Faith

What is faith? Have you ever really thought about that question? I’ll ask it again; what is faith? It’s a very simple question, but one that has confounded people, both scholar and layman alike. Sure, we could go to a dictionary and look it up; the Oxford dictionary defines faith as a “complete trust or confidence”, or “firm belief, esp. without logical proof”, or “spiritual apprehension of divine truth apart from proof”, but these definitions are nothing but empty phrases. Sure, all of these definitions seem to fit the context of what we think faith to be, but they are still so lacking. All three definitions of faith seem to be rather lifeless. Throughout the entire Bible, God places an immense importance on “faith”. Why would God put such an emphasis on something that is so passive, unless faith, the kind of faith that God talks about, isn’t passive at all.

Of all the stories in the Gospel about Jesus and faith, the one that has most recently jumped out at me is the story of the woman that had bled for 12 years who touched Jesus’ robe and was healed. Let’s take a look at that passage. It starts in Mark, chapter 5, verse 24 and goes to verse 34.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my garments?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, 'Who touched me?'" And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” -ESV

In all the recorded accounts of Jesus healing people, this is the only one in which someone was healed by Jesus without Jesus knowledge until after the fact. What makes this woman so special? Does the secret lie in who she is, or is it something she does? Let’s take a closer look at the story. In the story she touches Jesus robe and is made well, so it must have been because she touched Jesus. But wait a minute, at the beginning it says that a great crowd “thronged about him,” and later the disciples were puzzled by his question of “who touched me” because the entire crowd was pressing against Him. So it couldn’t have been just the fact that she touched him, because there were many people touching him. So if it’s not that she touched Him, could it be because of who she was? The story never does give a description of the woman other than she is afflicted with a seemingly chronic illness, so it’s probably not because of who she is that she was healed. If it’s not because she touched him, and it’s not because of who she was, than what makes this woman so special? Let’s go back into the story. At the end of the story, Jesus says, “your faith has made you well”. So here is where the faith of the woman comes in. Could it have been because of her faith that she was healed? I think that it would be very foolish to assume that she was the only one there among all the people gathered around Jesus who had faith, otherwise they wouldn’t have come from their villages to see Him. I’m sure some just came to see the famous man of Jesus, but I’ll bet a majority of the people in the crowd were there because they thought (they had faith) that he could help them in some capacity or another. So the woman is not alone in having faith in Jesus. So what could it be? Let’s imagine for a moment that everyone around Jesus had faith that he could heal them, but they thought they first needed to gain his attention so he could do something to them, or simply tell them they were healed. After all, that’s how he does it in almost every other situation. In fact, this story happens right in the middle of Jesus going to heal a sick little girl in that manner. That’s a good reason for people to be gathering in a throng around Jesus, wouldn’t you say? So everyone around Jesus is competing for Jesus’ attention, except this woman. This woman believed in her heart, she had faith, that if she even touched the garments of Jesus, she would be healed. So at risk of angering the crowd by coming in among them (women with this condition were considered to be unclean), she timidly approached Jesus, from behind, and touched his robe. It’s nothing theatric, nothing amazing or astounding, she just touched his robe, and immediately she was healed. This all happened before Jesus know what was going on. He turned around to see who it was that had tapped into his healing power without his knowledge. And he said to the woman, after she told Him what had happened, “your faith has healed you.”

So we see from this that faith is much more than what the dictionary defines it as. Faith is a belief, coupled with an action. Look back in the Bible to any place where God asks his people to be faithful, or full of faith; he asks them to believe and obey. For more on this, let’s take a jog over to the book of James. In James chapter 2 verses 14-17, James says:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. –ESV

James says here that faith, the kind of faith the Oxford dictionary defines, is not the fullness of faith that we need, it’s only part. For faith to have life in it, it needs to be active. As James states, to believe something and not act on it is almost like not believing. The faith that God talks about and wants from us, the kind of faith that the woman in the story had, is a faith from which works, or action, come naturally out of. That’s what made the woman in the story so special; she had faith, real faith. She believed in something so much that for her, to do what she did and for what happened to happen just came naturally. An example of this in daily life would be something like this: Say you are thirsty. You have faith that if you drink some water, you will no longer be thirsty. Do you hesitate or remain content with just that belief? No, you act on it. You drink some water, and sure enough, having drank the water, you are no longer thirsty. This is what real faith is like. Just the belief that the water would satisfy your thirst is nothing, I could believe with all my heart and strength that the water would quench me, but unless I act on it, that belief is completely useless. In the words of James, “faith without works is dead,” or faith without works is not real faith.

I now take this discovery that we’ve made, and I turn it back at myself, and I hope that you can turn it back at yourself as well. Do I have real faith, or do I have dictionary faith? Does what I believe show up in my life, or is what I believe only that, what I believe and nothing more. I urge you to think about that. I’ll leave you with this question, if what you believe doesn’t change how you live, is that really what you believe?