What is Faith in Christ?

[Below, you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday, August 20, along with live stream videos of both our traditional and modern worship services.]

Matthew 15:21-28

Just before the event recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus had an encounter with Pharisees from Jerusalem. They confront Jesus for allowing His disciples to break God’s Law that said good religious folks must undergo ritual cleansing before eating.

Jesus explains that it isn’t the things that enter our bodies from outside of us that make us unclean in the eyes of God. Instead, it’s the sinful nature inside each of us that leads us to commit sins that makes us unclean. Jesus says, “...out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…” (Matthew 15:19-20)

Then, as if to demonstrate what He means about not being defiled by what comes from outside of ourselves, our lesson for today finds Jesus, the pure, perfect, holy, Son of God, going into territory that Jews deem unclean, the region of Tyre and Sidon. This area hugging the coast of the Mediterranean was a land whose people were notorious idolaters and sinners. The whole region is regarded by Jesus’ countrymen as evil.

And here’s Jesus going into this unclean land to encounter a Gentile woman with a saving faith in Him that the Pharisees and most of Jesus’ fellow Jews would reject.

We all know the central importance of faith in Christ. Every little child in the Church knows John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” 

Romans talks about faith and salvation too. "...But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe [who have faith]." (Romans 3:21-22)

Our salvation in Christ isn’t based on what we do or even on what we are, but solely on what Christ has done for us and our faith or trust in Christ.

But what does it mean to have faith or to believe in Jesus?

The great Lutheran preacher of the last century, Bo Giertz, posed this very question and said that the Canaanite woman in today’s lesson illustrates exactly what it means to have faith in three ways. So, I want to take those three insights of Giertz and talk about each of them.

To have faith in Jesus means, first of all, to set all one’s hope on Jesus. That’s an enormous statement!

Faith in Jesus means that we trust that He, God the Son, is the author of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17), the supplier of everything we need, from our eternal salvation to our next meal. He is “our daily bread” in this life and the next.

We may wonder where this woman got her faith in Jesus. The gospel of Mark tells us in recounting this same incident, that the woman had “heard” about Jesus. (Mark 7:25) So, in some form or another the Word about Jesus had traveled from Capernaum, which is where Jesus’ ministry was centered at that time, to Tyre, about the distance from Dayton to Springfield.

This Word about Jesus had done its work in this desperate woman. By this second-hand Word about the Lord and Savior of the world, the mother of the demon-possessed girl, had come to believe in Jesus. She set her hope on Jesus.

The apostle Paul asks in Romans: “How…can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)

And He says that once the Word about Jesus reaches people, the Holy Spirit can create faith in Christ within them: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

The Canaanite woman had been given the Word about Jesus and through it, had come to set her hope on Him.

To have faith in Jesus means also not to think much of oneself. I’m not talking about “self-esteem” here.

The Canaanite woman, a Gentile who stood outside of the covenant God made with His people, the Jews, through Abraham, knew that she didn’t deserve anything from God.

When she approaches Jesus, we’re told, “A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’” (Matthew 15:22) And again she says, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25)

The woman acknowledges Jesus as Lord, that is, as Yahweh, God of all, and as the Son of David, the Messiah King, true God and true man.

She asks for His mercy. “I am a sinner, Lord,” she is effectively telling Jesus, “I don’t claim to be entitled to anything. I can’t claim to be a good person. But because You are good, because of Your grace, I ask, I beg. for Your mercy.”

As I’ve explained before, we sinners who cannot perfectly obey God’s Law nonetheless keep it when we acknowledge that we are rightly judged to be sinners by that Law–the Ten Commandments–and turn to Christ for mercy, grace, and forgiveness. This is what the Canaanite woman does!

When Jesus tells her that it would be morally wrong to take blessings away from God’s people to give them to dogs (what Jews called Gentiles), outsiders, the woman fully understands. No parent would be right to scrape the food off the plates of His own children in order to feed dogs. This is, in essence what Jesus is telling the woman. The woman agrees with Jesus but says, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15:27)

Now, this incident occurs between two miraculous feedings by Jesus: the feeding of the 5000 in Matthew 14 and the feeding of the 4000 in Matthew 15. At both feedings, there were leftovers, 12 baskets-full at one and 7 at another.

“Lord,” the Canaanite woman is saying, because of her faith in Jesus, “don’t give me the choicest of Your blessings. I know Your grace is overflowing. Just give me the leftovers. Just give me Your crumbs. I know You and I know that will be enough!”

Faith means not to think too much of ourselves, but to always think of how great, good, gracious, and wonderful is the God we know in Jesus!

Finally, Giertz says, “faith holds onto Jesus even if He does not seem to answer.” Why does Jesus delay answering the woman’s prayer for her daughter? Why does He seem to delay or not answer our prayers? I don’t know. Like you, I’ve experienced God seeming to tarry in answering my prayers in Jesus’ name. And I’ve experienced things going completely differently from what I prayed would happen.

