When we read Paul’s letter to Philemon, we tend to focus on the story of Onesimus – the slave who apparently left Philemon at some point and whom Paul now exhorts Philemon to take back as a brother in the faith.  But a good portion of this short Epistle actually consists of what Paul has to say about Philemon himself; and beginning early in the letter Paul commends Philemon:

“I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ (Philemon 1:4-6 – italics added for emphasis).

Interestingly, two things often cause people to be confused within these two small verses.  First, many popular expositions of the book get tangled up in trying to explain how Philemon had love for Christ and faith toward the saints, but this expression is just a chiasmus, or crossover, as was often used in Greek. It should be understood as “faith” in “the Lord Jesus” and “love” for “all the saints” rather than the other way around, as it might appear. You can see a clear example of this kind of chiasmus in Matthew 12:22,  which tells us “The blind and dumb both spoke and saw” – which clearly means the blind saw, and the dumb spoke.

The second often misunderstood point about these verses is found in Paul’s statement “I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective…” (Philemon 1:6, NKJV). I wish I had the proverbial dollar for the number of times I have heard and seen this verse used as a proof text that we should verbally witness or share our faith with others, but the real meaning is different and makes an important point. Here, the expression “the sharing of your faith” seems to mean not verbally sharing but rather communicating one’s faith through an outpouring of good works. The NIV captures this meaning quite well: “I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ” (Philemon 1:6).

The Nineteenth Century “Barnes Notes” commentary first summed up the meaning of this verse relative to how Philemon’s faith was to be expressed: “That his faith, expressing itself by good fruits, might be shown to be true … For although faith has its proper seat in the heart, yet it communicates itself to men by good works.”  Most commentaries since that time have agreed that this is the clear meaning of verse 6. 

So, properly understood,  these verses in Paul’s letter to Philemon make two important points:  first, they show the necessary link between our faith in Christ and love of the saints (Philemon 1:4-5), and then they show that the faith within us should be “communicated” or “shared” by good works (vs. 6).  This two-pronged argument represents something Paul wanted to stress to Philemon:  that faith in Christ involves loving the brethren, and that this true faith is manifested in good works to them.  These are important points for our understanding of the Book of Philemon, and of faith, too.

Have you ever noticed that one of the four Gospels mentions faith far more than the others? That Gospel is the Gospel of John.  Actually, as we will see, John does not use the noun “faith” at all – it occurs nowhere in his Gospel. Instead, John always uses the verb “believe” (Greek pisteuo), and he uses that word about 100 times (perhaps surprisingly, given most people’s perception of John, that is over twice as many times as he uses forms of the word agape or “love”!) 

To put John’s use of “believe” in perspective, we should realize that this is more than the use of the word in all the other Gospels combined. In fact, John’s Gospel contains well over half of all the instances of pisteuo or “believe” in the whole New Testament.

Clearly, then, “believe” is a key word in understanding John’s Gospel, and we can learn a great deal about the nature of belief and believing by focusing on what John tells us in his account.  Three points stand out – John repeatedly shows our faith must be based upon these three aspects of believing.   

Based on the Person of Christ

It is not coincidental that the great summary of God’s purpose set out in John 3:16 revolves around belief: “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” (John 3:16, emphases added here and below).  What we miss, reading this so-often-quoted verse out of context, as is so often done, is John’s continued stress on believing: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18).  Four times in the space of these two verses John hammers home the point that it is only as we believe on the person of Jesus Christ as the Son of God that faith will be rewarded with eternal life.  

Throughout his Gospel, John gives many examples of what and why we must believe (2:11; 4:41; 8:24; 10:38; 16:30; etc.), but they are all based upon the person of Jesus Christ, his nature, character, and the work that he accomplished. There is no room in John’s Gospel for any abstract “all you need is love” message.  His Gospel is deeply rooted in the necessity of active believing faith in Christ as much as it is in showing the importance of love.

Indeed, the very purpose for the Gospel of John, as the apostle himself tells us near its conclusion,  is so that we “ … may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). 

Based on the Work of Belief

Although as Paul affirms, “…  the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23), John’s Gospel paints a complementary picture stressing that although God does give eternal life freely, the gift comes with responsibilities.  While Matthew’s Gospel shows Jesus asserting: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21), John’s Gospel records Jesus instructing his disciples in the work that relates to faith. When they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’  Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:27-29).

We should not presume that in this statement Jesus is talking only about passively accepting or holding a belief. John’s Gospel stresses that believing is something active that we do, rather than just accept, and that believing is always associated with doing. It is probably not coincidental that like the word “believing,” John also uses the word “doing”(poieō) about one hundred times.  This is the larger picture that helps us to correlate what John's Gospel tells us about the work of believing with what the apostle writes about faithful obedience in his epistles (1 John 2:6; 5:3; etc.).

