Pastor Talk
The Pillars of Christian Character: Faith
In this concluding conversation, Pastors Clint and Michael explore how faith is the glue that holds all of the other Christian character traits together. In this conversation, faith and works are not diametrically opposed but rather mutually complimentary. Transcript 00:00:01:23 - 00:00:29:06 Michael Gewecke We are going to be exploring as our last mark of Christian character, the last pillar we're going to be looking at the idea of faith, and we're going to also be having a kind of concluding conversation towards the end about how these pillars might fit together and the ways in which we think about Christian character as being unique to our lives that we live out in Jesus Christ. 00:00:29:09 - 00:01:09:21 Clint Loveall There is some overlap between the idea of character and the idea of ethics, and Christians and non-Christians would agree on some ethical ideas, right? Don't hurt people. Try not to be dishonest. We we would agree on some of the pathways that we would call better and worse, but to the idea of motivation. Christians hold up those things not simply as good ideas, not just as good practices, not just as good ways to be students or citizens, but as a reflection of our faith commitment. 00:01:09:24 - 00:01:42:07 Clint Loveall And so even though we would have some commonality with lots of people and we could agree on things that are good for us, for Christian, our primary motivation is not that the thing in itself is good, but the one that it reflects is good, and we seek to reflect him by doing that, by being that. And so I, I do think while we stand on some ground together, we get there two very different pathways. 00:01:42:07 - 00:02:18:12 Clint Loveall And bear with me. We, you know, you give examples and you don't want to, well, whatever. Here we go. This is, I think, one of the interesting detours you get there has recently been another movie by people to put the Ten Commandments in public spaces. Right. And on the surface, there's nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments being known, but that's fine. 00:02:18:15 - 00:02:49:09 Clint Loveall But the Ten Commandments are not first and foremost good ideas to live by their covenant practices within the faith. And so when we treat them the same as be nice to each other, or we think that when we post them, they represent good ideas instead of covenant faithfulness, we're using them in a in a social. And I would. 00:02:49:12 - 00:03:29:12 Clint Loveall I would argue at times almost a secular way. And so I think those are the conversations that Christian people have to be. We have to be cautious with. Because, yes, the Ten Commandments are good ideas, but that's not primarily what they are, and that's never what they are to us. They are always more than that. And if we let them be reduced to instructions that go on walls, we have lost something in our understanding of what it means to practice Christian character. 00:03:29:17 - 00:03:56:24 Clint Loveall So again, don't go tell everybody Pastor Kuntz against the Ten Commandments. That's not my point. My my point is that underneath. Civics and civility and good practices, there is a layer deeper that Christians hopefully get to when we when we discuss character. 00:03:56:26 - 00:04:28:27 Michael Gewecke You can tell them, Pastor Michael, for the Ten Commandments, they'll get spicy. No, I want to we need to press on. But I just want to make one really short comment here about the Ten Commandments, which I think is is instructive because Christian character cannot be dissolved down to moral truisms, because Christian character is always rooted inside the reflection of Jesus Christ, who is a person. 00:04:28:29 - 00:05:00:01 Michael Gewecke It's always relational. We're always seeking to live into the character of Christ, into the world in which we live. So to put a thing on the wall and to point to people to it is a little bit like pointing them to the monument when the living thing is literally in you, it's to say, hey, look, we came to see the, the, the, the scaffolding of what a moral Christian ethic looks like when actually, because the Spirit of God lives in you, that Christian ethics should be living. 00:05:00:03 - 00:05:18:03 Michael Gewecke And so these things should reinforce for us what is true and how God expects us to live as covenantal people. But we should be the illustration of it in the world. People should see those ten commandments inside the people of God, because we are relationally living that out in the world. 00:05:18:06 - 00:05:49:19 Clint Loveall Yeah, the law itself is to point to something deeper, something better, something bigger. Michael's comment made me think, I don't have a nice way to ask this question. How many of you have been to a concert recently, or at some point in the recent past that was also attended by young people? 