Romans 10:8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim:
Many people have lost faith in the political system here in the United States. They see the abuses of power and the lack of accountability, the double standard of justice, for instance, and they conclude that the root must be rotten and therefore removed. It can be hard to have faith in a system that has so many flaws! Humans!
So how do you build faith in other people or in yourself? I guess that depends on what you mean by faith! If faith is stepping into the unknown, then you just need to provide parachutes. But if faith is trusting a known, then getting to know the known better would improve the ability to have faith.
An example might help. In Seoul, South Korea, there is a tall tower, very tall tower, the Lotte World Tower. On the 118th floor there is an observation deck with a glass floor. If you dare, you can walk out on the glass and look straight down the outside of the building, over 1500 feet!
So what does it take to just walk out on the glass? For me, it took trust in the engineers and designers, trust in what I was seeing with my eyes as others walked out and didn’t fall to their deaths. It took me about five seconds to run this through in my mind and then I just walked out, no problems. It was mind-boggling, having to fight against my own mind’s thoughts about glass and walking.
My trust came from within, bolstered by what I saw on the outside. No amount of external pressure could have forced me out onto that glass unafraid. It was my internal trust that I choose to place on the glass that day. I could trust my fear, or I could trust something else.
In this section of Romans, Paul is reasoning that faith is an internal thing. It isn’t about doing something external, like keeping the Law. It isn’t about some feat of changing location, like going up to heaven or down to the place where the dead were thought to dwell. It isn’t about physical location or geographical manipulation.
Faith comes from within. And we all have faith. We each choose to place the faith we have in someone or something. Even atheists have faith. And for Paul, faith is the key.
Not faith in the abstract, but the faith we place in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Paul’s Jewish audience members had placed their faith in their ability to keep the Law in all its detail as a means to obtaining a relationship with God. Paul flatly rejects this approach.
For Paul, it isn’t about performance of activities that restores us to God, but instead about who we trust for restore that relationship. Is it our effort or God’s mercy and grace!
Paul tells us in the following verses that salvation comes when we confess the truth about Jesus’ death and resurrection. We have done nothing to deserve restoration at this point. The starting point is our faith in Him and what He did on our behalf.
This is what Abraham and all the faithful of history have done. They have started and sustained their relationship with God by trusting Him, not by working something out, no matter how noble that effort might have been. Faith is an internal thing that changes the trajectory of our lives depending on where we place it. Paul says, that for the Christian, “Jesus is Lord.” Not works, not Caesar, not the Jewish leaders, not expediency, not convenience, not perfection. Only Jesus is in charge.
The Arnold Journey 