The Faithful

Psalm 31:23

B.

“Love the Lord, all you His saints!  The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.”

Many people have a tendency to believe the defining virtue of Christians to be their love.  And I suppose this may be true in some cases (but even in those only in certain situations) though I do not believe it to be true in all cases—even most cases—that the Christian faith or any particular individual within the faith is primarily defined by love.  It is true that love is the superior virtue inasmuch as it is the culmination of all virtue and good judgment.  However, to compare ourselves against the fulfillment of all virtue is about as helpful as trying to find a gray scale in the midst of the color black.  We are given instruction in virtue and it is certainly true that we must pursue what God commands us to value in the way He commands us to do so, but it is certainly not true that we are able to properly embody any virtue at any given time in our lives.  To believe that our faith is defined by the proper expression of virtue is to be misinformed about Christianity and about virtue itself.  In fact, I find that this misguided belief about the Christian faith and its virtue is what unbelievers believe about Christians, and it is why they believe they are justified in bringing accusations against the sincerity of Christian individuals.  For a Christian to hold this belief will, at best, lead to disillusionment with the faith, or at worst, cause them to become at odds with it through failure or self-righteousness.

            Like all things in creation, our identity in Christ is built into us—taught to us—in various ways, both physically recognizable and spiritually mysterious, through the investment of the one resource characteristic of all things worth having—time.  By virtue of this reality, we as Christians are in unique places and at individual levels of maturity at all times. This process is not facilitated by our ways but by God’s, and for this reason, none can be judged by the flawed perception of sinful man, since virtue, ultimately, is not an act of the body but motive of the heart.  Though expression of virtue uncharacteristic to the world is what we are seeking, we must be sure we are seeking God—the giver of virtue—and not virtue itself, lest we mistakenly find our own selves to be the object of our affection.  That being said, I believe the most fundamental and practical virtue of our faith, and also the one that sets us apart from the very beginning, is not love, but faithfulness.

            Notice that when Paul takes the time in his letters to describe the saints as a whole, he does not call them ‘the loving’, ‘the gentle’, or ‘the good’, but the faithful.  He says, ‘Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.  Moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.’  Faithfulness is a peculiar virtue in that it is not defined so much by the quality of an action, but by the presence of action.  It is the resolve to act according to one’s commitments in spite of all circumstances.  Is not this where all virtue begins—perseverance leading to character?  I cannot, with honesty, proclaim that I have ever shown love with complete sincerity.  I am far too aware of the grumblings and of the resistance in my heart.  What I can do, however, is to act according to what I can perceive love to be—small as my perception may be.  All virtue is defined as virtue only if it is done in spite of vice.  We turn the other cheek though our bodies ache to revile.  We give our last dollar though we groan from selfishness.  We fall on our knees in prayer though our hearts persuade us that God is not listening or that He does not care.  Spiting vice makes spite, in this case, a virtue.  It is faithfulness to the commitment we have given Christ, and to the stewardship we have been given in return, in Christ, not to embody virtue, but to act according to virtue.

            Our comfort is this: before we are able to achieve sincerity in the faith and joy in love, we must first discipline our bodies to the virtue of faithfulness, and fortunately, faithfulness has far more to do with what we do than how we do it.  It is the one virtue that we may do with sincerity since it only requires showing up to the place we have been called and doing what we have been called to do.  We let God deal with our evil hearts.  John says, “For, whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and He knows everything.”  This means that it does not matter how we feel about our personalities or our sincerity in the practical outpouring of our faith.  Do not cringe when the world or our hearts condemn us as hypocrites.  For neither has the authority to judge, but only God, Himself, knows all things.  We are not called to impress man, but to seek God in all that we do, being faithful to Him and what He commands us to perform in spite of our ability to maintain the substance of what we seek.  So, be faithful in all that you do, seeking God and doing for Him first.  For it is faithfulness that will begin to define our love and shape it since it is faithfulness, first, that defines God’s love as that which never fails.  We must remember that He is faithful even when we are not.  But, because of His faithfulness, even in failure we have an ability to be faithful if we use our inadequacy to draw closer, by grace, to Him who offers us His infinite sufficiency