When I was a child, I “gave my life to Jesus”. It was at the end of a week long summer holiday club at my local church. I didn’t really know why I wanted to do it. I just knew that it sounded like a good idea and that I couldn’t see why I wouldn’t do it. So I went into the little side room along with a few others and one of the adults there talked it over with me briefly before helping me to “pray the prayer” and “accept Jesus into my life”.
When I was a little older, I was baptised. I made a choice to be baptised because I recognised that I didn’t always live a life that followed in the footsteps of Jesus. I wanted that to change. I wanted to lay down a marker, and so in front of my faith community, I made some declarations about what I believed, and got dunked to symbolise my commitment to following the way of Jesus, and as a mark of my salvation.
Fast forward a few years and I’m at my university fresher’s fair signing up to join the Christian Union. In order to do so, I have to sign a “doctrinal statement” confirming that I agree with a series of theological assertions. Not doing so would mean not joining in with my fellow Evangelicals, so I didn’t give it a second thought. It all looked OK at first glance, anyway.
In all of these stories, I found myself focussing not on the statements or the beliefs but on my actions. But as I look back on these life events, I see a world around me focussing not on my actions but on my beliefs.
Why do my beliefs matter so much? Because “the Bible says so” is the answer I am usually given. What that actually means is that there a bunch of places in the New Testament where Jesus, and the writers, refer to what we believe. I’ll give two examples:
In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul writes that “we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but in faith in Jesus Christ”. It turns out that translating is hard work, and that there is more than one way to render the ancient Greek that the letter was written in. Here’s an alternative:
We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ
That’s quite different. In one, “faith” is equivalent to “belief” – the faith is mine, and it is in Jesus Christ. That means that I believe something, and I may or may not also then act a certain way as a consequence. But crucially, the faith is my faith. It is verses such as this one that lead us toward ideas of necessary individual salvation. [I’ll post some links at the end of the post to some more in depth explanations of why this is a better rendering.]
If on the other hand it is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ we are forced to confront two things: Firstly, that the “faith” isn’t mine at all, it’s Jesus’ faith. The word “faithfulness” – and the underlying Greek, cannot easily be interchanged simply with “belief” as we have come to use it. That is, belief is an intellectual assent to a proposition. “I believe that God exists” doesn’t evoke quite the same understanding as “I am faithful to God”. It’s also difficult to imagine that Jesus faithfulness was a purely intellectual thing.
So what does it mean? Well, put it this way: a person does not make amends with God through our actions, or our beliefs but instead by Jesus’ faithfulness to God. Paul is trying to explain why Jesus’ teaching is relevant to those who are not Jews. His rationale is that what Jesus does is makes the way to God not one of legalism, or creed, but available to anyone who chooses to walk the path. We are not made right through a decision in a church, through a baptism, or through good theology. We are justified as an ongoing process, choosing to follow the way of Jesus. No shortcuts. No statements. No magic. Just faithfulness.
So I think perhaps we should stop talking about what we believe. I don’t believe it. I choose to try to be faithful to it. Because I recognise that Jesus’ faithfulness is a model to follow that leads to things working out as God would like them to be.
I said earlier that I’d pick two examples, so here’s my second. Included for the avoidance of any doubt:
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever is faithful into him shall not perish but have eternal life.
The inclusion of “into” is a bit clunky but is more technically accurate, and helps us to see what is being said here. Into is active. It implies a movement of travel towards God. It doesn’t imply a set of beliefs. Instead, it says this: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever is faithful to him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
The other part in the bargain is the thing we receive: eternal life. There’s a whole other blog post waiting to be written about that. But rather than seeing it as a transaction: my belief for “eternal life”, things become much richer. If I am faithful to the way of God, if I follow Jesus, I will not perish, but instead discover what it means to have eternal life.
Now that’s something I do believe.