Life by Faith

Recently, I ended the day troubled by world events. The next morning the Lord guided me to an old scholarly work I had never heard of. As I read it, God restored my faith. I shared the text with friends, and they too were encouraged. So now I make it available to you.

This post is excerpted from The Great Texts of the Bible written over 100 years ago by James Hastings, a Scottish pastor. Though the language is old fashioned, the content will renew your faith in the God of the Bible amid the uncertainties of the present time.

Life by Faith

The just shall live by his faith.—Habakkuk 2:4.

There is no single text in the Old Testament that plays a larger role in the doctrinal discussions of the New Testament than this little sentence from the prophecy of the prophet Habakkuk.

I.  The Original Meaning of the Words

This text was written on the eve of a Chaldæan invasion. The heathen were coming into Judæa, as we see them still in the Assyrian sculptures—civilizing, after their barbarous fashion, the nations round them—conquering, massacring, transporting whole populations, building cities and temples by their forced labour; and resistance or escape was impossible. The prophet is perplexed. What is this but a triumph of evil? Is there a Divine Providence? Is there a just Ruler of the world? 

Belief in the protection of Jehovah had been the main element in the religious conviction of the Jew. Was it not shattered to the dust? The cry of the prophet went up in his perplexity with the question, so often asked before and since, “O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear?” “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity; wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously?”

Habakkuk was assured, by that word of the Lord which came to his inward spirit, that the vision of a Divine order in the midst of the worlds confusions would come at the appointed time in the fulness of its truth. “At the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it.” The attitude of patient, trustful expectation was the truest and the best for him. That expectation should not always be disappointed. “It will surely come; it will not tarry….  Behold, his [the invader’s] soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just by his faith shall live.”

Faith means vision. The constant sense of things unseen and eternal. Faith means trust. Daily confidence in the faithful Creator, the loving Redeemer. Faith means expectation. The anticipation of the recompense of the reward. Faith is the root, hope is the blossom, charity is the flower of true religion. Let me beware of the technical, the tangible, the formal in my religious life; let me keep intact the ethereal cords which bind me to the upper universe, and which bring into my life the spiritual electricity on which everything depends. I live by trust, love, admiration, fellowship, revealing themselves and justifying themselves in obedience.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 34.] 

We are now in a position to appreciate the meaning of this great prophetic utterance. A righteous one, exercising true faithfulness, shall live, shall endure; and (to add the Hebrew idea) shall endure affliction and reproaches with patience and long-suffering. The righteous man through his faithfulness shall live perpetually.

“But the righteous man shall live by his fidelity.” Righteousness may be hated, persecuted, maligned, slandered, imprisoned, beaten, burnt, crucified over and over again. That is in one form or another the lot of righteousness on earth. Nevertheless, righteousness is life, sin is death. That was essentially the oracle of Habakkuk, to Judah, and to all mankind.

II.  The Deeper Interpretation

The note struck in Habakkuk rings on through the whole New Testament. We find the words quoted three times, and applied so comprehensively as to embrace the whole Christian life within their scope. In Galatians 3:11 they specially refer to the beginning of that life, the justification of the sinner who confides in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. By faith he passes from the curse of the Law into the position and privileges of a son of God.

In Hebrews 10:38 the text is quoted in another sense, and refers to the continuance of the Christian life in steadfastness and strength through all its probation of earthly trial. The life which was received by faith is maintained by faith to the very end.

Then, in Romans 1:17, St. Paul quotes the words in a way which seems to include both of these ideas. From first to last faith admits man to the blessings of the covenant of grace. God unveils His righteousness little by little, stage by stage, to the believer. It is the eye of faith that sees the unfolding vision, the hand of faith that grasps the ever-opening blessing. The revelation of the gospel in its justifying, sanctifying, transforming power is given, not from faith to struggling, as we often mistakenly think, but “from faith to faith.”

Faith remains as of old the condition of the highest life. To the prophet the supreme idea of life is safety, preservation from peril. To the Apostle the supreme idea is entire devotion to the will of God. He alone lives who can, in his measure, say after Christ, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.” It is that life which a man shall live who has, and maintains, a living faith in God. And nothing else but faith can possibly inspire or sustain that life. A living faith maintains the higher life of righteousness, and the higher life of righteousness upholds, and ever reinvigorates, the living faith. Faith cannot but work out righteousness. Righteousness cannot but make demands that ennoble faith.

