The Fundamental Nature of Faith
Sermon for the the 25th Sunday of Trinity. Kvinnherad Church, Norway, 19th November 2023. Texts: Genesis 15:1-6; Romans 4:1-8; Mark 2:1-12
Today, we have read three texts that all deal with something very central, the nature of faith. The word ‘faith’ can be used in different ways.
On the one hand, we have the content of faith, what we believe in (fides quae creditum, ‘the faith which is believed in’). That means all the truths we as a church hold fast to. For example we believe in the triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), we believe that the Son became flesh, etc. During baptism, we express this, as we recite the Creed.
On the other hand, we have the act of believing, what we believe with (fides qua creditum, ‘the faith with which it is believed’). This is the focus in the texts today. They all concern the faith we have in Christ, the act of faith. When the Lutheran reformers talked about faith alone, this was what they were talking about. We cannot save ourselves, but everything is given by grace. And we can accept this in faith, in trust, and through this, we share in salvation.
In today’s Gospel, we see this trust in practice. A man was paralysed, but four of his friends carried him to Christ, because they trusted that Christ could make him well. In fact, they were so sure of this that when they couldn’t get through all those listening to Christ, they just as well went up to the roof. There they broke open the roof and lowered down the stretcher. And when Jesus saw their faith, both those who were carrying and the one who was paralysed, he looked at the man, and said: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
The scribes reacted negatively to this, because only God can forgive sins. But Christ did not challenge this. He only showed them that he had authority, by also healing the paralysed man. He was thus made whole in two ways – he could walk again and he had his sins forgiven. What Christ is saying is not that it is not God who forgives, but that he is God. God became man, in Christ. And by believing in him, we will be saved.
We also see this in the two other texts, from Genesis and Romans. In the first text, it is written about Abram (who was later renamed Abraham). He “believed the Lord,” it says, “and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:6). In the second text, St. Paul brings this up to explain to us what faith is. He points out that Abraham was not saved or justified because he was good or intelligent, but because he trusted God. He believed in God. “Now to one who works,” says St. Paul, “wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Romans 4:4-5).
Faith, then, is the fundamental attitude we have towards God. And through this act of trust, we are partakers of salvation. In one of our Lutheran confessions, Confessio Augustana or the Augsburg Confession, published in 1530, it says:
Likewise, [the Lutheran churches] teach that human beings cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works. But they are justified as a gift on account of Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins. God reckons this faith as righteousness (Rom. 3[:21–26] and 4[:5]).1
Through faith, then, we are justified “as a gift” (or “freely,” as it can also mean, from the Latin word gratis). Yes, because that is exactly the point. It is given to us completely free of charge. Through the grace of Christ, with the gifts he gives us in the word and the sacraments, we can receive in faith. And then we get everything that is given to us there, completely free. That is the foundation of Christianity. We do not need to struggle towards God, because He came to us, as one of us, and He gives us whart is His, completely free, out of grace.
But it doesn’t stop there. This does not only concern salvation in isolation. This is about our relationship with God and with reality in general. Believing is not something you do blindly. You believe in what you trust. When you approach a bridge in your car, you drive over it because you trust that it can hold you up. You have confidence in the bridge and in those who built it. To believe is first and foremost to have trust. And this is not only ‘religious.’ Believing is actually the most fundamental phenomenon in human life. Everyone believes in something, we all have a worldview that lies there as a fundamental fact that we cannot quite prove.
When you look out the window and think it’s going to rain, you don’t know, but you have experience. This is what we mean by faith, namely our fundamental worldview. It is actually quite impossible to live one’s life without faith. Everyone has an idea of how the truth should be perceived and everyone has an idea of what is right and true.
When you taste something, see something, sense something, you cannot actually know 100% that what you experience is true, the only thing you can do is trust it or doubt it. We think we can know the truth, but not completely. St. Paul puts it like this, in 1 Corinthians 8:2: “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge.” This is connected with the fact that God is unknown and incomprehensible to us. We cannot fully understand Him, and thus what he has created will also be unknown to a certain extent. You cannot know that the bridge you are about to walk, cycle or drive over will hold you up. You just have to believe it. And if you don’t believe that, then you won’t use it. Creation thus has in it a ‘touch’ of the unknown. Yet we trust in things, because God is good. Because faith is not about being blind, it is about the attitude we have towards the truth. Without faith, we really know nothing. We cannot know everything for sure and everything has a touch of faith, trust and doubt.
Belief is thus the most fundamental phenomenon in human life. Everything is imbued with faith and trust. We can only live normal lives if we trust each other, that you trust people and that they trust you. This is important, because it tells us that what St. Paul is saying today is not just purely ‘religious.’ It is therefore a completely fundamental attitude to existence.
The most fundamental and unique truth in Christianity is not that there is a God. That is not unique. But that God became flesh, became a human being, is completely unique. In Christ, we find the centre.
In Him, the divine and the human are fully and completely united. And when we are justified by faith, we partake of this. We become one with Christ. And because our calling as humans is to be fully and completely united with God, we are fully human only when we share in Him. Therefore, Martin Luther could say that the doctrine of justification, that we become one with Christ through faith, is what fully defines man. Because God has become man in Christ, the word “man” has been given a new definition. As Norwegian Knut Alfsvåg puts it: “The word “human” thus no longer describes something infinitely remote from God, but something inseparably united with him.”2 Humanity, then, are not separated from God, but united to Him, without separation but also without confusion. We become one with God, but we remain human. This can only be grasped in faith. We can trust that in Christ, and through this faith, we share in the divine. Yes, the Bible goes so far as to say that in him we “become participants in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
So remember this today. Have faith in God, trust Christ, and grasp this fundamental truth, that salvation is given to us completely free of charge. We don’t need to struggle. For, as Christ says in today’s Gospel (Mark 2:10): “The Son of Man” – Christ Himself, as Gud og man – “has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And He has that precisely because He is not only true man but true God. This is the centre and it gives meaning to everything else.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
For a translation, see The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000). For Confessio Augustana, I quote the translation of the Latin text. For a critical edition of the Latin and German originals, see Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vollständige neuedition, ed. Irene Dingel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).
Knut Alfsvåg, Christology as Critique: On the Relation between Christ, Creation, and Epistemology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 46 (cf. 44-48). Alfsvåg’ book is an excellent introduction to Luther’s fundamentally Christian Platonist leanings. He also treats Nicholas Cusanus, Johann Georg Hamann, and Søren Kierkegaard. Also see Knut Alfsvåg, Divine Presence: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2021) and Knut Alfsvåg, What No Mind Has Conceived: On the Significance of Christological Apophaticism (Leuven: Peeters, 2010). For the Norwegian original of Divine Presence, see Knut Alfsvåg, Det guddommelige nærvær – en innføring i kristen teologi, 2nd ed. (Stavanger: VID/MHS, 2021).