Faithfulness on a Higher Plane

Introduction

But the fruit if the Spirit is…faithfulness...

We come now to the seventh of the graces that are designated “the fruit of the Spirit” because each are by nature not to be found inherently in man or produced by man, but only produced in a regenerate man by the Holy Spirit. As repeatedly said, there are natural counterparts, but though they may be labeled the same, are essentially different. This seventh grace is translated in almost every English translation “faithfulness” with the exception of of the KJV which provides the translation of “faith.”

The fact of the matter is the greek word for faith and faithfulness is the same —pistis (peestees).

In the book of Galatians we see it translated both as “faith” and “faithful.”

It is translated as “faith” in two senses. First, In Galatians 1:23, “faith” is preceded by the definite article “the” as “the faith” to refer to the body of content of the Christian faith. Second, we find the translation of “faith” in its most common sense to refer to the exercise of faith in receiving the gospel, one’s surrender to Christ as his or her Savior and Lord. “Justified by Faith”.

Then there is a third use of pistis indicating faithfulness, being trustworthy, reliable and dependable. The context of Galatians 5:22-23 points to this use. Paul describes the graces that the Holy Spirit produces in believers. He is clearly not speaking of the body of content of Christian doctrine, and he is not talking about becoming a Christian. While it is possible from a language standpoint that he could be talking about living by faith, context points the the Holy Spirit produces In relation to others as an aspect of love. Thus he is talking about faithfulness, being trustworthy, reliable and dependable.

Again, the emphasis in all of these graces is on how we relate to one another, but it should be noted that when it comes to faithfulness, [SLIDE] our faithfulness to one another is largely rooted in our faithfulness to God. And our faithfulness to God is rooted in His faithfulness to us. Therefore we have to consider both.

As we have seen with each of these graces, faithfulness finds its origin in God. People apart from Christ may exhibit faithfulness at a certain level as marred image bearers, but only the Holy Spirit produces that which reflects the character of God in those who belong to Him.[SLIDE] God’s attributes are often spoken of in two categories—incommunicable and communicable. There are those attributes of God that are incommunicable meaning that they are only true of God and cannot be reflected or passed to us. God is infinite. We are not nor will we ever be. God is eternal. We are eternal beings after we came into existence, and thus are eternal in one direction. God is eternal in both directions. No matter how far back you go or how far forward you go, there is God. God is self sufficient needing nothing outside of Himself. We are not. God is immutable or unchangeable. He can never be anything more or less than what he is at any moment of time. God is omnipresent. His presence is everywhere. Then there are God’s communicable attributes which doesn’t mean that we can share or reflect those attributes to the perfection God possesses them, but that they can be reflected in us. Thus, we are to be holy, loving, longsuffering and as we look at today, faithful.

God is the standard and ground of faithfulness.

The fact of the faithfulness of God is sprinkled liberally throughout Scripture.

The Lord proclaimed it of himself when he granted Moses to see a veiled glimpse of His glory.

Exodus 34:6 (ESV)

6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,

The faithfulness God proclaimed of himself is affirmed by believers throughout Scripture:

Lamentations 3:22–23 (ESV)

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Psalm 108:4 (ESV)

4 For your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalm 117:2 (ESV)

2 For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!

1 Corinthians 1:9 (ESV)

9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Peter calls God, “a faithful Creator.” (1 Peter 4:19)

These verses are but a sampling that proclaim the faithfulness of God.

How are we to understand God’s faithfulness? Allow me to quote A.W. Tozer in the second volume of “The Attributes of God.”

“Faithfulness is that in God which guarantees that He will never be or act inconsistent with Himself. You can put that down as an axiom. It is good for you now and good for you when you’re dying. It will be good to remember as you rise from the dead and good for all the eons and millenniums to come. God will never cease to be what He is and who He is. Everything God says or does must be in accord with His faithfulness. He will always be true to Himself, to His works and to His creation.”

Then he goes on to say:

“Nothing can force God to act otherwise than faithfully to Himself and to us—no person, no circumstance, nothing.”

“If I can imagine someone who can influence God strongly enough to change His mind or compel Him to do anything that He hadn’t planned to do, or be anything that He isn’t, then I am thinking of someone greater than God—which is obvious nonsense. Who can be greater than the Greatest, higher than the Highest or mightier than the Mightiest?”

“The faithfulness of God guarantees that God will never cease to be who and what He is, just as His immutability guarantees that. You may remember what I said about the immutability of God—that if God changed in any way, He’d have to change in one of three directions: from better to worse, from worse to better or from one kind of being to another.”