Perhaps if Gods existence had been one of those things of which formal proof could be given to the world, the acknowledged fact would have lost its interest. It would have killed individual inquiry.… We should have lost all those touching and noble associations which gather round the name of faith, and should have had instead a cold science—common property, and so appropriated by none. As it is, each man has to prove the fact for himself. It is the great adventure, the great romance of every soul—this finding of God. Though so many travellers have crossed the ocean before us, and bear witness of the glorious continent beyond, each soul for itself has to repeat the work of a Columbus, and discover God afresh. And this can indeed be done; but intellectual argument is not the sole nor the main means of apprehension. At best it prepares the way. Moral purification is equally necessary. Then spiritual effort, determined, concentrated, renewed in spite of failure—calm and strong prayers in the Name of Christ—enable the believer to say, like Jacob after he had wrestled with the Angel,—“I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”1 [Note: A. J. Mason, The Faith of the Gospel.] 

Christian faith is an attitude of the soul which wholly honours God. It takes Him simply and implicitly at His word. It rests upon His promises. It asks no questions. The fact that God has spoken is sufficient; the soul trusts, and in its trust is again at peace with God. Mans oneness with God was ruptured at first by unbelief. It was through the door of doubt that sin entered into the world, and death by sin. “Yea; hath God said—?” Faith reverses the subtle whisper of the tempter and trustfully accepts the word of the Living God—“Yea; God hath said”; thus faith speaks, and there faith rests.

Faith in Christ is trust in a Person, not belief in a book; that the ultimate foundation of faith is personal knowledge of Christ, and its originating cause the personal testimony of those who in our own time, and before it, have trusted in Christ and have found their faith verified in spiritual experience.” This statement is true to the heart of things and to the fundamental elements of spiritual and discipular experience. Christ is as real to the Christian experience as the air we breathe. [Note: D. Butler, Thomas à Kempis, 75.] 

It is by such faith that men live. The life of our spirits is a gift from God, the Father of spirits, and He has chosen to declare that unless we trust to Him for life, and ask Him for life, He will not bestow it upon us. The life of our bodies He in His mercy keeps up, although we forget Him; the life of our souls He will not keep up; therefore, for the sake of our spirits, even more than of our bodies, we must live by faith.

If we wish to be loving, pure, manly, noble, we must ask these excellent gifts of God, who is Himself infinite love and purity, wisdom and nobleness.

If we wish for everlasting life, from whom can we obtain it but from God, who is the fulness of eternal life itself?

If we wish for forgiveness for our faults and failings, where are we to get it but from God, who is boundless love and pity, and who has revealed to us His boundless love and pity in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world?… By trusting in Him, and acknowledging Him in every thought and action of our lives, we shall be safe; for it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

Tolstoy had decided that for him at least life was simply not possible without faith.  “I had only to know God, and I lived: I had only to forget Him, not to believe in Him, and I died. What was this discouragement and revival? I do not live when I lose faith in the existence of a God; I should long ago have killed myself if I had not had a dim hope of finding Him. I only really live when I feel, and seek Him. What more then do I ask? And a voice seemed to cry within me, This is He, He without whom there is no life! To know God and to live are One. God is Life! Live to seek God and life will not be without Him. And stronger than ever rose up life within and around me, and the light that then shone never left me again.”[Note: J. A. Hutton, Pilgrims in the Region of Faith, 143.] 

It is by such faith that men endure. Faith is an attitude of the soul which is instinct with tremendous moral power. It is an energizing principle of such potency that where it operates the whole current of the life is changed. It fills the soul with a new inspiration. It uplifts the most sordid. It emboldens the most timorous. It banishes the fear of the craven and slays the lust of the profligate. It impels the slothful to a life of holy activity, and sends the most selfish forth into the world in self-forgetting service. Let faith live in a human heart, and there is nothing man will fear, nothing he dare not attempt. All things are possible to him that believeth.

By faith men endure in the midst of the greatest troubles and calamities. They so confide in the righteous God and in His declared promises, they remain so entirely loyal to the heavenly vision and hope which are beyond the ken of the natural man, that they are secretly strengthened in the darkest hours to hold fast their integrity. Faith in God means confidence in Him, fellowship with Him, devotion to Him; and such whole-hearted trust is the inspiration and guarantee of highest character, even when the stress and strain of life are most severe.

 God! Thou art love! I build my faith on that.
 Even as I watch beside Thy tortured child
 Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast by him,
 So doth Thy right hand guide us through the world
 Wherein we stumble.…
 I know Thee, who hast kept my path, and made
 Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
 So that it reached me like a solemn joy
 It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love. 
 [Browning, Paracelsus]  

The Great Texts of the Bible by James Hastings is in the public domain. This portion of the book can be read in its entirety at Bible Hub.