Where does faith come from?
Oh, nebulous question of questions.
Oh, arcane mystery of mysteries.
Faith, by its very nature, is difficult to define. This is so because it is completely
intangible. One cannot draw a picture of
faith. Perhaps an artist could portray a
subject acting in faith or demonstrating faith.
But, the faith itself? It is
impossible to portray. In spite of its
esoteric nature, for those who have access to the Bible, faith is not
completely obscured from our understanding.
Indeed, the Lord both defines faith for us and He clarifies its source,
or its origin.
In Hebrews 11:1 God says: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen. So, to have faith
is to be confident that what you hope for will come to pass. It is to be absolutely convinced of something
that you cannot see. We have a small
plaque in our home that reads as follows: “Faith is a bird that feels the light
and sings while dawn is still dark.”
This is a quote from the famous Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore. It perfectly captures the essence of what the
Lord communicated in Hebrews 11 so long before.
Alongside the biblical definition of faith, God also provides
to us the answer of where faith, specifically saving faith, or faith that leads
to salvation, comes from. Ephesians 2:8 leaves
no doubt: For by grace you have been
saved through faith. And this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of God.
In the salvific context to which Paul applies it here in Ephesians, we
can clearly see that God is the source of saving faith. The ability to believe and thereby be rescued
from damnation by the grace of God is sourced in God Himself. It is He alone who doles out this capacity
for faith that we require in order to enter into fellowship and relationship
with Him.
These two concepts, the definition and the source of faith,
are readily apparent to students of Scripture.
But, I want to ask another question.
Namely, how does God produce this saving faith? What are the means and the mechanisms He
employs in order to unlock the potential in a human heart and mind to respond
to the gospel, or the good news, about Jesus Christ? I will provide my answer to this question up
front and then spend the rest of my time attempting to defend that answer.
I think that God produces saving faith in a human heart by
acting upon the experiences, the situations, and the encounters with the
gospel, both through the written form of it in the Bible and the experiential
form of it in the lives of authentic Christians, that we have faced in
life. He uses these pre-existing
building blocks by expounding upon them and unveiling the truth about Himself
within them in order to confirm His own character through the rational
sensibility of our understanding. In
other words, He uses things that are seen, or known, in order to confirm things
that are unseen, or unknown.
A wonderful illustration of this can be found in the first
chapter of the gospel of John. This
chapter covers a lot of ground, but at the end of the chapter, in verses 43 to
51, I think we can see an example of what I am talking about. It is the account of the calling of Philip
and Nathanael. These two men would
become part of “the twelve”, Jesus’s trusted inner circle of disciples. These were the men upon whom the Lord would
eventually confer His apostolic ministry, so that they would continue to spread
the good news about Him after His ascension into Heaven in the due course of
time.
I want to begin in the middle of our passage and then work
outward from it. John 1:47 reads: Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him and
said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Frankly, this was an astonishing
statement. Jesus had never met this man
Nathanael before in his life. To issue such
a bold declaration of the makeup of Nathanael’s character was either the height
of lunacy or the revelation of some previous knowledge that Jesus had. Nathanael was certainly not blind to the
strangeness of such a greeting. We can
see that in his response in verse 48: Nathanael
said to Him, “How do you know me?”
This was a perfectly reasonable question. This man, who Nathanael had never laid eyes
on before, had just commented on things that He should have no way of knowing. Nathanael’s curiosity was instantly aroused
and his interest piqued. I think this
was precisely Jesus’s intent. He was
setting Nathanael up for the answer to the question that Jesus knew he was
going to ask. And the Lord gives His
reply in the remainder of verse 48: Jesus
answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I
saw you.” If Nathanael had been
interested before, now his senses were stoked to a fever pitch, as evidenced by
his reply in verse 49: Nathanael
answered Him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!
You are the King of Israel!”
Now, I want to stop and be frank. Nathanael’s response in verse 49, according
to human wisdom, was utterly ridiculous.
