The Life of Faith in Two Verses

It’s often thought that everything in today’s world must be 1) complex and 2) cater to individuality. A calculator, notepad, and wallet won’t do; we need a pocket-sized supercomputer that is itself hooked up to a learning network of far more advanced computers which can provide or fabricate answers to our questions in milliseconds (oh, and it also needs to double as a camera). Further, there can’t be one answer for everyone. Instead, there needs to be a multiplicity of answers that represent a broad range of ages, beliefs, cultures, sexual orientations, and gender manifestations.

As Christians, we know that some of these aspects of the modern world are morally neutral at best while others are sinful distortions at worst. Still, even we can shy away from simple things and singular answers. Simple things too often leave us yawning and checking our watches (or smartphones, more likely); singular answers too often leave us asking, “But what about…?”

Sometimes it helps to think about the life of faith in the simplest terms. Two impactful (albeit easily overlooked) verses in Genesis give us the opportunity to do so. The Bible reads: “So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan” (Genesis 12:4-5). In these two verses we find an outline of the three necessary components of any faithful life.

For every person, the life of faith involves responding to the call of the Lord: “So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him” (Genesis 12:4). The Lord’s call to Abram appears to have been direct and audible, involving the spoken words recorded in the verses prior (Genesis 12:1-3). “[I]n these last days” though, God has “spoken to us by His Son” (Hebrews 1:2), who chooses to call us by the Gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:14). Faith does not and cannot exist in those who have not heard “the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17 ESV) and responded to it by “obedience to the truth” (1 Peter 1:22 ESV).

For every person, the life of faith involves pursuing a clear and singular goal: “Abram… departed to go to the land of Canaan” (Genesis 12:5). While the text says that Abraham (as he was later called) went to Canaan, the Hebrews author ties his pursuit of Canaan with the clear and singular goal that all the faithful have: “By faith he went to live in the land of promise […] For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:9-10). Every faithful person must have this heavenly, God-established city as his or her clearly prioritized goal. Like Abraham, even if pursuing this goal calls us to leave our “country […] family […and our] father’s house,” we should be willing to do so (Genesis 12:1).

Finally, for every person, the life of faith involves us calling others on behalf of the Lord and giving them the opportunity to join us in pursuing our goal: “Then Abram took… the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed” (Genesis 12:5). While we have to be honest about the reality of slavery and the potential for acquiring people as property in Abraham’s world, this is not likely what this phrase indicates here. In his exhaustive work Creation and Blessing, Allen Ross argues, “This expression probably does not refer to the acquisition of slaves, for the Hebrew word [translated people] would not likely be used for that.” He further argues that if the expression refers to winning proselytes,^[1] “the narrative implies that, already in Haran, Abram had been sharing his faith.”^[2] When people answer the Lord’s call and pursue the Lord’s city as their goal, they can’t help but tell others about it and can’t help but acquire more souls to join them on the journey of faith.

In today’s complex and individualistically oriented world, we need to keep things simple. As Christians, we have one God who has called us (1 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:14) and one heavenly city that we join Abraham in pursuing. Have we answered that call, and are we with singular focus pursuing that goal? The surest way to check is to ask the question, what souls have I acquired along the way? Jesus Himself said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

-Patrick Swayne  
patrick@tftw.org