As is mine. That’s how faith works. We all have hand-me-down faith.
Sometimes I hear people talk as though faith that someone else gave you is somehow worse than faith that you found for yourself. I think that’s a mistake.
I just had the privilege of watching eight baptisms and heard eight stories of people’s lives changed by Jesus. Many of them had been brought up by Christian parents, which is wonderful, and they tell a story of the circumstances that led to them grasping hold of Jesus for themselves and wanting to be baptised. Some might talk of needing to gain their own faith rather than just their parents.
That’s wonderful and not really what I mean. I think sometimes our rhetoric goes overboard in making this break between parent and child faith: it’s preferable that your faith is nurtured by your parents while you’re young and that you transition into holding it yourself at some point under their care. That’s a great story and one we’d love everyone to have.
But even for those where that’s not their story for whatever reason—and some of the stories I heard were starkly different—every story I heard involved another person who in some fashion shared their faith with the person who is now declaring they follow Jesus.
What I’m saying is simply that ‘sharing your faith’ includes actually sharing your faith. Each person who believes has received faith as a gift from family members, or friends, or spiritual parents, or a random guy on YouTube. None of us make it in alone (Romans 10). Even the stories from the Islamic World of those who Jesus appears to in a dream, involve him sending them to talk to a Christian eventually. Faith is not a solo sport, we always receive it from others.
This is true once we’re Christians too. We need to keep believing that Jesus is good and loves us and is for us and will be with us. Sometimes our circumstances make that more difficult. What keeps us believing in the face of the brutality of death and the banality of evil is, most often, other Christians.
I often find myself sat with someone in tears who isn’t sure if they can believe right now because of what’s happened in their life. I know I’ve been the one struggling with that myself too. I then sometimes tell someone who is finding it hard to believe that God might break into this situation that I totally understand, but I’ll have faith for them.
We’re a body who stands together. Does their faith vicariously count for me? Not in the saving sense, but of course it does. That’s what prayer is.
When faith is difficult, for whatever reason, our faith is often shared with us by friends who encourage us in the gospel as well as by the preaching of the word and the ministry of the sacraments. The elders of our churches share their faith with us as they preach and share bread and cup. Of course, they too are men who’ve been broken by life and need our faith and prayers to bolster them.
All faith is second-hand. It’s all shared by someone else.
This is true in a much deeper way than I’m implying though: all faith is second-hand because all of my faith is Christ’s faith on my behalf.
That’s the goodness of the gospel, he rescued me before I asked him to. Even faith is a gift (Ephesians 2), and it’s not a gift of generic faith it’s a gift of Jesus’ faith in the Father by the Spirit. It’s a gift of perfect faith because he does all things well. Why is it Christ’s? Because that’s the logic of God’s gifts, he gives us himself by uniting us with the Son.
Which I find tremendously reassuring. Is my faith sometimes weak? Yes. Especially, and I suspect this is true for many, in the fact that God is good in the face of tragedy. But I don’t have to be strong and work up appropriate faith. Instead, if I go to my Father who loves me, and the Son my brother who gave himself up for me, and their Spirit who lives inside of me, then I can receive faith.
Is it hard to believe sometimes? Yes. In the face of circumstance, even in the face of the cross-pressured presence of doubt in an age dominated by it, it can be difficult to summon up faith. No one is asking you to. Meet Jesus and receive faith from him again.
Do so every week at Church in the Word, the Bread, the Cup, the songs and prayers. Do so in the faces of your friends as they re-evangelise you over a cup of tea. Do so in prayer and reading the Bible. Meet Jesus and be changed.
That’s what Christianity is: pure gift.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
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