The Commentariat Speaks (34)

The subject of faith has been on my mind this week, and we’ll revisit it tomorrow in our usual Monday “Anonymous Asks” post. Faith does not come easily to many, and even those of us habituated to trusting in Christ to meet our physical and spiritual needs on a daily basis find occasions when we too struggle to believe the Lord will do the things he has promised.

Far more important in the long run is faith that saves. One man’s honesty about his personal struggle to find it touched me the other day, and I’d like to share it with you.

This Elusive Thing Called Faith

“Daniel” writes as follows:

“I am 60, a retired Naval Officer. I have searched for faith my whole life … Churches unnerve me, the story of the torture and killing of Jesus fills me with dread, not hope, and I do not know what to do anymore to try and catch this elusive (to me) thing called faith.

Do you have a piece of advice I can try? Thank you.”

I sympathize. A few churches unnerve me too, the old high churches especially. I’m also not terribly surprised to find the cross troubles Daniel greatly. Viewers found Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, which graphically depicted the Lord’s sufferings and death, both praiseworthy and “emotionally draining” and “extreme”. One critic called it “horribly depressing bloody gore”. But another, more familiar with scripture, pointed out ways in which even Gibson’s extended depiction of the torture and killing of the Lord Jesus, which the famous director surely intended as historically accurate, fell short of the apostolic and prophetic accounts of what actually occurred.

The Limits of Imagination

The crucifixion of Christ was truly a dreadful moment in history, made all the more awful by our Lord’s perception that his Father had turned away from him and that he bore the sins of the world. Perhaps only our general Western unfamiliarity with violence and suffering during these seven decades of relative peace and social order preserve us from feeling the dread of the cross as we might under other circumstances. We simply can’t imagine what the Lord Jesus went through on our behalf.

No, the story of the cross does not inspire hope. I think that’s a normal reaction for someone coming to it without all the pieces of the puzzle. If the story of Jesus ended in his crucifixion, it would indeed be cause for despair.

But our faith does not turn on our perceptions about the awfulness of the sufferings of Christ. Believing in them, even if we do so in the most graphic terms, cannot save us. It’s only in what follows the cross that the believer finds his hope.

Faith in What?

“But God raised him from the dead.”

So Paul preached at Antioch in Pisidia. We do not have a dead Christ but a living Lord. It is in this that we put all our hopes. In fact, if Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. Everything turns on that. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus was the pivot point of every gospel message because it signified that God was satisfied with his atoning sacrifice, and that all who put their trust in him will be raised with him too. He was delivered up because of our trespasses and raised because of our justification. That’s what Paul was telling the Romans.

No, the truth in which God requires you to put your trust in order to be saved is not the horror of the cross but the glory of the resurrection. It is in trusting in Christ’s finished work and declaring him Lord to the world that we are saved from the wrath to come.

A Strange, Wonderful Story

Now, perhaps for Daniel the truth that Jesus was raised from the dead is as hard to swallow as it is to dig his way through the grim historical record of Christ’s murder. I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s where he needs to put his focus. He may still wonder, “Why would God do that?” He may still think, “What a strange story!” But if you work your way through the implications of Jesus Christ having been raised from the dead, all the questions you might have about your own security for eternity are settled with absolute finality. If God is indeed as holy as the scriptures claim, then of course our salvation must come at a tremendous cost. If sin is as offensive to him as the scriptures claim, then of course it makes sense that none of us could ever pay the price for it. Only God himself could accomplish it.

Can anyone doubt that a God who would send his own beloved Son to suffer and die on my behalf loves me beyond anything I can imagine? Can anyone doubt that he will finish the work in my heart that he started on the day I said, however tentatively, “I believe”? “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

A Piece of Advice

So here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. If, like Daniel, you find the story of Christ’s crucifixion grim and daunting, redirect your attention to what came afterward. That’s what every gospel message of the New Testament does. They all point us to a Savior raised from the dead, exalted to highest heaven, seated at the right hand of God, and waiting eagerly for the Father’s signal to return for those who love him to take us to be with him forever. Start reading and thinking about that, because it is the single most critical element of the Christian faith.

Faith is not so elusive. It comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But it depends which words you’re reading, doesn’t it. If you’re stuck back at the cross, you haven’t finished the story.