“The Just Shall Live by Faith”

Righteousness not only saves person from physical harm because he trusts in God. It also saves him from spiritual death because his faith made him righteous and worthy in God’s sight.

The Just Shall Live by Faith

Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright in him. But the righteous will live by his faith (Habakkuk 2:4).

At first glance, we can take this verse to mean that a proud, wicked person has no idea of the judgment that’s coming his way because his soul is way too puffed up to think that his stature and everything else he can be proud of will somehow keep him safe. But a humble, righteous person whose trust is in God will be preserved by his God from troubles. He will truly be safe. But the apostle Paul seems to see further meaning in this verse as he quotes it at least three times in his arguments regarding the subject of faith.

According to him, it is faith that makes one righteous, or just. Therefore, the person who is made righteous or just by his faith will live, meaning that he’ll have everlasting life. He’ll be “safe” from spiritual death which is the total and irrevocable expulsion from God’s presence because God can’t have anything to do with a soul that doesn’t have faith in Him.

Here are Paul’s quotations of Habakkuk 2:4:

For in it is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith. As it is written, “But the righteous shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).

“But the righteous will live by faith.” If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him (Hebrews 10:38).

Now, that no man is justified by the law before God is evident; for, “The righteous will live by faith.” The law is not of faith; but, “The man who does them will live by them” (Galatians 3:11-12).

As we said in the previous episode, a person who obeys God’s commandments, even if it is against his will, will be free from punishment and will have a peaceful, prosperous, and even blessed life here on earth. But that’s just it: only in this life on earth. But what about the life that is next? Since our physical body is temporary and our soul is eternal; after death, the latter can only go either to the presence of God or not to the presence of God. And, as we said, God can’t have anything with a soul that doesn’t have faith in Him.

Good thing God is super gracious, and He went out of His way and provided a solution to mankind’s perennial problem. All He asks is faith, particularly in the One whom He gave to us.

For by grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

We have discussed in the previous episode about how Abraham became a righteous man by God’s grace regardless of everything good he has done. God was exceedingly pleased by the faith that Abraham unfeignedly showed; and because of this, He made Abraham righteous with no additional process or ingredient needed.

So overall, it is of grace. God has always been gracious, and Abraham became righteous before God because of God’s graciousness. However, he couldn’t have obtained God’s grace if he didn’t believe God’s promise to him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Like Abraham, we become righteous before God only by God’s grace. However, we cannot obtain that grace if we won’t somehow make use of a thing called faith to receive it.

So we receive God’s grace by putting our trust in Him, by leaving to God everything that is in our lives, by dedicating our lives to God, and by deciding for ourselves that, from now on, we will follow God and His ways, that we will turn away from sin, and that we will be truly obedient to God’s commandments by the faith that is in us. So that’s how it happens. That’s how it works.

That way, we can’t have anything to boast before God because we realize that everything that is in that process of obtaining righteousness is by God’s grace. God gives the gift of righteousness to us graciously, and we receive it by putting our faith in Him.

He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9).

When we put our faith in God, God cleanses our heart as a result. Thus, our hearts becomes circumcised. It doesn’t matter whether we are within the covenant of circumcision or not. We become right with God all the same: by grace though faith. That’s what the covenant of circumcision between God and Abraham symbolizes.

“…to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me” (Acts 26:18)

This is now the answer to our hanging question from last episode, episode 2. How so? Because it is the resurrected Lord Jesus who is speaking here in this verse; and He says that people are forgiven and sanctified by having faith in Him.

After Jesus resurrected from the dead, the plan of God to redeem fallen human kind back to Himself had been fulfilled, completed, and perfected. There is now hope for the helpless mankind to get back to God regardless of their inadequacy, insufficiency, and inability to make themselves absolutely perfect and therefore right with God. They can be as if sinless if they put their faith in Jesus because Jesus is sinless. God can see them as righteous although they may have been the opposite of righteous because Jesus is righteous.

Once we’ve learned how to see Jesus truly, we will also be able to see God the Father for who He is because Jesus is the image of the invisible God. It means that Jesus is the tangible form of God because He walked here on earth as a regular person like you and me.

Mary conceived Him by power of the Holy Spirit and gave birth to Him. Jesus grew up in human stature and human wisdom. In fact, He looked too ordinary that you wouldn’t take Him for a God-Man or Messiah unless you hear Him talk and feel the power of His words and see Him work miracles that only the power of God can accomplish.

Through Jesus, God the Father was already in the final phase of His plan to redeem us, sinful mankind, back to Himself. Therefore, it is now in Jesus whom we should put our faith properly.

So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor (Galatians 3:24-26).

So the reason why God handed down to us His commandments through Moses is to make us aware of His standards and expectations and His definition of how it is to live as responsible human beings. God wants to inculcate His ideals in the minds of every generation so that it will be our way of life. We are to live and breathe it. We are to love it. Gifted teachers are to teach us about it.

