“A Justification For Faith”

A Sermon Based Upon Galatians 3: 1-29,  NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.  

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Pentecost 9,  August 2^nd, 2015

Recently, a multi-million dollar General Survey of the United States, funded by the National Science Foundation, claiming to give the most accurate data on American society,  reports that that since 2012 there has been a three point rise in secularity.   What this means is that in the last two years 7.5 million people in the United States have left religion and the church.

LEAVING FAITH

Now the fastest growing religious group in America are those who both prefer and profess ‘no’ religion at all.   When asked about their religious preference, 1 out of every 4 Americans will answer “none”.   Up until the 1990’s this group of ‘nones’ only registered in the single digits, but now ‘nones’ make up 21 percent, or 1/4^th of the population.  Amazingly, or alarmingly, there are just about as many who claim to have no religion as there are Catholics in the U.S.

When we look around us, we know this is all too true.   Less and less is religion, church, or matters of faith important to American’s and some of them are our own children.  People aren’t going to church like they used to.   More and more say they never pray.  The number of Americans who never darken a church door is at an all-time high of 34 percent.   More than a one-third of Americans never attend a worship service (other than a wedding or funeral service).   Even though a majority of Americans still say they believe in God or that they sometimes pray,  the percentage of those who say they ‘never’ pray rose from 10 percent in 2004 to 15 percent in 2014 (From Religion News Service, quoted in Christian Century, April 1th, 2015).

People are leaving church and losing faith.  They are losing faith in religion as valid approach to life’s questions.  They are losing faith in institutions that used to be the cornerstone of society.  Some are even losing faith in America, in the moral, legal or political structures of culture.  There is a sense of loss, failure, or pessimism growing that includes people losing faith in themselves, or their own future.   Whereas the youth of the last generation believed that they could work hard and be just as successful or even more successful than their parents,  most of the youth of the current generation believe that they will have less than their parents.  They are losing ‘faith’ and it is happening fast.

What will happen to our Freedom, our freedom for faith and our freedom as a country, when a nation, or a people, and even when the religious lose faith?   Will we also watch our secular freedom deteriorate as faith and faithfulness continue to decline?  Is there a real connection between how people worship and the kind of freedom they enjoy as a society?  Evidently, our founding Fathers thought so, because they included “religious freedom’ as a part of the nation’s bill of rights.   Although our nation’s founders cherished freedom “from any particular religion” to be just as important as the freedom to have ‘for’ a particular religion,  even the most secular of our nation’s founding founders would never had imagined that the fastest growing religious group of ‘we the people’ people would be those who have absolutely ‘none’.  The Great Constitution of the United States, as well as the Bill of Rights, and all the Amendments to the Constitution, including the right to Bear Arms, and the Rights of every human being,  were all based upon a ‘faith’ that America would be and remain a moral and religious people.  You could even argue that the freedom to be an atheist is based upon a Christian understanding of God-given freedom to accept or reject the truth.   But what the Founding Fathers never saw coming or could never have imagined was how morality and justice could continue in a nation when the majority have no religious faith at all. 

So, with the majority of people without faith and now that people of faith are only another minority opinion, is there a ‘justification for still having faith’ at all?  If we live in a democracy where the majority rules, can we now imagine a world where core ideas or beliefs of legitimate faith could eventually we ‘outlawed’?    We already know that oppressive religions and totalitarian governments do outlaw Christianity in parts of the world.   Could a secular majority begin to encourage a new kind of ‘secular’ religion as a better alternative to the historic, Christian faith?   In our changing cultural context,  what will having Christian faith mean in a country now exploring what it means to be free from faith?  

While I have no easy answers to any of these questions, we all know the world around us in changing, and fast.    How do we come to grips with this new culture that challenges our belief and our existence?    As biblical Christians, we may find some help in how the early Christian movement was also under ‘threat’.   Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians in hope of countering one particular threat.   Paul not only reaffirms his belief that people need to have faith he Jesus,  but he also affirms how much people with faith in Jesus also need to understand the nature and gift of their freedom.   According to Paul, faith and freedom should go together like ‘hand in glove’.  