For him to take one demonstration of supernatural power and deduce from
that, that the man talking to Him was deity, indicates that either Nathanael
was a lunatic, or that something else was going on here. For that matter, how could Nathanael have
known for sure that any power from God was even on display at all? Jesus might have just happened to be passing
by the tree Nathanael was taking refuge under and that is how He saw him. Why did Nathanael immediately leap to the
conclusion that Jesus was “the Son of God” and the “King of Israel?”
Is this nothing more than a demonstration of God’s ability to
supernaturally produce, out of nothing, the ability to exhibit saving
faith? I do not think so. I believe there is something else going on in
this encounter between Christ and Nathanael.
We can see several clues scattered through the passage, both before and
after the text we have read so far.
First, we have great insight into both Philip and Nathanael’s
relationship and their world view. They
were clearly friends, as seen in the fact that Nathanael appears to be the
first person Philip sought out after Jesus called him. Observe this interaction between the two in
verses 43 to 45: The next day Jesus
decided to go to Galilee. He found
Philip and said to him, “Follow Me.” Now
Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We
have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Also, these two friends were students of the text. They were studiers of the Hebrew Bible. Notice how Philip phrased his revelation to
Nathanael: “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets
wrote.” Philip was referring to the
numerous Messianic passages, or Scriptures pertaining to the Messiah, that are
found in the Old Testament. In
particular, he was referencing Deuteronomy 18:15. In that verse Moses wrote: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a
prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to Him you shall
listen.” The fact that Philip and
Nathanael were familiar with these Old Testament references to the Christ
indicates that they were men of the text.
This can also be observed in Nathanael’s second reply to
Jesus, that we saw before. He called
Jesus the “Son of God” and the “King of Israel”. These titles would only have been used by
someone who was familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures which prophesied both the
role the Messiah would play as well as the nature of His character. Psalm 2:7-9 was probably one of many texts
that Nathanael was familiar with: I will
tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten
you. Ask of me, and I will make the
nations Your heritage, and the ends of the earth Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and
dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Nathanael was aware of Messiah’s deity. He was also aware of Messiah’s role as the
ruler of Israel. The only way he would
have known this is if he had studied the Scriptures. I think it is clear that Philip and Nathanael
were men of the text. Further, I believe
this was a critically important factor in how the Lord Jesus approached
Nathanael in John chapter 1.
Consider the first statement Jesus made to Nathanael. He begins in verse 47 by saying: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there
is no deceit!” Now, was this merely
a case of Jesus reading a man’s heart and knowing what was in him? That is certainly something our Lord was
capable of doing. The very next chapter
in John confirms that He had this ability, in John 2:25, which says that He: needed no one to bear witness about man,
for He Himself knew what was in man.
I think it is more than that.
I believe that not only did Jesus know what was in Nathanael’s heart,
but He also knew precisely what Nathanael was doing under that fig tree, and it
was that knowledge He was playing upon. I
think Nathanael was studying Scripture when he was under the fig tree. Specifically, I think he was studying the
account of Jacob in Genesis 27 and 28.
John does not explicitly state as such in the text. However, I think he offers us a number of
clues and circumstantial evidence that help us to arrive at this
conclusion. The first clue I have
already covered. Philip and Nathanael
were men of the text; students of the Hebrew Scriptures. The second clue is in Jesus’s final words of
the chapter. After Nathanael proclaims
Him to be the Messiah Jesus responds, in verses 50 and 51: Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig
tree,’ do you believe? You will see
greater things than these.” And He said
to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels
of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
Jesus was not making fun of Nathanael here. He was not brow-beating him for having
premature faith. What He was doing was
pointing out to Nathanael two things.
First, that Nathanael still was not grasping the enormity of Jesus’s
perception and omniscience. Second, that
if Nathanael was impressed already, he, to coin a phrase, “hadn’t seen nothin
yet!”
