THE “ONE FAITH” IN PAUL’S PLEA FOR UNITY

The apostle’s plea for a sacred oneness of all the children of God in Ephesians 4:1-6 is based upon a seven-fold reference to unity, one of which is the “one faith.” In this apostolic mandate for unity the “one faith” is linked with six other one’s: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one baptism, and one God. Paul appears to arrange these one’s into two triads, the first being one body, one Spirit, one hope, while the second is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. God is thus the seventh unit, making perfect both the source and the numerical reference to unity, the number seven so often symbolizing completion or perfection in the scriptures.

Joined as it is with one Lord and one baptism, the “one faith” suggests a relationship with the Lord that is based upon baptism. This is made clear in Gal. 3:26-27: “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Here we see that sonship is realized only through faith in Christ, a faith that expresses itself in baptism. Mark 16:15-16 is a similar reference: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”

Faith is thus to act. As Gal. 5:6 puts it: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.” It is as if Paul were saying: A man is right with God, not by any works that he does, such as circumcision, but by a faith that is activated by love. Baptism is, therefore, in Paul’s view an act of faith, or it is the response of faith.

Alexander Campbell said it this way: “Ordinances are instituted to consummate faith, or to perfect faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in what he obtained for us. Hence acts of faith were instituted and ordained — such as repentance, baptism, the Lord’s day, the Lord’s supper. There is a special grace connected in the Divine economy, with every specific ordinance. But whatever be the specific ordinance, faith is indispensable to the enjoyment of each and every blessing connected with it.” (Mill. Harb., 1857, p. 648)

Campbell insists that it is by faith that man is pardoned, but it is a faith that is exercised in acquiescence to the ordinances of the Lord. “By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God — not because of works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9) This passage makes faith and works incompatible, but it does nor make faith and grace incompatible: “by grace have you been saved through faith . . . “ It does not therefore make grace and baptism into Christ incompatible. While baptism is an act of faith, it can hardly be viewed as a work, for in baptism the subject is as passive as he will be in his literal burial in the earth. Baptism is not a work, but an ordinance of God to which the faithful heart responds in loving obedience.

To quote Campbell again: “Baptism is but the personal and formal confession of the faith of the subject . . . It is a development of the grace of God.”

It is a gross misinterpretation of scripture to make “the faith” mean everything in the New Testament. It is a common view among our people that if one is faithful he must be true to all that is written in the New Testament. The “faithful preacher” is therefore one who is loyal to all that the New Testament teaches.

If this is a proper understanding of the “one faith”, then there was not a faithful man among all the twelve apostles except John, for he was the only one that lived to see all the New Testament written. Even Paul could not have been faithful since some of the “one faith” was composed after his death, and he himself had to say “we know in part”. If one has to know and obey all the New Testament to be a faithful Christian and to be true to the “one faith”, then we have to eliminate all the primitive saints as faithful, for they did not have all the scriptures we have.

There is no such difficulty when the “one faith” is equated with the gospel, which in turn must be distinguished from the apostles’ doctrine. The gospel was fully preached before a book of the New Testament was composed, and this is the “one faith” Paul speaks of, and it is obedience to this that makes one a Christian.

Certainly doctrine is urgently important, and the disciple is disloyal if he fails to disobey any of it that he understands. But there are both babes and full grown men in the “one faith” who are equally faithful, even though they differ greatly, both in their understanding and practice of the apostles’ doctrine.

The “one faith” is personal rather than doctrinal. Faith means a loving, trusting, believing relationship to God through Christ, and the scriptures never use faith to mean assent to or defense of doctrinal statements or loyalty to a church. When Jude urges disciples to “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” he could hardly have had reference to all the New Testament, for some books were yet to be written. The faith to be defended against the heretics that Jude was writing about was the gospel that Peter preached on Pentecost.

Let me emphasize this proposition for your consideration: whenever faith is made to mean assent to doctrinal statements or loyalty to a religion or church, it assumes the character of a meritorious act; but when faith is understood to refer to the personal relationship one enjoys with God through Christ, it assumes the character of grace.

The view that faith is a matter of being doctrinally sound makes faith an act of man, while the position that faith is a personal relationship makes faith an act of God. One is justification by works, the other justification by grace.

The proposition I have affirmed may be illustrated by the use made of “faithful” and “unfaithful” by many modern religionists. A “faithful member” is one who adheres to the doctrines and practices of a particular religious persuasion. He is faithful if he believes what the church teaches and if he conforms to its practices. If he shows disloyalty in these respects, he is looked upon as unfaithful. A true disciple of the Christ who deeply loves and trusts the Saviour, believing in Him with a child-like faith, will be rejected as unfaithful by many churches today unless he subscribes to their particular doctrinal interpretations.

Faith is thus made to mean a conformity to orthodoxy rather than a cultivated relationship with a Person. This is why a man immersed in the secularism and sensualism of our age and impregnated with worldly ambitions can be “a faithful member of the church.” It also explains why a devoted Christian may well be excommunicated when his faith in a Person transcends his loyalty to his party.

