“Therefore it is of faith, that it may be according to grace.”
Rom 4:16

Faith stress

Faith was once the simplest thing in the world. Faith is nothing other than trust. In both the language of the Old Testament (Hebrew) and the New Testament (Greek), the verb “believe” is identical to the verb “trust.” He who believes trusts. Hence the expression “trust in God”.

Now this trustworthy expression has been hijacked and reformulated into a “condition for salvation.” The invitation is called: “Believe in Jesus or you are lost forever”. Faith suddenly became a work, a precondition. Faith became something you had to “do”. Against the background of the doctrine of hell, a threatening message was created, in which the responsibility for salvation is shifted entirely to man. Only those who believe can save God. Unfortunately, if you do not believe, He is powerless. A terrible image of God emerges that is far from the biblical meaning of faith and of God’s working to save.

Disregard from context

How could it have come to this? If one wants to untangle the knot of faith and come to an understanding of the biblical concept, then this is an important question. How is it that people can no longer perceive what is written, but impose assumptions about the faith of the Bible? It doesn’t just happen. This has a system (cf. Eph 4:14“ἐν πανουργίᾳ πρὸς τὴν
μεθοδείαν τῆς πλάνης
“, “by the stratagem calculated to spread error in a planned manner”).

How could it have come to this?

Only false assumptions about important parts of the Bible lead to misinterpretations. This idea of “you must believe” is nourished from the Gospels and applied to the rest of the New Testament. What was a limited statement in the context for Israel was projected by Christian theologians to a fictitious eternity. The reason for this is blind assumptions about what the Bible speaks about us and in what ways. It is not uncommon for Christians to understand that “the Old Testament is about Israel, while the New Testament speaks of the church.” But where does it actually say that? Is Israel no longer spoken of in the New Testament? And if there is a future for Israel (is there?), where do we read about it in the New Testament?

Texts in the Gospels are therefore applied uncritically to today’s church, with complete disregard for their own context. But Jesus specifically indicated that He was sent “exclusively to lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24), which Paul confirms (Rom. 15:8). Because these texts are applied uncritically to the church of today, strange interpretations occur that do not do justice to the respective context of the statements. Wrong conclusions are drawn with wrong assumptions.

Jesus’ sermon was in a clearly defined context that we must not simply hijack.

If we lived in Jesus’ time, we would have gotten only some of the crumbs – like the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. Jesus was not traveling for the nations. At that time, our only chance would be to be incorporated into the Jewish people as proselytes. That is not the case today. Why?

Jesus’ sermon was in a clearly defined context that we must not simply hijack. It was not even about the cross and resurrection, because that was still before Him. That is why the Gospels are set in a Jewish context, while today’s church from all nations are shaped by the apostle to the nations (Rom 11:13). One did not merge seamlessly into the other. This is also a blind assumption that is not true. Read more in the article “Jesus and Paul, are they saying the same thing?”.

• Confusion arises when you disregard the differences between Israel and nations.
• Cramp occurs when Bible texts are taken out of their own context and arbitrarily applied to other situations.
• Power comes from interpreting the Bible in one’s own context.

The fact that faith has now been turned into a work is a tragedy of theological misinterpretations. Logically, it also causes many to cramp and stress their faith. However, this does not have to be the case. See the post “Is Faith a Service I Must Provide?” for more on this.

In this series on the Letter to the Romans, we have arrived at chapter 4. Paul does not describe a spasm and struggle of faith, but liberating faith because it is based on God’s grace. Grace is “unmerited favor of God bestowed upon me” (Eph. 2:8). This is something completely different from a spasm of faith, in which my effort of faith is supposed to be a precondition for eternal salvation.

What Paul emphasizes in the Gospel

If we read the Epistle to the Romans, nowhere will we discover faith as a condition for salvation. Rather, faith is the antithesis of some achievement. It is not about performance justice, but rather God’s justice. So it is not what I do that matters, but what God does that matters. Whoever then trusts God lives by His grace.

He who trusts God lives by His grace.

Paul is all about God’s justice everywhere. He already emphasized this in Romans 1:16-17, right at the beginning of his letter. Since then, the theme has accompanied us through the first chapters.

The emphasis on God’s justice is radical. He does not set this up as a demand, as if we must fulfill God’s justice, but it is the reality of the cross that is given to us. God has accomplished something (“His righteousness”) and we are given it for free. In this sense, it is about grace, namely God’s unmerited favor . Only God’s work is and remains decisive. This marks the difference between my effort and His salvation.

This liberating statement is unfortunately completely lost in so many Christian teachings, such as when people say “You must believe in Jesus, or you will burn in hell forever!” This kind of threatening message has nothing to do with the gospel. They are just conclusions of human theology, which consider the effort of man as more significant than the achievement of God. The Gospel is about God’s righteousness, which He brought about on the cross. Only therein lies the good news.

Faith corresponds to grace