"Why Faith?"
Part 1 - "I AM"
"The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17).
Why did God make human beings to live by faith? Why are we completely dependent on Him, to the degree that the Lord Jesus Christ told His disciples, "Without Me, ye can do nothing"? (John 15:5). Why must we all join the Apostle Paul in his confession of need and reliance, "We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead"? (II Corinthians 1:9). Why faith?
We will consider this vital matter over the next few days, beginning with the primary answers that relate to God Himself, and then proceeding to address the matter of faith as elemental to the proper understanding of ourselves and others. Few Scriptural considerations more illuminate, encourage, and challenge us in our walk with the Lord as we grow in our realization of life in terms of truth and reality. "To live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).
Our consideration begins not with ourselves, but rather in the light of God's being, nature, and existence. "I am the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God beside Me" (Isaiah 45:5). The triune God of Scripture alone exists as uncreated, self-existent, and completely self-sufficient. No one made Him, and He requires no other to sustain His existence. Only our Lord dwells in the eternality of "from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God" (Psalm 90:2). He identified Himself to Moses as "I AM" because He singularly lives as a Being without need and reliance on any other. Moreover, when He created other conscious persons - angels and humans - He could not make them as other Gods. By Biblical definition, if someone comes into being and continues to exist by the fiat and function of another, that being is not and cannot be a God. "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Thus, there is one God, who dwells in the triunity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All others are not, and must live in dependence on Him for all things. They must live by faith. "He giveth to all life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25).
Only as we know our Lord in this holy light of "There is no God beside Me" can and will we discover what it means to live in the truth of trust rather then the delusion of independence. "There is one God" declared the Apostle Paul in perhaps the simplest, but most vital of Biblical doctrines (I Timothy 2:5). Or, as a good friend says, "There is one God, and we ain't Him!" We must accept Paul's "sentence of death in ourselves," that is, we must condemn and execute any notion that we can be or do apart from the only "I AM" who exists. This means faith for all who will truly live, and this means the living Word Christ and the written Word the Bible will supply the means whereby we experience life as it is because we know God as He is…
"In Thy light shall we see light."
(Psalm 36:9)
"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."
(Romans 1:17)
"He is thy life."
(Deuteronomy 30:20)
Tomorrow: "It is He that hath made us."
Weekly Memory Verse
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."
(Ephesians 4:29)
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