“Because God is absolutely, perfectly holy, He couldn’t be anything less than holy, so He couldn’t change from better to worse. And God couldn’t get any holier than He is, so He couldn’t change from worse to better. Also, God, being God and not a creature, could not change the kind of being that He is. God’s perfection secures this. God’s faithfulness also secures it, because God can never cease to be who He is and what He is.”

Then in the next paragraph, he gives these wonderful words of counsel.

“Now that may sound a little dry, but if you get that inside of you and build on it, you’ll be glad you know it the next time you’re in a tough circumstance. You can live on froth and bubbles and little wisps of badly understood theology—until the pressure is on. And when the pressure is on, you’ll want to know what kind of God you’re serving.”

I wish I could stamp that paragraph on the most accessible part of your mind. There is such truth there. You never appreciate sound theology more than when you are being pressed. Pressure and tribulation has a way of accomplishing one of two things. Pressure has a way revealing the quality of our faith. Pressure has a way of verifying the authenticity of our faith or revealing the false nature of it. And if our faith in Christ is not authentic, then when we are squeezed by difficulty, our faithlessness to God will begin to emerge. On the other hand, if our faith in Christ is real, we are driven to the fact of God’s faithfulness, and in turn, his faithfulness stirs up our faithfulness. Our faithfulness is rooted in God’s faithfulness.

We can be faithful in times of temptation because we know:

1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV)

13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

When we feel as though we won’t be able to continue in the faith until the end, we can be faithful because:

1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 (ESV)

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

When we are in the thick of spiritual battle and feel as if Satan will surely devour us, we can be faithful when we remember:

2 Thessalonians 3:3 (ESV)

3 But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

When we have been unfaithful, filled with shame and embarrassment because of our sin, feeling as we want to shrink away rather than draw near to God, we can restore our intimacy with God and return to the path of faithfulness knowing that:

1 John 1:9 (ESV)

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God’s faithfulness never wavers and never fails so that as 2 Timothy 2:13 tells us that even if we are faithless, God will always be true to himself. We are a variable. He is the constant.

That God is faithful is the grounds for our faithfulness. Difficulty has a way of showing whether whether we are faithful. In the same way, our response to this world, whether we be conformed by it so that we are faithful to follow it rather than actively following Christ will expose unfaithfulness. This is not to say that if we are believers we will be faithful 100% of the time because God is faithful. We surely will not. But believers do not become settled into glaring unfaithfulness and certainly don’t live in a pattern of excusing it. A patterned lack of faithfulness, particularly if one knows they are not faithful to God in fundamental ways that He has made most clear in his word is symptomatic that one doesn’t know the faithfulness of God.

Will I prove to be a Judas or a Demas--like a seed sown among the thorns? Judas was one of the disciples and yet that he did not know the faithfulness of God was ultimately revealed in his unfaithfulness even though he externally did what the other 11 disciples did. Demas labored with Paul. Paul includes him with Luke as sending greetings to the Colossians (Colossians 4:14). But in 2 Timothy 4:10, Paul, in prison, soon to be beheaded found himself alone because Demas had deserted the apostle. But why? Was the price to high? That was surely a part of the reason. But that is not quite what Paul assessed. Paul says it was because Demas was “in love with this present world.” There it is. He had returned to his first, his priority love demonstrating his unfaithfulness to God and that he did not know the faithfulness of God.

Faithfulness must run deep and wide in our lives.

As God is faithful, and faithfully working in us, we are to be faithful. We are to be dependable. We are to be reliable. We are to be trustworthy.

What is the extent of this faithfulness?

A. Its breadth

1. Faithfulness in everything.

Paul said that the apostles and all ministers were stewards of the mysteries of God. He then states a general principle of stewardship.

1 Corinthians 4:2 (ESV)

2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.

That is the mark of a steward is that a steward is faithful. Scripture teaches us that we are all stewards, that is once we become believers, everything we have is to be viewed as belonging to God. We understand that when it comes to our bodies: “We are not our own.” That “We were bought with a price.” Believers, everything they are, everything they have belongs to God and they are to be stewards of it. When Paul gave the qualifications for the office of Servant (often called deacon) the qualifications spilled over to their wives which includes “faithful in all things” (1 Timothy 3.11).

2. Faithfulness in the smallest of things.

In Luke 16, Jesus talks about how believers should be with their wealth, their stuff. We are so sucked into materialism, stuff becomes a driving force in our lives. It is a big thing. Jesus said money, wealth was the little thing. He said that if we weren’t faithful as stewards of our stuff, which he says is a little thing how are we be faithful with the greater things. If we treat stuff as the big thing indicating our values reflect that we don’t understand the spiritual nature of true riches, how can we even be faithful in what is most important.

