a right faith (short thought)

A right understanding of faith is essential to every Christian. In times past, the church gave great emphasis to teaching on the character of genuine faith, but in our modern world, we tend to shy away from casting doubt upon some one else’s supposed faith. We live in a time of relativism. We see it in how the bible is studied (everyone is allowed their own interpretation), we see it on our stance on sin (who are we to judge another), and we see it in our acceptance of every profession (I can’t know his heart). We ignore the black and white lines that the bible draws, and we tend to just want to keep everybody happy. Don’t rock the boat!
This attitude is horrifying. False conversion has always been a real threat and Jesus spoke so much on it (Matt 7:13-27; Matt 13:1-9, 18-50; etc) because the possibility is real. We must open our eyes to what is happening around us, the righteousness of God is revealed to faith: genuine faith not just a said faith. It is not enough to say “I am a Christian,” it is not enough to believe that you are saved. Conversion is not about doing something or saying something; that is works, and oh how many people trust in their works to get them to heaven. It is not in getting baptized, it is not in saying a prayer, it is not in joining a church. It is in trusting Jesus Christ to save you, and this is truly, truly, an amazing thing.
We take for granted faith in Christ because we don’t understand what it really is. Faith in Jesus Christ presupposes that we understand our sinfulness and God’s holiness and righteousness, faith presupposes that we understand that we are rightly deserving of eternal damnation, faith in Christ accepts that there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves. And then, faced with despair and hopelessness, faith looks to that Holy Righteous Judge and asks Him to save us. This is madness. We are saying that we are not going to trust in anything else, not even a little, but only in the work of Jesus to save us from eternal torment. We will not look to our intentions, our best efforts, our good deeds, we will do nothing to aid in salvation, just hope and trust that this Judge will pardon us on behalf of His son. And when we are tempted to trust, just a little, in how good we are now, how much we love God now, how well we keep His commandments now, how we long to serve Him now, we will shun those thoughts as the sinfulness that they are. We know that we can never, ever, be obedient enough, good enough, love enough to get us to heaven. True faith knows that there is no hope but Jesus and true faith will seek Christ as its only hope. True faith will always produce a godly repentance and a godly way of life. True faith is what Paul looks like, a man deeply humble and deeply grateful, serving out of gratitude and love, despairing of ever living for himself again, longing to be with Jesus and to worship Him forever! We would do very well to heed Paul’s warning/advice in II Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.” And think often on the words of Jesus, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” And also Peter, “be even more diligent to make you call and election sure…(II Peter 1:10).”