Jesus’s statement about heaven opening and angels ascending
and descending on the Son of Man is a direct reference to Jacob’s dream vision
in Genesis 28. In that account, Jacob
makes camp at Luz. When he goes to sleep
he has a dream which is recounted in verse 12: And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and
the top of it reached to heaven. And
behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! The dream continues, and God speaks to Jacob
from the top of the ladder. The Lord
reveals Himself as the God of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob’s grandfather and
father. And this God of his fathers
affirms with Jacob the same covenant He had made with Abraham and Isaac before
him.
In the dream, the ladder, or staircase, represents the means
by which God descends to commune with man.
The angels serve as God’s messengers who communicate the words of God
directly to mankind. Jacob woke up and
he got the point. He renamed Luz to
Bethel, which meant “the house of God” because he thought that the location had
special significance as the place in which God would communicate to man.
Now here comes Jesus, 1800 years later. He expands the symbolism of Jacob’s dream and
reveals Himself as the staircase! Notice
how Jesus rephrased the dream. He said
that Nathanael would see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending
“upon” the Son of Man, Himself.
It is Jesus who enables the relationship of God to man. It is He who is the actual means of God’s
descension to man’s level and man’s ascension to God’s level. Christ is the conduit through Whom worship is
now to be given to the Father. And,
although Jesus could have simply been utilizing a great Old Testament patriarch
to make His point, I think there is more to it than that. I think Jesus used Jacob’s dream because that
was exactly what Nathanael was reading about under the fig tree!
With that in mind, go back to verse 47 and notice Jesus’s choice
of words: “Behold, an Israelite indeed,
in whom there is no deceit!” The
word in Greek, which is translated here as deceit, is dolos (dah-los). It means
deceit, cunning, or treachery. But here
is the thing. There are several synonyms
in Greek that mean almost the exact same thing.
Jesus could have used apate
(ah-pah-tay), meaning deception. He
could have said dolios (dah-lee-os),
which means dishonest. He might have
used plane (plah-nay), or error. Even planos
(plah-nos), meaning deceiver would have fit the context. Why did our Lord choose dolos? I do not believe it
was purely a matter of a random choice of several similar words.
The Hebrew Bible that both Philip and Nathanael would have
been familiar with was not actually written in Hebrew. It was written in Greek. In the third century B.C., Ptolemy II of
Egypt sponsored the translation of the Hebrew Torah into Koine Greek. This was because most of the Jews at that
time were fluent in Koine Greek but not Hebrew.
So Ptolemy assembled a translation team of 70 Jewish scholars who went
to work and produced a translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint.
In the Septuagint, the translators needed to choose a Greek word
to replace the Hebrew word that described Jacob in Genesis 27:35. Our English text reads thusly: But he said, “Your brother came
deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.” The word used in the Septuagint for the
description of Jacob’s character, deceitful, is dolos. It is the exact same
word that Jesus used to describe Nathanael’s character, by stating that he was
not dolos, or not deceitful. Also, remember that Jacob was later renamed
to Israel, which is the form of address Christ used for Nathanael; an Israelite
indeed. All these dots must have
connected together in Nathanael’s mind.
As if that was not enough, then Jesus really ups the ante by providing
the ultimate interpretation of the dream of Jacob that Nathanael had been
considering. In one master stroke of a
sentence the Lord explains not only that Jacob’s dream had messianic
implications, but that He Himself was the fulfillment of those implications.
So, I believe Nathanael was studying the Scriptures under
that fig tree. I think he was looking
into the life of Jacob in Genesis 27 and 28.
Jesus of course knew this, knowing the heart of man as He does, and He
used this knowledge to pierce right to the heart of Nathanael. I think it was this understanding that dawned
on Nathanael; not only did this man know where he had been, not only did He
know what he had been doing, but He knew exactly what he had been thinking
about. And it was Nathanael’s awe at
Christ’s power that caused him to respond as he did: “Rabbi, you are the Son of
God, you are the King of Israel.”
Seen in this light, the second statement that Jesus made to
Nathanael takes on a new significance.
