Faith.

[This is the talk I gave in sacrament meeting today. Latter-day Saint content ahead!]

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We’re going to be talking about deep doctrine today – the deepest, in fact, because it’s so foundational. It’s faith. It qualifies as a “deep doctrine” because, while it’s a word that many people use, very few understand it.

Much of the Christian world has had an ongoing debate about “faith vs. works,” with the greater mass of Protestant denominations – and even some parts of Catholic doctrine – holding to the idea of “salvation by faith alone,” condemning works and basing that condemnation of their reading of the Pauline epistles. At best, some will say that good works or acts are a natural result of faith, but they’re not something to put any effort into – they just come naturally if you have faith.

I never thought that that made much sense in the context of the New Testament as a whole. While Christ often emphasized guarding against the thoughts or desires which lead to evil acts, He certainly seemed to expect His disciples to behave like His disciples. Here are a few examples just out of the Sermon on the Mount, which is three chapters of one gospel:

Matthew 5:44: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

Matthew 6:3-4: “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”

Matthew 7:12: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 7:21: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

So from Jesus’ own words, it seems pretty clear that what we do is at least as important as what we believe, or profess to believe.

That’s all well and good, but if you’re like me, you’re starting to read through Paul’s letters in Come Follow Me with a wince on your face, because what you read in there just doesn’t seem to jibe with either Christ’s teachings in the gospels, or the doctrines of the Restoration.

We’re familiar with the concept of the Great Apostasy – that after the deaths of the original apostles, priesthood authority was lost, and many plain and precious truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ were lost or removed.

One of the most far-reaching aspects of the Great Apostasy is one that we almost don’t notice: That the definitions of some words were changed, so that even in the Biblical texts we have, what we read is not what was meant.

We’re familiar with the idea that word meanings change over time. Less than a hundred years ago, the word “satellite” simply meant “moon” – now it means something in orbit that’s NOT the moon. And within living memory of many in this room, the word “gay” simply meant “joyful” or “carefree.”

By the way, this is another reason that the Restoration of living Prophets and Apostles is so important, because prophets speaking to people in their own days will always sound strange to people of another time and place. This is one of my favorite examples. Joseph Smith said:

But there has been a great difficulty in getting anything into the heads of this generation. It has been like splitting hemlock knocks with a corndodger for a wedge, and a pumpkin for a beetle.

Now that sounds like a big load of nonsense, until you know that:

• The knots in hemlock wood are just about the toughest thing to chop through.
• A corndodger is a crumbly corn bread biscuit.
• A beetle is a huge hammer, used to drive an iron wedge into the wood.

So what he’s saying here, which his audience would have understood, is that it’s easier to split some very tough wood by using a Twinkie as a chisel, and a pumpkin as a hammer.

And that’s less than two hundred years ago, in a language we speak.

“Faith” is another one of those words, and the change in its definition has been a difficulty to understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ for two thousand years.

I recently read this book, Relational Faith, published by BYU Studies, in which a scholar of Greek and Latin examines the Greek word pistis, which is translated as “faith,” and what it would have meant to a first-century, Greek-speaking, mostly Gentile audience – in other words, the audience to whom Paul was primarily writing.

The first thing that becomes apparent is that faith did not mean “belief in doctrines or teachings.” Pistis was always expressed toward someone, not an idea. As more modern speakers have put it, it’s not “faith that,” it’s “faith in.”

But more than that, faith was always relational. That sense of the word still remains in the way we use the word “faithful,” and it always described a relationship in which faithfulness went both ways – between a soldier and a captain, between a husband and wife, or between a master – or Lord – and a servant. With apologies to the popular Primary song, faith is not really explained as “knowing the sun will rise,” because the sun doesn’t owe me anything and has not made a commitment to me.

The nuances of pistis really do take a book to examine, but rather than having an eight-paragraph footnote every time the word “faith” appears in the New Testament, we could understand it as being a combination of “trust in” and “loyalty to.”

Another key part of understanding pistis is that there were obvious terms to the faithfulness required in any relationship. Being faithful to one’s spouse is expressed in different behavior than being faithful to one’s commanding officer, for example. So in each case, there was a statement of terms to the relationship, often sealed by a outward observance, such as taking an oath – in many ancient texts and monuments, pistis is symbolized by a handshake or handclasp. In other words, the idea of a covenant is implicit in the definition of faith – one cannot be faithful if there is no commitment to be kept.

Maybe some of you are familiar with a YouTube channel called “Hello Saints,” in which Pastor Jeff, a young evangelical pastor from the midwest, learns all that he can about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s very respectful and does his best to understand what he learns in the Book of Mormon, in conversations with members, and even in General Conference, but he will also point out where what he’s running across in his learning doesn’t match what mainstream Christianity teaches. In one recent video, he said something to the effect that, for as much as Latter-day Saints are always talking about covenants, he just doesn’t see that in the New Testament. The truth is, covenants are all over the New Testament, because every time it mentions faith, a covenantal relationship is implicit.

