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Faith as Provision
(Totally and Only)
By John R. Gavazzoni
Man's insistence on claiming some credit for his salvation, and the faith by which we are saved, is often revealed in all its brazenness even, or especially, at a scholarly level. But even, or especially, at that level a carefully considered skepticism is called-for, as indicated by the Amplified Bible's translation of John 6:28, 29. Utterly ignoring the plain meaning of the Greek text, it renders vs 28 as, "They said, What are we to do that we may [habitually] be working the works of God? -- What are we to do to carry out what God requires?" (29) Jesus replied, "This is the work (service) that God asks of you, that you believe in the One Whom He has sent---that you cleave to, trust, rely on and have faith in His Messenger."
As helpful as the Amplified Bible is in many instances in expanding the meaning of the Greek text, we find in this case those translators who most certainly knew better, inserting into the text of vs 29 a popular evangelical presumption, i.e., that God ASKS OF US (emphasis, mine) that we believe in the One He has sent. No, that's not at all how Jesus replied to those questioners. In this case, the KJV is simply better: "This is the WORK OF GOD (emphasis, mine) that ye believe on him whom the Father has sent." It's not something God asks of us, rather our believing in the One He has sent is His work. As plainly simple and basically accurate as the KJV is, the following "nails" very specifically what our Lord really said.
In his translation of the New Testament, Amplified, Expanded, (with) Alternate Renderings, Jonathan Mitchell, makes the meaning strikingly clear: "Jesus considered and answered, 'this is God's work (the work whose source is God): that you folks would continuously trust and progressively believe into that One whom He sends forth with a mission (or: into the One Whom That One sent forth as an Emissary) '"
It is evidently clear that in the case especially of western evangelicalism, the faith that pertains to the soul's salvation, is presented as a conditional requirement, that when met, guarantees salvation for the one seeking said salvation. It's clearly a quid quo pro arrangement: on man's end, he is to believe what God requires of him to believe, and in turn, God grants him absolution from sin and spiritual regeneration.
Some might protest that I'm over-simplifying, because I haven't included the general evangelical consensus that man must be aided by God in order to believe. It's a fair protest in some ways, except that, while confessing the sinner's need of being grace-enabled in order to believe (sometimes referred to as prevenient grace), they nevertheless, insist that a person's salvation requires that he exercise his free will. In the end, one must make one's decision for Christ. One must choose, as required, to believe before being enabled to believe. In the end, I get saved, because I chose to obediently believe what I was required to believe.
That's not Bible-faith. Not at all! The Bible kind of faith, has nothing to do with any sort of conditional requirement, but is rather totally and only about God, according to His sovereign choosing, sending His Son into the world that through Him the world might be saved; God then follows through consistent with that sovereignty, choosing when and where, "in due time" to send the Spirit of His Son, including His Son's faith, into our hearts. (Paul, in Romans) We don't get saved by our choosing to believe as a conditional requirement, but rather we get faith WITHIN the Spirit of God's Son when He is sent into our hearts.
By that faith, the faith OF Christ, we are made righteous, as in, rightly related to God/rightly aligned with God/being brought from our end to be in agreement with God from His end by Christ rightly relating to God in us by HIS faith. Righteousness is, at its heart, the right response to the love of God. Jesus, in us, knows and understands the Father's love perfectly, and by that perfect knowledge, He, being utterly persuaded of the always-faithful, never-failing, integrity-pure, unconditional love of the Father, trusts completely in the goodness of that love.
God enjoys, He finds pleasure in, the fruit of His love in our hearts, as that love, in His Son, in us, returns to Him in the Son's righteous faith-response. His faith is our faith, because His life is our life, and His life includes His faith. This is what Paul really meant by a person's faith being reckoned as righteousness. With Christ...in union with Him...we, as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, are caught up into that Source of all rightness, i.e., the faith that works by love within the Deity which is a Father to Itself as a Son, and a Son to Itself as a Father. For us to be made co-participants in that righteousness that constitutes all righteousness, is the work of God. It is totally, and only, God's work.
Let's go deep into that relationship: the faith of the Son in the Father has no element of independent, self-generated faith-responsiveness on the Son's part. The principle that, "we love God because He first loved us," applies primarily to the love-faith relationship between the Father and the Son. "Faith works by love," i.e., faith is energized by love. God's love produces the called-for faith-response response of the Son inclusive of us. Faith is not a requirement. Love provides faith. Faith is Love's provision...its very constitution.
Faith is entirely a provision, not in any way a conditional requirement. There is no element of quid pro quo in that divine arrangement which is THE divine economy, THE divine administration, THE real divine dispensation. The theology of dispensationalism has distorted what dispensation is all about. God dispenses the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, and by that, accomplishes all that I have laid out above.
Our God is the God of provision. The only requirement involved is God requiring of Himself to bring mankind into the righteous relationship His Son has with Him. Christ is God's provision for man, and that provision includes the faith of Christ. Christ's faith is our faith for Christ is our life, and His life includes His faith. Christ "is made unto us wisdom from God (the wisdom that trusts the love of the Father), and righteousness (the inherent rightness of that trust), and sanctification (we are set apart from all that is alien to that relationship), and redemption (ransomed back to God from enmity to the right-relatedness of faith)."
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