Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, and the Future of Denominationalism
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - Dr. Timothy George
Dr. Timothy George looked at Jude 3 as he discussed the role of faith in our lives and in the life of our church. Jude 3 states, “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude was written during a time of crisis near the end of the first century. Unlike today, grace was not cheap and the cross had not been reduced to a metaphor. It seems like today we have forgotten about the power of the cross in some aspects of our lives. The people in Jude’s day either remembered the cross from a firsthand experience or had close friends who had been with or seen Jesus. More than likely, there were more and more people who had not actually seen Jesus on a firsthand basis, thus ushering in a greater need for faith. Not only did they have to believe that Jesus actually had the power to die for their sins, but they also had to believe that there actually was a man named Jesus. So Jude wrote on what this “faith” was. He knew that he would only have time to write a short letter, so he wrote about what he felt was most important for his readers to hear.
But this “faith” is nothing if it is not personal. We can look to passages such as Jude 3 or read the stories in the New Testament all day long, but without faith it is pointless. Without faith, we are reading and studying in vain. So the question that we face today is whether we make Scripture and the creeds that have been developed over the last 2000 years a part of what we believe. Again, we can have head knowledge all day long, but without faith we have nothing. Without action (a direct result of our faith) we have nothing.
Finally, what about the “church’s faith?” Dr. George stated that any one of these three categories can lead to dead ends by themselves. We have already seen how faith is powerless unless it is also personal, our own faith. So how do we relate this to the church? The question now is what is it that we believe? As Christians, we have the message of hope, meant to carry out to the world, to all the nations, as commanded in the Great Commission. That is our statement of faith, what we believe, the message we receive in Scripture. This is where the “church’s faith” is rooted, Scripture.
Over the last 2000 years, the church has demonstrated their faith in a variety of methods: songs, confessions, prayers, and sermons. Now here is the connection between the individual and the church. Obviously, individuals write songs or sermons. Small groups of people develop confessions or statements of faith. But songs, confessions, prayers, and sermons are not kept to ourselves. Instead, they are shared with the congregation of believers. Instead of it being a strictly personal faith, it becomes a public faith that we share with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
We can get lost when we remain isolated, to ourselves, in our faith. When we solely depend on the church to tell us what we believe and do not search Scripture for the answers, we may not even know what we truly believe. But when we unite these two together (actually all three), they will support one another. We must have a faith that is our own personal faith (one that we have searched the Scriptures for) that is also supported by the church’s faith (what the church stands for, such as a confession of faith). All three of these “types” of faith must go hand-in-hand or we will find ourselves at a dead end.
Matt
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