Sola Fide

You know, there’s the great verse in Colossians 2 which says, “just as you received Christ, so walk in Him.” My favorite version says, “continue to live your lives in Him.” You’ve probably heard this verse before, but did you stop to consider it? How did you receive Christ? Was it through spiritual discipline, behavior modification, or ardent commitment to doing godly things? No, as we learn in Ephesians, you received Christ by grace through faith, and so your walk is also by grace through faith. You don’t receive Him through faith and then walk in Him through good effort and commitment to getting closer. Paul tells us in Romans that because of our freedom in Christ we get to serve from the new life of the Spirit in us, not based on some old written code and the obligations found within it.

So, what does that look like, to live our lives in Him, rooted in faith?

Well, maybe you should ask Him about that? See, because there is no math formula to follow when it comes to faith, if there were it would no longer be faith. There is no faith required to know that 1 +1 always equals 2. Faith is not formulaic. And I get it, that’s scary at some level, because it feels out of our control (it is). But it’s only scary if you don’t know the truth which is that God has only good for you. God delights in giving good things to His kids. He loves to teach you what it looks like to live out the goodness that He has placed in you already. You are designed for goodness that He already has prepared for you. Which is more powerful for doing good I wonder: His strength or yours?

You can ask Him to teach you and trust Him to do it. He’s pretty rad like that.

Col 2:6-7; Eph 2:8-10; Rom 7:6; Titus 2:11-12