When faith is measured in terms of things, whether creedal statements or orthodox practices, salvation is seen as a matter of works, even though there might be lip service given to the role of grace. Faith in things has one busy being right about everything. If he is right in his doctrinal interpretations, diligent in his giving, loyal in his attendance, dutiful to the “items of worship” — if indeed he wears the right name, belongs to the right church, and does everything according to the pattern, and if he stays that way — then he is faithful. Neither can one be sure at any given point as to whether he is saved, for it all depends on how right he is at the moment. If he is indeed faithful in all these things, then of course he will be saved. But why shouldn’t he? He has been faithful, hasn’t he?

This is salvation by works. The disciple who sees faith as personal has a different view. He never thinks of himself as “faithful” because of the works he performs for his Lord: “So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Lk. 17-10). He works because he is faithful; he is not faithful because he works.

In this regard it will prove helpful to notice our Lord’s usage of faithful and unfaithful. You will find that he never speaks of one’s faith or lack of it in terms of fidelity to a set of doctrines. It is always in terms of the person’s relationship to God, or as to whether he trusts in the power of God. Listen to Him: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you; O men of little faith?” (Matt. 6:25-30).

Jesus says his disciples have little faith when they fail to trust God’s providential care. Worry about where the next meal is coming from is unfaithfulness according to this scripture. We well know that a congregation can be full of worried, frustrated souls who, like sister Martha, are “anxious about many things,” but who are not for one moment thought of as unfaithful, for they are loyal to all the external tests of orthodoxy. Have you ever heard of anyone being “withdrawn from” because of worry? Imagine a brother or sister being “churched” because of their anxiety about where the next meal was coming from!

But we can all recall cases of withdrawals because of doctrinal variations. Before me is a notice of one such withdrawal by a Dallas church from a man who at one time was one of their ministers. The charges against him include such things as his conviction that the Holy Spirit operates directly, erroneous views relative to the frequency of the Lord’s Supper and the use of instruments of music in worship, and his questioning the undenominational character and unity of the Church of Christ.

This brother is, therefore, “unfaithful” (in the bull of excommunication he and his wife are referred to as “former brethren”) because of erroneous views about things like instrumental music and the serving of the Lord’s Supper. Regardless of how much love and trust there may be in his heart for the Christ, he is rejected as a brother because of unorthodox positions. If this is the meaning of the “one faith” in the apostle’s call for unity, then unity will be realized only when we all see alike in regards to all these things that are subject to varying interpretations.

The scriptures have a much different view of what it means to be unfaithful. It may mean a rejection of the testimony of God: “Then Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing,’‘’ (John 20:27). Thomas had ample testimony as to the reality of the resurrection. To refuse to accept the testimony was to be unfaithful This is the meaning of “unfaithful” in Rev. 21:8 where the unbelievers along with the cowardly, murderers, and fornicators are said to have their place in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. These “unfaithful” that are doomed to the second death in hell are those who refuse to believe in the Christ, or who only give lip service to Him, denying Him by the way they live.

It is a travesty against both reason and scripture to make a passage like this refer to those who happen to differ with us in doctrinal interpretation. To say a brother is “unfaithful” and put him in company with murderers and fornicators as does Rev. 21:8 because they play a piano at the congregation where he holds membership is to be ridiculous.

It is equally burlesque to take a passage like 2 Cor. 6:14, where it says: “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers,” and make it mean that the young woman in your congregation cannot marry a man in another religious body, for this makes the man unfaithful! A man is faithful if he believes in Jesus as Lord, and if his life bespeaks such a profession. It is true that Christianity is tragically divided into many sects, but it is fatal to assume that one must be in my own group in order to be faithful. The context of 2 Cor. 6:14 makes it clear what “unbeliever” means. He is the one who rejects the Christ and chooses paganism instead. It therefore makes sense to ask as Paul does in that passage: “What has a believer in common with an unbeliever?” There is a great deal in common between ourselves and the multitudes of others who profess the Christ, irrespective of the tragic fissions that divide us into many denominations.

We must learn, therefore, that in references to such verses as Rev. 2:10, which reads: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life,” the reference is to fidelity to the Christ, and not to the list of doctrinal interpretations whereby we test a brother’s loyalty. Mark it: a brother may be doctrinally wrong and yet be faithful, and he may be doctrinally right and yet be unfaithful. It is not a question of how good a biblicist he is or how orthodox he is, but whether he trusts in the Lord Jesus. He may be confused about many points of scripture, and yet be filled with trust and confidence that Jesus is Lord of his life. This is the “one faith” in Eph. 4:5, and it is this kind of faith that makes possible the sacred oneness for which the apostle pleads.

