What Does It Mean to Have Faith?
September 11, 2024
Fr. John Riccardo
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, "but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
Indeed someone might say, "You have faith and I have works." Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.
(James 2:14-18)
“Repent and believe!”
As we all probably know, those words were spoken by a man traveling around Galilee in the Middle East in the 1st century.
However, they weren’t spoken by Jesus, nor by John the Baptist. OK, of course they were, but they weren’t the only ones who said them. That fact alone should make us pause and consider whether or not we truly understand what they mean. The person I had in mind was a man named Josephus, a historian and wealthy Jewish man, who later became very involved in the Jewish-Roman war (on the Roman side).
I am increasingly of the mind that we don’t really grasp what faith is, or what it means to say, “I believe.” There’s a book by Matthew Bates entitled Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. It’s been mentioned here before, but it’s worth bringing up again. It’s an excellent and very readable book, that can help us grow in our understanding of not only what James is writing about, but what Jesus is calling for – thirsting for! – from us. Which brings me back to Josephus.
What does it mean when Josephus says, “Repent and believe in me”? He’s certainly not telling someone “how to get to heaven.” He’s more or less saying, “Abandon your current way of acting (in this case, by waging war against Rome) and put your trust in me.” Such an exhortation relates to action. Bates argues, as do many other scholars, that we need to re-hear Jesus (and James) in a similar tone when He speaks about faith and belief.
Believing in God, having faith, means so much more than most people think it does. If we were to keep reading James, the next verse says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” From this we can conclude that faith isn’t some mere intellectual assent to the proposition that there is a God. The demons, after all, have that.
That said, to have faith is to intellectually assent to all that is professed in the Creed by the Church; it’s just not limited to that. That’s what James is getting at. It can’t stop there. If it does, it’s of no avail – “Faith without works is dead.”
What else is necessary, then? Well, much the same as what Josephus was asking for. To believe, to have faith, is to turn our allegiance from anything and anyone else (starting with self) and towards God. Here is where faith becomes very, very political. To say “Jesus is Lord” were seditious, dangerous words when the New Testament was being composed. The Romans, after all, proclaimed that Caesar was lord – and savior, and the bringer of peace to the world. Such words, such faith, led to many of our brothers and sisters being martyred.
“Jesus is Lord” are still dangerous words. And to proclaim them is to publicly announce to anyone and everyone that our allegiance belongs to Him and Him alone; that He is first in our lives; and that we promise to strive to live out that allegiance in our words, decisions and actions. Oh, to be sure, weak as we are, we will constantly fail. It’s one thing, though, to fail; it’s another thing entirely to not even try, or to flat out refuse to conform our lives to Jesus and all He commands. Such would mean that we do not have faith.
ACTS XXIX Prayer Intentions
September 2024
For our Board meeting, that it will be a time of both hope and encouragement for our Board as we gather in faith and fellowship to share the fruitfulness of the mission God has entrusted to us.
For our time in the Diocese of Gary, IN at the Disciple Shift Conference at St. John the Evangelist, that many will hear and be surrendered anew to the gospel and be mobilized for mission.
For our time in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, that God will bless our time there with His Spirit as we seek to build on the great work already happening in the local Church there.
Prayers of thanksgiving for God’s provision in enabling us to begin translating The Rescue Project in German, Portuguese and Mandarin in order that the gospel would reach even more nations.
For our Board of Directors, our Episcopal Advisory Council, our benefactors and prayer partners.
For God’s protection upon the ACTX XXIX family
and their respective families.