way to evaluate and appreciate the gift of faith and the life of faith is to go back to the place where it found you and try to imagine what your life would be and look like without the presence and influence of faith. For myself, I can look directly and simply at the crosses my friends carry and see my own among them. This is where the Gospel I preach today found me.
The lack of appreciation of the Gospel will never leave a void in our hearts and in our lives, because that place will immediately be filled with contempt for the same Gospel. The contempt itself will not stand still, but will ferment and grow into hostility, and the one who does not value God will end up fighting against Him: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23).
Certainly, in every heart, feelings of self-exaltation can arise, like those of Nebuchadnezzar before the panorama of Babylon: “he said, ‘Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?'” (Daniel 4:30). So it is, but Psalm 124 challenges us: “If the Lord had not been on our side” (Psalm 124:1), what would Nebuchadnezzar say now? David, on the other hand, looks at his own life and exclaims: “You make your saving help my shield, and your right hand sustains me; your help has made me great” (Psalm 18:35). Where does this difference between Nebuchadnezzar and David come from? Precisely because of “the price at which they valued me”! The life of faith has at its centre one of two elements: self or Jesus. A faith based on the self will spiral downwards into death because it unconsciously separates itself from the source of life, while a faith based on the appreciation and value of God will be like the bright light of the sun, ever increasing. Not only here, but forever, there will be new sparks of love to be discovered in Jesus.
There are certain experiences in life that cast a heavy shadow on the image of God in our lives and in our being. These shadows linger like a poisonous cloud over the soul, obscuring our eyes and preventing us from seeing the face of the Unseen One in all its beauty. Yet, like Asaph, we experience a moment of awakening and realise how different the message behind our trial, loss or suffering is: “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before You” (Psalm 73:21-22).
This revelation is not about a change in the Lord, but a change in the eyes of the beholder, who is suffering and disappointed. It is followed by a sublime confession of faithfulness and steadfastness forever: “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory” (Psalm 73:23-24).
Surprised on the one hand by God’s goodness and on the other by the limits of his own understanding, he makes this beautiful and unique declaration of love and faith: “Whom have I in heaven but you?” (Psalm 73:25). It was enough for him to see the goodness of God “a reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), and a new light dawned on his life. He now understood the value of faith and the truth about God. Never again would suffering, loss, and falling come between him and the Lord: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
Faith does not come in many shades
Our life of faith and the Gospel to which we owe our present condition are not one ingredient among many. This is not possible, just as it was not possible for the first Christians to include Jesus among the other gods. Thousands upon thousands paid with their lives for their refusal to see Jesus as one of the gods. He is either everything or nothing in our lives. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Many people have received just enough of the gift of faith to make them miserable and wretched for life.
The most wretched of people are not those who have never known the Lord, nor even those who have persecuted and mocked His name, but those who have chosen Christ only for this life, as an ingredient or appendage to their lives. They are heading for no man’s land—they came out of Egypt but never entered the Promised Land.
For the life of faith to be truly full of power and good fruit, it must be fully manifested, that is, there must be no fibre of our being that is not alive through Christ. Faith is not a part of our life, but our very life: “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Or: “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).