What does it mean to live by faith? Is it only speaking to life after death? The faith of the righteous has a particular
content that makes it specially relevant to this life. There are current applications to this rule
of faith listed by the prophet: getting unjust gain for your house, building a
town with blood and founding a city on iniquity, getting a neighbor drunk and
exposing his/her nakedness, and idolatry.
These all point beyond the immediate towards the larger picture. It is not only defrauding the purchaser of
your house but all fraud designed to enrich.
Building a town with blood isn't only related to violence but recall
that life is in the blood and therefore unjust treatment of laborers is in view
as well. It is not only getting someone
drunk to take advantage of them physically, we can be intoxicated without
stimulants, we can believe a vision that causes us to expose ourselves to shame
in pursuing it as well. The righteous
shall live by faith has a present application, the life of faith is a life that
chooses righteousness over self-interest and self-aggrandizement.
The rich man lived by his wealth while the poor man,
Lazarus, was forced to live by faith.
The rich man had all he wanted, his needs were cared for by his wealth
while Lazarus was forced to beg from others but his hope, apparently, was in
the Lord. After death, however, it was
Lazarus who received a reward while the rich man spent eternity in the flames,
apart from God. His fate is clearly
connected with his failure to respond to the need of Lazarus when he had the
means to do so. In the movie Groundhog
Day, Bill Murray's character is stuck in one day in his life which repeats
itself many times over until finally, it is February 3rd. The turning point seems to be when he not
only sees the old beggar on the street but responds to his need. His response, however, is insufficient and
the man dies, his role is not to save apparently, but to respond in loving
kindness, doing all he can do. The rich
man begs now, first for water and then for someone to go to his family and warn
them but the Lord says it wouldn't make any difference if they received a witness,
they wouldn't have the faith.
James says that faith is more than intellectual assent to
propositional truth. Faith extends
itself, risks much, for the sake of love.
He likens the life of faith to the prostitute Rahab who forsook her
citizenship and alliance with her kinsmen in Jericho to align herself with
Yahweh and His people by informing the spies of the fear of her people and then
hiding them from those who would arrest them.
She took action that potentially threatened her own life for the sake of
these foreign men. In return, she was
rewarded by being saved from the destruction of her own city. We know a bit more about her as well, she was
the mother of one of the truly righteous men of the Bible, Boaz, who married
the Moabite Ruth. This, then, makes her
an important link in the chain, the great-grandmother of king David and
therefore indispensible in the line of Messiah.
Faith is a way of life not only a way of believing.
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