For John, this active believing work is something we do on an ongoing basis – as we see in the way he repeatedly tells us the disciples “believed” as they witnessed Christ’s miracles and teachings (John 2:11; 16:27; etc.), and this leads us to John’s final stress regarding the nature of true believing. 

Based on Perseverance

Precisely because true believing is a repeated action on our part, John also stresses that believing must be coupled with perseverance.   John gives clear instances of individuals who had believed, but who stopped believing. In John 8, for example, we read: “As he was saying these things, many believed in him. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him,'If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples’” (John 8:30-31).

The importance of ongoing and continuing faith was already stressed by John two chapters earlier when he tells us that previously believing individuals “… turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66).  This scripture alone shows that believing faith is not something entered into on a one-time basis, but an ongoing action that must be maintained through perseverance.

When John tells us, near the close of his Gospel, that “ … these [things] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31), the word “believe” in the Greek is literally “be believing” – ongoing persistent believing.  

The Three Aspects of Believing

John’s Gospel clearly shows us that true believing is based on the person of Christ, involves active expression on our part, and must be maintained through perseverance.  The apostle makes it clear that lack of these three factors led to many not believing or losing the belief they once had.  It is in these three ways, however, that John shows we can truly believe, and that through believing we can have life.

“Do not fear … Be faithful … and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10 ESV)
 
The words of the “First and the Last” to Christians in the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor recorded in Revelation 2:10 are words that we can all profit from.   The message doubtless had specific application to its original readers, but its core is one which applies to us all. We see this truth in the words that directly follow the statement not to fear and to be faithful: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches…” (Revelation 2:11).

So how does the message apply to us today?  Jesus does not just say “Don’t fear and I’ll give you the  crown of life” and he doesn’t just say “Be faithful and I’ll give you the crown of life” – he says both.  These dual commands are based on the fact that fear and faithfulness are opposites that cannot coexist. If we are faithful in our behavior, we gain spiritual confidence that banishes inner fear.  On the other hand, if we live in fear, we often end up compromising our beliefs and being unfaithful in some way.

This is easier to understand when we realize that “do not fear” is just another way of saying “have faith.”  So “Do not fear … Be faithful…” is simply saying “Have faith and be faithful.”   Faith and faithfulness together make up the sum total of Christian responsibility of inward belief and outward behavior.   But the two qualities are not independent of each other in our lives. Faith leads to faithfulness and faithfulness leads to faith.

The apostle John reiterates the necessity of both faith and faithfulness later in the book of Revelation when he writes: “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus (Revelation 14:12, emphasis added).
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We must remember that we are saved through faith, not faithfulness, but the book of Revelation makes it clear that faithfulness is involved in our reward – in the crown of life we are offered, and in the identity of the saints of God who will not only be saved, but also crowned.

 ​Every Christian knows that when Jesus was asked which was the “Greatest Commandment” (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27), he quoted Deuteronomy 6:5:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 
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But how exactly are we to do that – what is it we do to express love to God?  Many Christians would say that we show love to God in our prayer, praise, worship, and so on.  While this is true, of course, and we can express love in these ways, it is interesting that the Bible itself mentions only two specific ways that we love God.

Obedience

The first way the Bible teaches love for God – in the words of Christ himself – is through our obedience.  Jesus made many statements to this effect:  “If you love me, keep my commands… Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me …Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching….” (John 14:15, 21, 23).  The same principle is reiterated in the later books of the New Testament (“… if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them” – 1 John 2:5,  “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments…” – 1 John 5:3, etc.).

This is something  we also find throughout the Old Testament as well as the New – for example, in Deuteronomy 30:16: “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws…”   We see the correlation between love and obedience throughout the Pentateuch and then continuing through the Book of Joshua (Joshua 22:5) and beyond.   In fact, there are more verses correlating our obedience with our love for God than those showing any other aspect of our relationship with God.
 
Service

A second specific way the Bible shows we express love to God is found in the Book of Hebrews: “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them” (Hebrews 6:10).   This principle is not always immediately obvious because showing love to others may not seem the same as loving God, but the two are inextricably connected.

Jesus showed this, of course, in the Parable of the Judgment in which he said:  “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’“ (Matthew 25:40).  It is a fundamental concept of the Christian Faith that God holds our love given to others as equivalent to love given to him.