Again, remember the first thing Jesus said, in verse 47: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no
deceit!” Then in verse 48 He
declares: “Before Philip called you,
when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
There are two levels of depth that Jesus is operating at with these
two sentences. At first glance, on the
surface, the second appears to be more profound than the first. But I think the second statement served to
unlock in Nathanael’s mind the truth that it was actually the first statement,
which while initially seemed less penetrating, was actually by far the deeper
of the two.
Jesus’s first words, that Nathanael was a true Israelite
without guile, were easier to say but harder to prove. The second statement, that Nathanael was
under a fig tree, was harder to say but easier to prove. It was more difficult for Jesus to say that
He saw Nathanael under the fig tree. But
it was easier to prove because it could be handily verified by Nathanael’s own
experience. On the other hand, it was
quite easy for Jesus to say that Nathanael was a true Israelite without
guile. Yet it was much more difficult to
prove that because the veracity of the statement was intangible and
unverifiable.
We can see another example of Jesus working like this in Mark
chapter 2. In this chapter we read of
the account of the paralytic and his friends.
Jesus was in a house teaching.
The paralytic’s friends brought him to see the Lord for healing, but the
crowd was so great they could not get in.
So, the resourceful men went up on the roof, dug a hole in it, and
lowered their disabled friend down into the middle of the crowd where Jesus
was. Jesus, upon seeing their faith in
His ability to heal, responded to the paralyzed man in verse 5 with: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Some scribes were in the home. They became upset at hearing Jesus’s
words. In verse 7 Mark records their
thoughts: “Why does this man speak like
that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” The Lord’s response in verses 8 through 11 is
of particular relevance to us: And
immediately Jesus, perceiving in His spirit that they thus questioned within
themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your
hearts? Which is easier, to say to the
paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and
walk’? But that you may know that the
Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – He said to the paralytic –
“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”
In the case of the paralytic, anyone could say that his sins
were forgiven because there was no way to verify the truth of such a
claim. But no one could tell him to get
up and walk unless they actually had the power to make such a miracle
happen. Jesus’s point is that the
forgiveness of sins was the greater of the two miracles. Although, from a surface level point of view,
the healing of paralysis was the more demonstrably miraculous, in terms of eternal
significance having one’s sins forgiven is of vastly greater weight. So then, the healing of the body served to
authenticate the healing of the soul that had already taken place.
Going back to Nathanael in John chapter 1, we can see the
same principle at work but applied to a different situation. Jesus’s first statement, that Nathanael was a
true Israelite without deceit, was far deeper and more perceptive than His
second statement, that He had seen Nathanael under the fig tree. But the problem was that the first statement
sailed right over Nathanael’s head initially.
So, Jesus used the obviousness of the second statement to cause
Nathanael to recognize the miraculous nature of the first statement. In other words, the seen became the proof of
the unseen.
Allow me to paraphrase and re-state the situation in a
different way. I think Jesus was saying
the following to Nathanael. You are a
true descendant of Jacob Israel.
However, unlike your fore-father, you are a man of integrity who does
not engage in deception. Like your
ancestor, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and
descending from earth to heaven. But,
unlike Jacob, you will see them doing so upon Me rather than a ladder or a
staircase.
My point is this. I
think that God produces faith in us just as He did with Nathanael. He utilizes our minds and our
experiences. He ordains the situations
and encounters we face in life. Then He
uses them and expounds upon them to confirm His own character by the rational
sensibility of our understanding. In
other words, I believe that God often does not simply create faith in us out of
“thin air”, so to speak. I think He uses
the building blocks that are already present within us and from them causes
something to occur that would never happen without His intervention; saving
faith springs forth and new life is born.
This is why the preaching of the gospel is so critically
important. It is the primary method that
the Lord uses to regenerate the dead heart of man. Consider the text of Romans 10, verses 13
through 17: For everyone who calls on
the name of the Lord will be saved. How
then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom
they have never heard? And how are they
to hear without someone preaching? And
how are they to preach unless they are sent?
As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the
good news!” But they have not all obeyed
the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who
has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing
through the word of Christ.
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