As we constantly devote our minds to the knowledge of the will of God, fulfilling it to the letter becomes our life goal. Sometimes, we see it as a religious obligation. Thus, we are educated in the law of God. But the more we do so, something seems to turn out amiss. We realize that we can’t perfectly obey all of the commandments and thus be perfect and sinless, something that we can present to God as an accomplishment.

It is because of our sin nature that always goes against our efforts to fulfill God’s commandments to the letter. Sometimes, we give in to it; and when we do, all our efforts crumble down like a sand castle we’ve been carefully sculpting.

Maybe that’s the very reason why God gave us His commandments: to show us that His standards are absolute that not one of us can ever meet those without miss.

Without faith in God and relationship with God, what we’re doing seems to be just an exercise in futility. We realize in the end that only God can deliver us out of this dilemma and make us worthy of Him despite of our inadequacies. Once we’ve put our total trust in God, in Jesus in particular, we will realize that it is God who can enable us to fulfill the commandments with joy, with power. We’ll produce an effect that our previous manner of fulfilling the law was unable to produce.

So we see now that the purpose of the Law of Moses was just to be a tutor. And it is a good tutor. No question about it. But what really completes everything and makes us right with God is our faith in God, in Jesus in particular. The tutor molded us and prepared us for the coming of God’s complete redemption through Jesus. And now that Jesus is revealed and now that we have truly put our faith in Him, we are now released from the tutor’s tutelage; and the way the tutor molded us makes even more sense now than ever before.

…and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that which is of the law but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith (Philippians 3:9).

Righteousness is from God; it is not from us. It cannot come from us. We cannot make ourselves righteous by our own efforts, not even by our obedience to God’s commandments if we don’t have faith in Jesus first.

…yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law (Galatians 2:16)

The words are emphatic. The idea is as clear as a noonday sun.

The men of God in the Old Testament, starting from Adam, became right with God because of their faith in God.

Yes, Adam. Though Adam disobeyed, it is implied in the Bible that he also lived a life of faith in God. And I think Eve did too. Why wouldn’t they? They used to talk to God face to face! But they realized the gravity and lifelong effects of their disobedience and looked forward to God’s redeeming work which they may or may not have not known to be through Jesus, God the Son.

Enoch was raptured because of his faith. He didn’t experience death. Maybe his faith was so great that God literally took him up to heaven because he was too good and God didn’t want anymore to expose him to the temptations of the world.

Noah and his family were the only people whom God found worthy to live in their generation because of Noah’s faith.

Job clung to his faith in God to the end despite the misery and anguish that God allowed Satan to cause him. With tearful words and despondent exposition, he defended his faithfulness to God before his so-called friends who, at first, consoled him and then accused him of being a wicked person.

And of course, the man of the hour, Abraham, and then Isaac and Jacob. They were just ordinary people like you and me who lived normal lives alongside their life of faith in God, which made their lives extraordinary. Then we know the adventures of Jacob’s 11th son, Joseph, in Egypt: how, from being a slave, he became Egypt’s number two. This was all brought about by his faith in Yahweh.

Then Moses, Joshua, and the judges. They didn’t sign up to be heroes! But with a life of faith, they became God’s valiant men. Then Samuel and then David. Just look at the book of Psalms. Such beautiful words cannot be composed by someone who doesn’t have a personal relationship with God!

Elijah was also raptured because of a strict life of faith he had led throughout his life. Elisha, though he acquired a double portion of God’s power that his master, Elijah, wielded, did experience death because he was kind of a grumpy and hard-to-please fellow. (That’s just my opinion.) He was a great man of God, though; and he always made a point of giving God the glory through the spectacular miracles that God performed through his prophetic timing.

Then Asa, Jehosaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Those Judean kings prevailed against formidable foes because of their faith in Yahweh.

Then Isaiah who prophesied a lot about Jesus the Messiah, then Jeremiah, the prophet to the nations.

Jeremiah, like Job, also lived a miserable life. But if you would ask me, I think Jeremiah was more miserable than Job because Job had a happy beginning and ending while Jeremiah didn’t. Jeremiah was miserable all throughout his life although he may have had some intermittent respite from troubles. But what sweetened his miserable existence is the unspeakable joy of knowing that he had been entrusted with God’s revelation despite the fact that he was constantly experiencing various forms of hurt because of it.

So we see here that the Old Testament men of God were not just heroes and sages whom we can refer to and talk about as is. They were exceptional human beings! By God’s grace, they became exceptional human beings. What set apart and distinguished the Old Testament men of God from their countrymen are their devotion to, and a life of faith in, God, together with the powerful gifts that God the Holy Spirit endowed them with. Bottom line: faith. Faith is what makes us right with God and what makes everything else work smoothly.

Study the Bible with me: Faith series, episode 3

by: Marven T. Baldo