Totality

But we can also go beyond the specific teachings the Bible gives regarding loving God through obedience and service. If we look closely at Jesus’ words that we “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” we can see not only the idea of degree – that we love God as much as we can – but also the idea of extent – that we love God in every aspect of our being.  

The aspects of our selfhood that Deuteronomy 6:5 enumerates represent an ever-widening circle. Our heart represents our inner thoughts, emotions, and will; our “soul” represents our physical being as a living person; our “strength” is the power we exert toward something. But our “strength” can have a broader meaning, too.   The Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6:5   can sometimes be translated as an adjective – as “very”–  or it can be a noun (as it is in this verse) – as “muchness” or “abundance.”

In other words, loving God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength  encompasses loving God with our inner thoughts, our outer being, and even the extended circle of that which we own – our “abundance.”   If we want to know how to love God, the full answer is that we can love God in every expression of every one of these areas – in the totality of our being.

“In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work” (2 Timothy 2:20-21).

I remember when I was young, my parents had two sets of dishes – an everyday set and a good set for  visiting  “company” and other special occasions.  The good dishes had to be not just washed but polished up to remove even the smallest water spots because of the special occasions for which they would be used.  

In Paul’s analogy, it’s not an occasional “special occasion”  but an ongoing  job for which the special dishes are needed, and Paul insists that  we – as those special-purpose dishes – must be cleaned for that work.  Now no one likes to have to wash dishes, and although it’s not always an easy task cleaning ourselves up spiritually, Paul tells us that’s what God wants us to do if we want to do His work. 

Naturally, Paul understood that it is Christ who cleanses us in terms of our standing with God,  but then as he says,  we (“Those who cleanse themselves”) have to continue the work in getting ongoing sin out of our lives.  Not that we have to be perfect for God to use us – none of God’s human servants has ever been perfect –  but the important thing about the domestic analogy Paul uses  is not that we are expected to be perfect yet, but rather the cleaner we are, the more we conform to His way of life, the more God  can use us.

That is really a sobering but encouraging thought that applies to all of us.  God is Holy and with His help we should strive to be, too, as the apostle John wrote:  “…we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).  But the reason for us to cleanse or “purify” ourselves is not just to “qualify” ourselves, but to be able to let God effectively use us in helping others. We are not just spiritually “washing the dishes” for the sake of  becoming clean as an end in itself, we are to become the “…vessels for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.” 

By Whaid Guscott Rose

Christians are to be not just faithful but fruitful.  Jesus said, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:8).

In his small volume simply titled Meditation, Jim Downing paints a beautiful picture of the fruitful Christian. He points out that for every New Testament truth, there is an Old Testament illustration, or picture. Jesus’ familiar discourse about the vine and the branches in John 15 has an Old Testament picture in Jeremiah 17:7, 8:

"Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."

This tree in Jeremiah’s illustration faced severe heat and drought. However, despite adverse conditions, it remained green and yielded fruit in its season. What was the tree’s secret? It spread its roots by the river, tapping into the life-giving nourishment it needed.

This vividly illustrates Jesus’ words in John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Through day-by-day connection with Jesus, we share His life and bear His fruit, regardless of our circumstances. This is the picture of the fruitful Christian.

By examining the rings on the stump of a fallen tree, we can know its age. But these rings reveal even more.  Large rings indicate that nourishment was plentiful that year; narrow rings reflect years of drought.

Phillips’ translation renders John 15:5 “It is the man who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful.” It’s been discovered that a small amount of nourishment sustains what life is already in the tree. When the nourishment is more than the tree needs to sustain its life, the tree grows. But if the nourishment is over and above what is needed to sustain life and cause growth, it is transformed into fruit.  Fruit, then, is excess life!

This sheds new light on another familiar saying of Jesus: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10, NKJV). To have abundant life is to have life in excess — not just enough to stay alive and to grow, but surplus life that becomes fruit.

(Reproduced, in part, from the Bible Advocate, December 2008.)

You know you need faith, but does faith need you?  In asking this, I mean are there times when faith should be augmented by what we can accomplish through our own power and by our own  work?  And please realize that we are not talking about justification here – just everyday life.  Let me explain.  Throughout our present era many very sincere people have caused themselves – and others – unnecessary hardship through not understanding the principle of trusting God and at the same time doing what we can do ourselves.

Many Christians have believed that in any problematic situation we should trust entirely in God’s help and wait patiently for that help to materialize. As a result, in extreme situations some have even felt that seeking medical or other help is to lack faith, but is that what the Word of God shows to be the case?  This week's article "Your Partnership with Faith" looks at some examples from the lives of faithful servants of God – all drawn from times of danger or need – that show clear partnership with faith.