Faith In Search of Understanding

By Bob Hutto

As the reader knows, faith is to be one of the primary virtues of every Christian. The New Testament teaches that we are saved by faith, justified by faith, have peace with God by faith, and should walk by faith. Our spiritual journey begins with, is sustained by, and will be completed in faith. Faith has to do with confidence in the unseen and the unproved (Heb. 11:1).

As people of faith we are as certain of the reality of things we cannot see, as we would be if we could see them. We are sure that certain things are true, though our powers of logic and reason take us only so far in proving them. Without this kind of confidence in the unseen, we cannot please the God whom we have not seen (Heb. 11:6). Yes, we claim to be people of faith, and yet it seems that at times we do not want to allow a place for faith in our lives.

God says of Himself, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways...For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa. 55:8,9). There may be many ways in which God's ways are higher than ours – when He does what is not possible for us to do, when He does what we do not understand, or when He does the opposite of what we would expect in order to accomplish His purpose.

At times we must accept by faith that God has accomplished a thing in a way that we do not understand fully. Perhaps we have a partial understanding of it, or it may be that some have a better understanding of it than others, or we may draw an analogy or two to help explain it. But in the final analysis, the process belongs to God and we must accept it by faith.

HOW? -- For example, do we know for sure by what process Jesus performed miracles? Did Jesus merely manipulate natural processes? Did He simply "speed up" a series of natural causes and effects or provide a single necessary ingredient to initiate nature's work? Perhaps, but no one knows with certainty what happened when miracles were performed. Apart from avoiding a few mistakes, no explanation is needed. We don't accept the reality of miracles because we can explain how they worked to our or anyone else's satisfaction. We accept them by faith -- faith in the power of the Person who did them. It's giving up on providing a plausible explanation and accepting things by faith that gives some people trouble.

HOW? -- And how did inspiration work? Were the writers of the Bible overpowered by the Spirit of God so that as they wrote they had no idea what the content of the book they were writing would be? Were they unaware of what word or even letter would be the next one out of their pen? Or did God guide the intellect and abilities of the authors in some other way to produce the books of the Bible? It seems likely that God worked in concert with the will, consciousness, and intellectual abilities of the writers to produce His inerrant word. But no one knows exactly how inspiration "worked" in every case. We don't accept the inspiration of the text because we can adequately explain how God produced it through human beings. While acknowledging that some explanations may be better than others, after all is said and done we accept it by faith.

HOW? -- Christians believe that the blood of Jesus atones for sins, and that when people respond to His gracious gift in obedient faith, their sins will be forgiven. But how are the sins of one person borne by another? How does the death of Jesus in the first century satisfy the requirements of God so that He is able to forgive the sins of someone who lives in the 21st century? We can offer explanations and draw analogies that may help us understand these things, but the mystery of the atonement will likely remain just that -- a mystery. We accept the work of Christ by faith. Not a blind faith, to be sure, but faith nonetheless.

FAITH! -- The New Testament says that we are to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7). Requiring a plausible explanation before we accept a thing as true is not walking by faith. It comes closer to walking by sight and is faith in us, not in God. Of course, we should seek to understand the deeper elements of the gospel, but our efforts should be "faith in search of understanding," not faith conditioned upon understanding. In the final analysis, after all of our reasoning and attempted explanations, we must abandon our powers, accept our limitations, and confess our faith in a God whose ways are higher than our ways. &  

Bob Hutto in Biblical Insights, Vol. 8, No. 10, Oct. 2008

Alas, Poor Uzzah!

By Bob Myhan

He meant well. His only crime, so far as we know, was touching the ark of the covenant while it was being transported on the new oxcart. And he only touched it to keep it from falling off the cart when “the oxen stumbled” (1 Chron. 13:9). But God had said that the sons of Kohath were to carry the furnishings of the taber­nacle on their shoulders. And even the Kohathites were not to “touch the holy things, lest they die” (Num. 4:15). We are not told whether Uzzah knew this, but “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

“But,” one might insist, “it wasn’t Uzzah’s decision to carry the ark on the oxcart. It decision it was David’s. And he apparently only wanted to do something nice for the Lord.” After all, the ark had been taken by the Philistines more than sixty years before, when the Israelites—at the behest of Eli’s sons—had taken it into battle without divine authority. David probably just thought it would be nice to bring the ark back with pomp and circumstance.

Even when God had living prophets on the earth, He did not always punish sins in such a tragic way. Nor did He constantly interfere with the day-to-day duties of the prophets, priests and kings. During the sixty plus years that the ark was not in the tabernacle, for example, the Day of Atonement could not be observed, because such observation involved sprinkling the blood of the atoning sacrifice on the mercy seat. And there is no indication that God ever said anything about this during that time. The Passover was not observed from the days of the judges to the time of King Josiah (2 Kings 23:21-23). The Feast of Tabernacles was not kept from the time of Joshua till the return of Judah from Babylonian captivity (Neh. 8:14-18).

God clearly did not punish Israel for each instance of sin. But we can learn the same lesson from the incident with the oxcart that David learned. Afterward he said,

And David called for Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and for the Levites: for Uriel, Asaiah, Joel, Shemaiah, Eliel, and Amminadab. He said to them, "You are the heads of the fathers' houses of the Levites; sanctify yourselves, you and your brethren, that you may bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel to the place I have prepared for it. For because you did not do it the first time, the Lord our God broke out against us, because we did not consult Him about the proper order." (1 Chron. 15:11-13)

Not even the northern kingdom of Israel was punished immediately for going into idolatry under King Jeroboam. It was not until Elijah “prayed earnestly that it would not rain,” that God withheld the rain (James 5:17), which Moses said He would do if His people went into idolatry. After 850 false prophets were executed for their crimes at Elijah’s command, God allowed it to rain again (1 Kings 17 & 18). And He eventually allowed Israel to be destroyed by the Assyrians.

Should we not conclude that God expects to be obeyed? And should we not obey Him even in the smallest matters? &