But, like the woman, our call is to keep praying and seeking from the God we know in Jesus the blessings we feel we need and trust Him to sort things out as He, in His grace and wisdom, sees fit. This is the point of our praying, “Thy will be done.” We trust and pray in the certainty that it is His pleasure to show mercy to those who cling to Him in faith. And when the answers to our prayers seem to be delayed, Jesus blesses us with His presence and places us in the comforting presence of His people.

The woman in our lesson trusted in Jesus as God and King. She acknowledged her sin and that she didn’t deserve God’s favor. She expressed faith in the enormity of God’s grace that could provide even for her, an undeserving sinner.

Friends, whether in this life or the next, Jesus loves to bless and reward such faith. It is people with this kind of faith that are meant when the Bible tells us, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

And so, Jesus tells the woman that the disciples wanted to send away: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” We’re then told: “And her daughter was healed at that moment.” (Matthew 15:28)

How does one acquire such a faith?

You don’t decide to have it.

You can’t work to get it.

God gives it to us through His Word and His Word made visible in the Sacraments. He speaks faith into us.

Through the Word about Jesus, we know that Jesus is our God and King, that we are sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus, that all our sins are forgiven, and that Jesus wants to give us His mercy. By the power of the Word about Jesus, you may believe that this is all true! Amen

Christians: Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, and the Grinch Can't Do What Only You Can Do

It's that time of year again. The time when one of Christians' favorite indoor sports is lamenting how advertisers, retailers, and the big bad media have taken Christ out of Christmas. These lamentations are often accompanied by references to how different things were "back in the day."

Really?

Think of the Christmas classics that have warmed our hearts for decades.

How much of Christ is there in It's a Wonderful Life? It's my favorite movie. But there's no mention of Jesus' birth in it, except for the incessant rehearsal of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing by one of George Bailey's daughters.

The only mention of Jesus in The Bishop's Wife comes at the end, during the bishop's Christmas Eve sermon, when he holds Jesus up, not as the Savior of the world, but as an example of good living.

Most of the Christmas Classics--from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Polar Express, from A Christmas Carol to Christmas in Connecticut--have nothing to do with Christmas.

They're wonderful, heart-warming stories. But they're not about Christ at all.

The media, advertisers, and the retailers have always loved turning the Feast of Christ's Nativity into a festival of winter sentimentality and materialism. It sells. And it's less controversial. (The rare exception being, A Charlie Brown Christmas, among others.)

So, why the laments? The culture's Christ-less Christmas is nothing new. We Christians need to get over it.

Many of the Christian laments and groanings are rooted in a more basic problem: We Christians are terrible about passing our faith along to others in our personal relationships. For decades, Christians have relied on the culture (or the preacher or the Sunday School class) to pass along the truth that God came into the world in the Person of Jesus Christ, took our rightful death sentence for sin, and rose from the dead so that all who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Him as their only God and King, have life with God, imperfectly in this imperfect world and perfectly in the perfect world to come.

We can't trust the culture to share that message. It's not the job of moviemakers, toy manufacturers, or Macy's. It's someone else's job altogether.

In today's installment of Our Daily Bread, we're reminded of God's instructions to His people, Israel, delivered through Moses, just before Israel entered the Promised Land. God gave His people what's become know as the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

A relationship with God is passed on person to person: parent to child, child to parent, friend to friend, co-worker to co-worker, neighbor to neighbor, classmate to classmate.

We can't rely on a culture that isn't so much antagonistic to Christian faith as it is, as it always has been, indifferent to Christian faith, to pass it on to our neighbors and friends.

People do not come to faith in Christ by cultural osmosis. It's passed on from one flesh and blood human being who believes in Christ to another flesh and blood human being.

That's why, writing decades after Jesus' resurrection, the apostle Peter told Christians living in what is today called Turkey:

...be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,  keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:15-16)

As a Christian, I believe that everyone who calls out in faith to the God revealed in Jesus Christ will be saved. But, as Paul writes at another place in the New Testament:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)

Paul wasn't talking about professional preachers proclaiming the Good News of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

He was talking about every Christian, in their sitting at home, in their walking along the road, in the morning and in the evening, being ready to do things like...

• offer to pray for others to the God with whom they have intimacy through Christ;
• offer to help them when they need child care or a lift to work;
• serve meals to homeless people; 
• be considerate of those others disrespect;

and, in a thousand other ways, earn the right to tell others about the eternity of hope through Christ that causes us to gratefully love God and love the people for whom Jesus Christ died and rose...everybody.

You might earn that right with something as simple as telling the clerk at the store, "Merry Christmas" or "God bless you" during this Advent season.

Jesus isn't relying on the culture to share His gospel with the world. He's relying on people who follow Him to do that.

Christians, that's us. Will we do it?