What was so shocking to Paul, and should still be shocking to us too, is to learn ‘who’ was and still is, the most dangerous threat to faith.   As Paul reminds us,  it is the very people who were ‘eyewitnesses’ to the death of Jesus and the truth of the gospel (3.1), who also had ‘received the Spirit’ of Christ, who are now returning to ‘works of the flesh” (3:3).    What made the loss of faith so tragic, was that it these who left their faith knew exactly what they were doing.  Their loss of faith was intentional, deliberate, and obvious to themselves and to everyone else.    What Paul wants to remind them is that if they choose to walk away from ‘faith’ in Christ, they need to also realize just what ‘freedoms’ they will lose in the process.   If they walk away from ‘faith’ in Jesus Christ, there will be other losses as well?  What are they?

LOSING BIG

A very popular show on television is named ‘The Biggest Loser’.  It’s a play on words of course, because this is a program about very obese people who win big by losing a lot of weight.   In other words, they win by losing.  Many people today think that when they ‘shed’ their faith in Jesus Christ that they too are winning by losing.   But what they gain by losing faith may end up being more than they bargained for.  This exactly what was happening in Galatia and it is why Paul begins his discussion telling them how ‘foolish’ they are to consider leaving their faith in Christ.

The first thing Paul says they will lose when they leave ‘faith’ is ‘the Spirit’.   When you leave faith you return to living by rules, regulations, and laws.   Is this what you want?  Paul asks.   “Does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you through the law?   Don’t God’s gifts come to you through belief and faith?  If you leave now, wasn’t all that God has done for you for nothing?  (3: 2-5).

Secondly, if you go back to living under the law, you return to live under a ‘curse’.   When you live under the law,  and you fail to obey all the things in the law commands, then you returning to living under a curse.    Paul’s point is that if you leave faith, aren’t you are going backward, rather than forward.    It’s like going back to live in elementary school when you have already graduated into adulthood.   Living by rules and laws justifies no life.   It’s like moving into a prison where you have lost all freedom.  That’s not the way to live.  Only faith in Christ can redeem from the curse of having to live under law, because Christ has become ‘a curse for us’ and given us new life ‘in the Spirit’.

Finally, if you leave faith, you will lose will ‘lose’ both the ‘blessing of Abraham’ and the ‘promise of the Spirit’.    Many, who are not students of the Bible might struggle with Paul’s whole argument about what we lose when we ‘leave’ faith.   What in the world do these losses have to do with life today?   The answer is everything.   For you see, ‘the blessing of Abraham’ is the truth that God desires to bless the whole world with ‘faith, hope, and love’.   But this blessing of will never fully come without having faith in the gift and in the promise given by the Spirit.   According to the New Testament, only the Spirit can ‘guarantee’  that the blessing and the promise will be fully fulfilled in us.   Only the Spirit can free us from the weakness of the flesh.   Only the Spirit can free us from the limits of the law.   Only the Spirit can promise redemption in Jesus Christ.    Unless we live in the Spirit that guarantees the fulfillment of the promise,  we can’t be made righteous.   Since the righteous live by faith, only they ‘receive the promise of the Spirit through faith’.   When a person leaves the faith, they sin against the Spirit and return to living by their flesh, and they also end up forfeiting everything the Spirit promises ‘through faith’.   This is tragic, because everything God has to give is part of a ‘promise’ that will be given to us.  To leave faith, is to lose the ‘future’ of God’s saving work that is only ‘guaranteed’ by faith, through the Spirit.

Though Paul is speaking directly to Jewish Christians,  we might think about leaving or losing  faith for other reasons.   We might skip returning to law, and just go straight ‘back’ to living by the ‘flesh’.   Besides, as some say,  who needs ‘religion’, when all we want and need are the ‘facts’?  Well, what are the ‘facts’ you end up with when you lose faith?  Have you thought about that?   Recently,  after the wealthy Silicone Valley Executive named Dave Goldberg’s accidental death, his wife, Facebook’s executive CEO, Sheryl Sandburg, posted about her great loss of a great husband and father: “As we put the love of my life to rest today, we buried only his body.  His spirit, his soul, his amazing ability to give is still with it.  It lives on in the stories people are sharing of how he touched their lives, in the love that is visible in the eyes of our family and friends, in the spirit and resilience of our children.  Things will never be the same – but the world is better for the years my beloved husband lived.”

