Why I Am No Longer an Evangelical (Part 5d)
Practical Faith as Instrumental Means to Persevere to the End
God is neither a Stoic, nor a Kantian, nor a divine positivist (re: Divine Command Ethicist). The ethical good is purposed to achieve the ontological good within the framework of the telos of each Covenant to which human beings have entered by consensual agreement.
(The Mosaic Covenant or Constitution was a social covenant, in the fashion of social contract theory, purposed for the common good of the community. From its very inception, it was never intentioned for individual Justification, nor individual Salvation, although it becomes the conduit means through which Justification and Salvation were attainable. For whether in the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, Justification is from out of faith and Salvation is through faith.
Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.1
Abiding by the counsels of God in Christ to the best of one’s honest understanding is the instrumental means by which one’s faith perseveres unto the end. These are means to ends, as Christ Himself elucidated.
Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them: He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent crashed against that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears My words and does not act on them is like a man who built his house on ground without a foundation. The torrent crashed against that house, and immediately it fell—and great was its destruction!”2
This becomes more evident if one walks the Christian walk, that is, as Martin Luther noted, one’s faith is an experimental and experiential faith, that is, if one predicates/premises one’s life and operates one’s actions/decisions upon the Full Counsel of God.
For one soon finds, on the meandering path to the Celestial City, that practical disbelief, even in tertiary issues of the Christian Faith, has an insidious logical and psychological propensity to undermine one’s faith in the essential doctrines of the Faith. Call it what one will, the Yeast Principle,3 the foot in the door, this dynamic is an ever-present peril. On the other hand, to the extent that practical belief is exercised, one’s faith in the God of Scriptures becomes more solid and sure-footed.
Nevertheless, a proper faith and relentless pursuit of the Kingdom and its ethic/ethos, even if that pursuit be flawed and meandering, will not be rejected by God in Christ. One will be preserved. One will persevere to the end, these being one and the same at different planes of God’s existence.
For this reason, one is enjoined to always “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,”4 and “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.”5 Presuming upon one’s assurance or, worse, presuming upon a doctrinal tenet like “once saved, always saved,” which is often misunderstood and abused, is a foolish game when eternal destines are at stake.
John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim Progress
Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never drive away.6
Human beings are, by virtue of their sin and injustice, exiles from Eden, the land of Milk and Honey (re: terrestrial Israel), and the Kingdom of God. This is not only a matter of divine justice, but also divine prudence. To permit moral criminals into and remain within a pristine environment is to allow that pristine environment to be marred, and eventually destroyed.
Justification, the formal basis of our salvation, accomplished through the Atonement of Christ and appropriated through the conduit of faith, provides God with a just amnesty scheme which allows these exiles to immigrate into Kingdom of God. But while Justification provides a potential convert with the legal license to immigrate into the Kingdom, that convert must endeavour to come to that Kingdom. A mere assent to this salvation hardly brings the immigrant to Ellis Island, so to speak.
In order for an exile to immigrate into the Kingdom of God, the exile must begin an arduous and perilous journey to that Promised Land, just as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim set his course on the narrow and winding path to the Celestial City. Herein, Justification by Faith serves as the narrow gate. It becomes the badge of legal authority which grants rightful entry into the Kingdom.
However, if one ultimately lacks a committed faith in Christ in the whole of His being, His assertions, counsels, and promises, one is liable to turn back (apostasy), go off course (i.e., heresy), fall into one of the many traps (i.e., persistent sin7), or become distracted on the way (i.e., Vanity Fair). One shall never reach the gates of that Celestial City or shores of that Promised Land and may even lose that badge of legal authority on the way.
This is not “works righteousness” or “Lord Salvation.” One is neither justified, nor even directly saved, because of one’s works. Justification requires the resting upon the finished work of Christ alone. However, Salvation is instrumentally accomplished through one’s works and their natural cause-and-effect ontological consequences, in order for one’s faith to endure unto the end, including keeping practical faith in Christ’s atonement for one’s Justification.
Genesis 15:6. Cf. Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6; James 2:23.
Luke 6:46–9. Cf. Matthew 7:21–27.
Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 1:5 – 6; Hebrews 12:15; Matthew 16:6, 12
Philippians 2:12
2 Corinthians 13:5
John 6:37
Hebrews 10:26–31