Luke 16:10–13 (ESV)

10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

B. Its depth—in the heart.

In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5 Jesus brought clarification to the shallow understanding of the law that was understood only as outward action. As long as you didn’t physically carry out an act, it didn’t matter what was in your heart. Jesus applied this to the context of marriage.

Matthew 5:27–28 (ESV)

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

He addresses adultery as a breach of marital faithfulness. He says, I don’t want you to think that you are faithful to your spouse simply because you didn’t physically carry out the act of adultery. Then he says this, and he is not saying what he says next to say that it equates physical adultery or is the same as physical adultery but rather that it is still a form of unfaithfulness. He says that if a man looks at another moment with lustful intent that he would fulfill if all the restraints were removed, he is guilty of adultery in his heart. In other words if you commit physical adultery, you committed that sin and the sin of adultery in your heart. Yet it is possible not to commit the sin physical adultery, but to be guilty of the sin adultery in the heart.

I don’t think Jesus was singling out faithfulness in marriage as the only arena by which faithfulness must be maintained outwardly and inwardly. I think it extends to all faithfulness. Faithfulness isn’t just outward conformity, but its a matter of the heart as well. That means faithfulness isn’t a just a matter of doing something or not doing something, but is accompanied by a heart that supports that doing or not doing. That is why Nehemiah 9:8 says of Abraham that God “found his heart faithful ” before him.

Faithfulness then is a vital grace in our Christian lives. To be called faithful is to speak volumes.

When we get quick mention of believers who we know little about, we know much when we are told they were faithful.

Peter mentions Sylvanus as a faithful brother (1 Peter 5:12).

Paul mentions Epaphras as “a faithful servant” (Colossians 1:7), Tychicus as “a faithful minister, and Onesimus as a faithful brother (Colossians 4:7-9).

So as we consider our own faithfulness from heart to action, we must ask ourselves: Am I faithful in all of our relationships?

Am I reliable? Are we dependable? Do we keep our word? We value reliability in those we receive something from. We don’t want fairly reliable surgeons, fairly reliable pharmacists, fairly reliable mechanics, fairly reliable builders, fairly reliable airplane pilots. Trapeze artists don’t want fairly reliable partners.

Am I faithful to God--faithful to the Father, faithful to the Son, faithful to the Holy Spirit? Have you made friends with the world and thereby made yourself an enemy of God, a spiritual adulterer? Do you love the world and the things that are in the world? If you do, John says then the love of the Father is not in you. Are faithful to the Holy Spirit understanding that the Holy Spirit lives within you and whatever you do with your body or think with your mind is either faithful or unfaithful to him.are we faithful to Christ in obedience (If you love me you will keep my commandments.)

Am I faithful to his Word? Do you hide it in heart that you may not sin against God? Do you let the Word of dwell, make its home in your heart? Are you a faithful student of the Word, a faithful hearer of the Word?

Am I faithful to His gospel? Do you stand on it, protect it, and live it? Am I ashamed of it?

Am I a faithful steward of all that God has given me—my time, money, abilities, spiritual gifts?

Am I faithful, reliable, dependable, trustworthy to my spouse? Faithful to your vows? Faithful to encourage and build up. Faithful to minister rather than manipulate. As a husband to be the spiritual leader, and as a wife a true helpmeet.

Am I faithful to my children? Do you keep your promises to them? Are you faithful to properly train them up in the way they should go? Are you faithful in taking the lead role in their spiritual development? Are you faithful to train them and appropriately discipline them when necessary, to give them what they need as priority over what they might want?

Am I faithful to my friends? Are you faithful to give support and encouragement in time of need? Are faithful to make your self available?

Am I faithful to your church family? Are you faithful to recognize the necessity of every member of body, never dismissing any member as unimportant just as we don’t consider any member of our physical body as unimportant. Are you faithful to build them, de-emphasizing their weaknesses and flaws rather than parading just as you wouldn’t parade a physical flaw in your own body. Do you do what you say? Is there a breakdown between what you say and what you do? Do you say you want and need their encouragement and fellowship but are unfaithful in taking advantage of the opportunities to do just that?

Am I faithful to your employer? Do you give work commensurate to your pay?

Am I faithful to myself? Do you make all kinds of promises to your own self that you break, to study God’s Word, to pray, to get more involved, to change habits that hinder your walk with God? Gap between what you say you want and what you actually do?

The lack of faithfulness doesn’t mean identifying an area you need to work on. It is revealing the deficiency is your spiritual life at the base level: walking by the Spirit.