00:05:49:22 - 00:06:17:13 Clint Loveall Okay. Okay. Well, yeah. I'm on thin ice here, but if you have been to a concert where young people. It is incredible to me that young people will run and push and work as hard as they can to get close to the stage. And then if you watch them, they are watching the band on their phone while they film it. 00:06:17:13 - 00:06:56:17 Clint Loveall And as an old person, I think they're right there. You you're you're looking at a copy of the thing that's happening right in front of you. And I think sometimes that's how we treat law or prescriptions like the Ten Commandments. They are the embodiment of a Christ like life. They're not rules. They are the way to live a life that honors Jesus, and we should not allow them to become less than that just because they're also good ideas in other contexts. 00:06:56:20 - 00:07:25:22 Clint Loveall If that sounds a little crabby, I will admit to you it is because they are ours. They belong to the church, and and we need to be aware of that anyway. Oh, that's enough preaching. So we are talking tonight about the character pillar, that we would summarize by faith. And if you talk to people about faith, I would say that that falls in in two categories. 00:07:25:22 - 00:07:56:13 Clint Loveall The first is generally if you ask people what faith is, they're going to talk to you about what? Their beliefs. Yeah, I agree, I think one way that we talk about the faith is the collection of things we believe that we label Christianity, and when we put our mind to the faith, what we are doing is trying to ensure that we think correctly about following Christ. 00:07:56:15 - 00:08:29:06 Clint Loveall So these are where we run into words like our doctrine, our theology. Right? We want to have the right ideas. We want to have the right thinking. This is a major part of going to seminary. When you want to be a pastor and you do the seminary thing, part of what they're trying to do is train you to think, well, they're trying to train you, teach you what is our traditions take what is theology, take on concepts like salvation and sin and providence and justification and justice. 00:08:29:09 - 00:09:07:17 Clint Loveall What do we think about God in our corner of the church? And is that thinking both biblical? And is it Christ like? You might also add historical, traditional, but primarily the lenses we've tried to use. Is it biblical and is it like and? We are in a tradition that prides itself on being thoughtful and often for good reason. 00:09:07:19 - 00:09:11:18 Clint Loveall But it's not always the case. 00:09:11:21 - 00:09:35:29 Michael Gewecke Yeah, we know throughout history, and this has been true, by the way, in every age that we as Christians succumb to bad thinking, our theology does not always rise to the level of or beyond the, the weight and the anchoring of our times. Right? So the church has been guilty, over, over the years. Our thinking hasn't risen above racism. 00:09:36:06 - 00:10:07:17 Michael Gewecke We've struggled theologically with, with classes, and nationalism, legalism. I mean, all of the isms we've at some point, run our way down the wrong path. And the truth is, Christians aren't always good about consistent thinking. We are often guilty of being sloppy. Sometimes, quite frankly, we get called out on bad thinking and we just double down and say, yeah, what are you going to do about it? 00:10:07:19 - 00:10:36:13 Michael Gewecke Because we we find ourselves backed into a corner. And so one of the ways that we as Christians have to refer to faith is, is we have to, in the spirit of the Reformation, remember that the Spirit of God is always at work, both before we are reformed people, but we're also being reformed. We also always have to be open to that work of the spirit within us, and that becomes an active practice. 00:10:36:13 - 00:10:54:00 Michael Gewecke In the same way that we say that a doctor is practicing medicine. I don't think we have any doctors in the room today so I can make a doctor joke. I think right now you think it's okay for you to practice medicine. Just don't practice it on me. Right? Get it right on me. But the reality is, Christians are practicing the faith. 00:10:54:02 - 00:11:16:03 Michael Gewecke We're always practicing it and embodying it. The world in which we live. But truth is, we don't always get that right. But the the focus of church is that we take what we believe and we live it out in a meaningful way. And this is one of the most essential understandings for why church is an essential part of the Christian life. 00:11:16:06 - 00:11:44:10 Michael Gewecke Because if you believe that at its core, the faith is an individual adventure, then ultimately what you might believe is that it's all what's in your head and really what you do with it is a matter of your choice in the world in which you live. But anyone who has been a brother or sister in Christ in a church family knows because of experience and practice that this is the incubator. 