Those were beautiful words as a tribute, but where is the ‘promise?’  What Paul wants the Galatians to know is that if they leave Christ, this is all they will have left—a memory without the promise of hope for the future.   There is little ‘hope’ for any kind of future for the ‘soul’ without the ‘promise of the Spirit through faith’ in Jesus Christ. 

SAVING FAITH

So, how do we ‘save’ faith?   In other words, how do we ‘justify’ having faith in a world that lives now, and is content only to live by what is now, and by the memory of what used to be, instead of living by the promise of what still will be in Christ?   Isn’t this the difference that the Christian faith brings?   When we leave faith we not only leave life in the Spirit and return to living under the curse of the law, but we also forfeit future hope because only living by the ‘promise of the Spirit’ through faith in Jesus Christ can bring us any kind of real hope for the future.

Can Jesus Christ bring you any kind of hope that is worth believing in and living by?   This is the heart of Paul’s concern for the Galatians that can be applied and asked directly to us.   As Paul goes on to say,  God ‘granted’ the blessing to Abraham ‘through a promise’.     The law was part of the promise, but not the fulfillment.  The law was our ‘teacher’ to show us how much we need Jesus and the Spirit to take us to the fulfillment of the promise.    And the fulfillment is that ‘by faith’ we are no longer slaves of the law, slaves of time, nor slaves of each other.  But because ‘faith has come’ we can all become ‘children of God through faith’.    It is by our baptism into Christ Jesus that we all destined together toward this that is‘promised’  so that we are no longer different, but we are all ‘one in Christ Jesus’.  Through ‘faith’ we are all entitled to the promise as God’s ‘children’ and ‘heirs’ to what God has promised that is still to come.

In the recent movie ‘Son of God,’ a new 'life of Jesus' movie some interesting additions were made to the biblical account based on historical records outside the Bible.   What the writers did was not to go against or counter to the Bible Story, but to enhance it by showing just how difficult life was for the Jew in Jesus’ day.  They were living under the oppression of Rome.   They were living under the oppressive Jewish leadership who were still using the law against the people more than for the people.  My favorite part of the new gospel depiction came in the opening of Jesus ministry, when Jesus’ teaching was interrupted by the crippled man who was lowered down to him through the roof of a home.  As in the NT account, the very first thing Jesus does is to announce to this cripple that his ‘sins are forgiven’.  This was important, because a person who is sick or invalid first wonders what they have done to deserve such a life.  Jesus wanted the man to know that his ‘sins’ are not the problem.  God has forgiven his sins.  Jesus has forgiven his sins.   His sins are not the problem.   As the local Jewish rabbi objects to a human having such power to forgive sins,  Jesus does not answer the charge of blasphemy with mere words.  Jesus looks at the crippled man again and then turns to the Rabbi and asks him,  “Is it easier to say ‘your sins are forgiven’ or to say ‘get up and walk’.  With this, the crippled man ‘gets up and walks’.  The crowd is amazed.  The rabbi is silent.  Who can argue when the ‘promise’ of healing, salvation, and hope has come alive? 

This is what you don’t have when you lose faith: You lose the Spirit.  You lose hope.  You lose the future.  You lose the promise.    What the gospel teaches is not that everyone will get the ‘healing’ they want,  through faith in Jesus Christ,  but it does teach us that everyone will receive ‘the promise of the Spirit’ and will become ‘children of God’ who live toward the fulfillment of everything.  This is a promise and a fulfillment that begins now, by faith.   It is a promise that comes to all who ‘live by faith’ awaiting the promises of God to be unfold and be fully fulfilled.    

Before you walk away from faith, think about if you want to lose the only thing worth living for and living by?   The ‘facts’ of life are out to get everyone one of us,  and only ‘faith’ can save.   And the only faith that can redeem anything is the kind of faith that will redeem everything through Jesus Christ.     Without faith we are ‘imprisoned’ without hope, Paul says.  Without faith, we have no promise.    Faith is 'gift' you don’t want to lose.    Without it, you will lose everything.  With it, you will have all the promises of God.   Do you still have faith?   You’re gonna need it.  In fact, you need faith right now.   Faith is a gift God can give you.   He can give it to you just like he first gave it to Abraham when he ‘believed’.   Faith is life greatest gift.  Amen.