Romans 10:13-17 “For "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (14) How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? … (17) So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
We have seen in the previous section that even though God gives to each person the gift of faith as part of their DNA so to speak, by the time they reach maturity many no longer exercise their faith, and especially not in God. So how is it possible for people in that condition to get saved, for we have also seen that without faith it is impossible to be saved? The above quoted passage of scripture gives us some insight into the answer to that question. Many, in reading this passage “faith comes by hearing”, interpret it to say that people get faith when they hear God’s word proclaimed. In other words, their viewpoint is that people initially don’t have faith and the faith to be saved is only imparted to them when they hear the gospel of salvation proclaimed. But that interpretation of scripture contradicts the truth that everyone is given faith by God when He creates them. A more accurate translation of the above passage however, would be “faith emerges by hearing” or a better way of saying that would be “faith is activated by hearing”. In other words people already have faith, but their faith has become dormant so to speak, and so when people hear the truth of God’s word proclaimed to them, their faith becomes activated once again, and they can thus exercise their faith by believing the message of the gospel and thus be saved. And so, we can see that when we rightly divide the word of truth that there is no contradiction in scripture.
Luke 17:5-6 “And the apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." (6) So the Lord said, "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.”
Another reason why it is important for us to correctly interpret the previous quoted passage of scripture is because it refutes the false narrative that says, because faith comes by hearing, the more we hear God’s word the more faith we will have. And so with that erroneous interpretation of scripture the logic is applied that if we eventually get enough faith then we will finally be able to move mountains and walk on water. The problem with that interpretation of scripture however is that it strongly implies that, initially at least, believers don’t have enough faith even though God requires them to live by faith. And so believers that are taught that error find themselves constantly trying to acquire more faith so that they can finally live as God intended them to live, while some just give up, saying that they will never have enough faith. Simple observation however shows the narrative of believers having insufficient faith to be false, for if we just look at salvation for example, we can clearly see that the moment people hear the truth of the gospel preached they are immediately able to respond in faith and are thus saved. They do not have to repeatedly hear the same gospel message proclaimed to them until they finally have enough faith to respond and be born-again. As we can see from the above quoted passage of scripture, the apostles initially had the same misconception about faith, for they also mistakenly thought that if they could somehow get enough faith, that they would be able to walk in the same amount of power that Jesus walked in. They had not heard the false narrative about increasing their faith through hearing God’s word however, and so they simply asked Jesus to increase their faith, thinking that He had the power to do that. Jesus responded to their request however by telling them that faith the size of a mustard seed (which is the smallest seed there is) was more than sufficient to move mountains. In other words Jesus was telling them that they already had more than enough faith to move mountains, and that it was not insufficient faith that was preventing them from walking in the same power that He walked in.
Matthew 14:15-18 “When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food." (16) But Jesus said to them, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." (17) And they said to Him, "We have here only five loaves and two fish." (18) He said, "Bring them here to Me.”
In this section we are discussing the biblical truth that all the Lord’s saints have more than sufficient faith to live this life just as God intended, i.e. by faith. The above quoted passage of scripture highlights that same truth for us, for in this passage Jesus challenged His disciples to do what He eventually had to do Himself, which was to feed the multitudes. Jesus would not have instructed the disciples to do something they were not capable of doing, for that would have made Him unjust, and Jesus is not unjust. In fact the scripture teaches us that Jesus was testing His disciples on this occasion to see how they would respond to His challenge (John 6:5-6). And so we see that the disciples responded in the same manner that most saints would, they looked at their own natural resources to see if they were able to carry out Jesus’ instruction, for another gospel account reveals to us that they checked to see if they had sufficient money available to buy food for everyone and found out they didn’t have nearly enough (John 6:7). They then looked at how much food they had available and obviously realised that five loaves and two fish were going to go nowhere in feeding such a large crowd of people. And so clearly the disciples failed the Lord’s test. So why is that? The reason is because they looked at their own natural resources to solve the problem, whereas Jesus wanted them to look to God’s supernatural resources to solve the problem, and He wanted them to use their faith to do that. Clearly Jesus knew that the disciples had the faith to do that or He would not have instructed them to feed the multitude in the first place. And so in the end Jesus had to use His faith to perform the miracle of feeding the multitude with just five loaves of bread and two fish. But the main point I wanted to make from this account is that as far as Jesus was concerned the disciples had all the faith they needed to do exactly what Jesus did, and that same truth is applicable for every saint today, for we have all received the same gift of faith.
Michael E.B. Maher
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