This is to say that there is no necessary connection between faith and knowledge. By this we mean that a disciple’s faithfulness is not contingent upon how much he knows about the Bible, the church, the Christian system, or things in general He may be an ignorant man and yet be faithful to the Christ, or he may be most sophisticated and yet be devoid of faith. It does not follow that the more one knows about the Bible the more faith he has. The man who has poured over the scriptures for a half century should have a richer faith because of it, but his faith may be weaker than that of a newly-born Christian. One might have great knowledge and little faith, or little knowledge and great faith. Faith is a simple and loving trust in Jesus the Christ; it is not academic devotion to a book or loyalty to a denomination.

Knowledge can be a dangerous thing, even knowledge about spiritual things. It tends to make a man arrogant, so that he looks down on the man who is not as far advanced as himself. It tends to make him unsympathetic with those he regards as ignorant. My experiences in the educational field have given me an insight as to how dangerous a consciousness of intellectual superiority can be. It is an evident danger in the church as much as in the world. The ignorance of wisdom can be fatal to a living faith.

One of my colleagues at the university has been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He confides with me somewhat concerning his problems, and I have spoken to him of the peace that is in the Christ. He is a Ph. D., a Phi Beta Kappa who speaks several languages, and a man who is multi-disciplined. But he does not know the Lord. As I spoke to him of the Christian faith, he said to me: “I wish I could believe that. I really do. I envy you. But my mind rejects it as fantastic.” What he was really saying, bless his heart, was that he was simply too intelligent to believe what I believe!

We must not forget the apostolic warning that shows how knowledge can be a barrier to a loving faith: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” (1 Cor. 8:1-2) He assures us that among those who are wise by worldly standards there are but few who are called (1 Cor. 1:26), and he tells us how he avoided lofty words of wisdom lest faith rest in the wisdom of men rather than in the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:5 )

One of the amazing characteristics of Christianity is that the mystery of the gospel was hidden from the wise and revealed only to those with hearts like children: “In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will’” (Lk. 10:21)

This would suggest that faith is as simple as it is profound. What is the “one faith” of Paul’s plea for unity? A simple trust in God through Christ.

There is no need for extended essays on the nature of faith, as if it were something quite beyond our grasp. One has faith in the Christ when he trusts in him enough to rely upon his promises and loves him enough to do what he commands. We can see this kind of faith in the experiences Jesus had with his followers. There is the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus and cried to Him, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon:” At first Jesus did not even answer her, as if to see the measure of her faith. The disciples wanted to send her away. Finally Jesus spoke to her, explaining that his mission was to the Jews, and that it would hardly be fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. Then she said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Then said Jesus: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matt. 15)

This touching story shows us what faith is — great faith! When one comes to Jesus and begs for help, and is satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the table, that is faith. She believed that Jesus was the answer to all her needs. The poor soul probably knew very little about Jewish theology, and maybe not much about anything else, but she believed that Jesus was the power of God.

Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, is another like her. When Jesus passed near him, he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those around him rebuked him, wanting him to be quiet. But he cried all the louder until Jesus heard him, and called him. The Master asked him what he wanted. “Lord, let me receive my sight.” Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” (Mark 10)

And there is the woman who for twelve years had the flow of blood that the physicians could not cure, and who had spent all her money trying to get well. Despite the great throng she made her way to Jesus, saying, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” Her faith made her well. (Mark 5)

Faith may call for a response that makes no sense. It may even be preposterous, as in the commandment that Abraham should murder his own son. Can you not see Abraham as he prepared for his journey that fateful morning. Where are you going, Abraham? To slay my own son, my own dear Isaac. But why? The Lord told me to do so. How ridiculous! I would not commit a murder, especially my own son, nor even if God told me to! But Abraham believed God, regardless of how unreasonable it might be. And is it not unreasonable to tell a man that he would give him a son, and that that son would be the means whereby he would become the father of many nations — and then turn around and tell him to murder the son!

“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:3) Paul explains that the purpose of all this was to make Abraham “the father of all who believe.” It is the kind of faith that Abraham had that is the “one faith” in Eph. 4:5.

We should observe in conclusion, however, that the “one faith” in Paul’s unity appeal is characteristic of a certain kind of person: one who leads a life worthy of the Christian calling. The apostle names four virtues in particular: “I urge you to behave with all humility, and gentleness, and patience. I urge you to bear with one another in love.”

Here is our answer to the curse of party strife. When we are humble we set our own life beside the life of Christ and expose ourselves honestly to the demands of God. When we are gentle we have our passions under control and treat others with kindness. When we are longsuffering we bear with each other without irritation. When we have love in our hearts we have tender feelings even for the loveless and for those who would abuse us.

Humility, gentleness, longsuffering, love! This is the way to unity, the sacred oneness for which our Savior prayed. It is this kind of company that the “one faith” must keep.

“Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee,” — (Isa. 26:3 )

— The Editor

Seminar on Fellowship at Wynnewood Christian Chapel, 2303 S. Tyler, Dallas, Texas, June 15-18. Brethren from all groups of Christian Churches — Churches of Christ will be invited, with representative leaders sharing in the seminar. The sessions will be open to all interested Christians. Further information will be published later. Correspond with L. M. Roberts, 4450 Preston Circle, Dallas, about the gathering.