Here’s something I learned which brought me so much clarity. As you can imagine, in pre-modern societies in much of the world – including Hebrew, Greek and Roman cities – there weren’t nearly the number of laws and regulations to keep everything working. At the same time, there wasn’t the same idea of “equality” of rights and privileges which we take for granted. Instead, much of the business of society was organized by what’s called patron/client relationships. A wealthy or powerful individual, the patron, would agree to take someone not as powerful under his wing, and extend favors or protection or opportunities to him that he could not have gotten on his own. In return, the client is expected to be loyal to the patron – not to someday “pay back” his patron, but perpetually, because that’s how loyalty works. (Unfortunately, the only real example of patron/client relationships in the modern world are in the Mafia, which makes this seem shady, but imagine if the Mafia were engaged in legitimate business, and were filling the space because there were very few laws.)

Now here’s the kicker: The favor or opportunities which the wealthy patron bestowed upon his clients was known by the word chares, which is the word that’s translated in our Bibles as “grace.” And the perpetual loyalty which the client showed to his patron, not because he felt he could pay back the debt but because that’s the behavior that loyalty requires, was of course pistis, or faith. So when Paul spoke at length about being “saved by grace,” he wasn’t implying that the recipient of Christ’s saving grace was freed from all obligation; on the contrary, a Christian was bound to the Savior – his Lord – by unbreakable bonds of loyalty and obligation, which would necessarily be expressed in behavior, not simply “belief.”

Again, these are things that Paul didn’t need to explain to his audience, because that’s what the word meant. It would have been as awkward for him to explain the foundational concept of pistis as for me to say, “Now, when we’re done here today, we’re going to leave in our cars, which are four-wheeled vehicles also known as ‘automobiles’ powered by an internal combustion engine unless you have a Tesla.”

But over the centuries, as Greek fell out of use as the common language of the area, the concept of “faith” among Christian theologians became more mystical and conceptual. By the time of Augustine, around 400 AD, faith meant two things: one, a list of beliefs, such as the “correct” understanding of the Trinity, which had to be adhered to and confessed in order to be orthodox; and two, a God-given belief in those things, apart from any evidence reinforcing it. Augustine even went so far as to explain that faith was necessarily all from God and not at all dependent on our agency, because doing anything to strengthen our faith would be an icky “work.” From that, it was just a short leap to the idea of predestination, because obviously if it’s God who’s entirely responsible for a believer’s faith, the God picks and chooses who He gives faith to.

A millennium later, Martin Luther took those Augustinian ideas and cranked them up to eleven. His marching cry was “faith alone,” even so far as negating all of the behavioral and ethical teachings of the New Testament. If you’re wondering why so much greed, adultery, and bloodshed were sanctioned throughout Christendom, a large part of it was because of this perversion of the idea of “faith”: If I have faith, then God’s gonna save me no matter what I do. The entire idea of discipleship was rendered a thing of naught.

So how does a restored understanding of pistis affect the whole “faith vs. works” argument? Well, it’s true: No one is saved by works, either in the sense of an ordinance, or in the sense of doing good specifically to earn our way into heaven. We all know that baptism does not save anyone, even if we don’t know that we know. How do we explain to non-members about baptism for the dead? We tell them that, even with the ordinance performed, the individual must accept the covenant which goes with it.

The same with any other righteous act. I can’t, for instance, donate to the construction of a temple for the express purpose of getting blessings out of it, or trying to “buy” my way into heaven. I can and should consecrate as able to the work of the Lord, but I should do it because of my covenantal loyalty to a Savior in whom I trust. Another way to explain it: I should do the dishes because I’m in a covenantal relationship with my wife and want to do things for the betterment of the family as a whole. But if I do the dishes because I’ll get a backrub out of it, that’s not covenantal, that’s transactional. And that’s not how pistis works. (And yes, I know I just established the expectation that I’ll do the dishes tonight.)

So. With our new understanding of “faith in” as meaning “trust in and loyalty to,” let’s examine some of the proof texts used to support a “faith alone” theology:

Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Hebrews 11:11 “Through faith also Sara received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was part age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.”

Ephesians 2: 8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourself: it is the gift of God:
“Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Those are some of the short ones, but trust me – or rather, don’t take my word for it: Read through the epistles of Paul in the next few weeks with this understanding of pistis in mind, and you will understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ like never before.

Brothers and sisters, our Lord and Master has extended to us His saving grace, and by the covenant of faithfulness we are partakers in that grace. I am so grateful that the knowledge of the covenant path which was taught in the early Church has been restored, that we can reach out to a God and a Savior whom we can trust.