00:11:44:10 - 00:12:11:06 Michael Gewecke It's the laboratory. It's the place where that thinking has to work its way into our living. It has to be in our hearts, and it has to live in and out through our mouths, our hands and our feet. And I think that that is one of the reasons we need to focus on faith at the end is because I think in some ways, faith becomes this bridge, that this character that we are seeking to live in, to all of the things we talked about. 00:12:11:06 - 00:12:31:00 Michael Gewecke Grace. Right. All love, all these things that we believe live in us. Faith is the way in which those things get integrated into our lives, and we lean back into them and trust that God's doing that in us. And that's what gives us the courage and bravery to live it out in a place with other people doing the same. 00:12:31:03 - 00:13:11:29 Clint Loveall So tonight we are going to focus on this second idea that faith not only is what we believe, but equally as importantly, faith is what we do. Faith is the beliefs we put into practice, and we are all well aware that the gap between what we believe and what we do, we call hypocrisy in the church. When I know what it is that I am to do, but I don't do it or I do something else, I'm choosing to live in a way that doesn't match my professed beliefs. 00:13:11:29 - 00:13:33:21 Clint Loveall And, the ancients gave us that word hypocrisy. It's the word they use for actors. People who played roles. So I say one thing, but I act differently. So we're going to focus tonight on the action and the case. We're going to make or try to make is that the collective of our Christian character is not an attribute. 00:13:33:21 - 00:14:05:26 Clint Loveall If faith is not just one thing in our character, faith is the foundation, the primary expression of our character. And I think we've maybe touched on this. This gets a little difficult in English. In English, faith is a noun, so it's something you do or don't have. We generally make it equivalent to belief, but Greek has a way of making faith a verb so that life can be faith. 00:14:05:29 - 00:14:31:14 Clint Loveall Work can be faith, family can be faith. And it's unfortunate that we can't really do that with our English word. The closest we could get, maybe, is that faith is the collection of things we think are true, and living up to them would make us faithful. So we might be able to talk about our faithfulness as an attribute of faith. 00:14:31:14 - 00:15:01:07 Clint Loveall But it's very difficult for us to talk about faith. Any. And I wish we could fix that because it's a wonderful advantage. I think, that biblical language has over English. In the Bible you can faith things, you can faith, relationships, and I wish we could say it that way. I think that would be helpful. The difference between faith and faithful. 00:15:01:08 - 00:15:31:11 Clint Loveall Again, this English struggle is not really a separation that the Scripture makes it. Even Paul, who is very clear to talk about faith versus works, understands them to be connected, understands them, to be both essential. Paul is not in those conversations saying that what we do doesn't matter. He is only saying that what we do is not the mechanism by which we are saved. 00:15:31:14 - 00:16:03:05 Clint Loveall We are saved by faith. But Paul himself writes, we are saved for good works in order to do good works. So Christians should stand out not just for the things we say or the things we believe, but for the things we faith, for the things we do. We should be faithful people, literally full of faith, connected and committed to the God who calls us. 00:16:03:08 - 00:16:40:03 Clint Loveall Because in our life, our attempt is through gratitude for what we've received to show the character of God in the character of his people. You know, our character as Christians, we are to display something of what we know to be true of God. So in the Old Testament, faithfulness is the equivalent of obedience, which is still in there, but in the New Testament, far more faith is our belief put into practice. 00:16:40:06 - 00:17:01:15 Michael Gewecke I think when we make the mistake of making faith a thing that we possess, we begin to lose our ability to make sense of the Psalms we make. We lose our ability to make sense of limitations and job. Because when a person is crying out to God says, how in the world are you letting this affliction happen to me? 00:17:01:15 - 00:17:27:21 Michael Gewecke When we experience grief, Christians feel this pang of guilt. Well, how am I feeling this way towards God? I have I lost my faith. You heard this before, and if that is the way we can sit, our faith that it's a thing that we can have, then it's a thing that is so fragile that we forget that faithful people can be angry. 00:17:27:24 - 00:18:02:12 Michael Gewecke Faithful people can have doubts. People who are facing God to be the kind of people on the journey of faith, and yet still finding ourselves in a circumstance where faith is hard. And I think that that is essential for us to understand that there's a real danger in trying to drive a wedge between faith and works. So trying to say that if I just have enough faith, then that is separate from what I do is is by definition, creating the hypocrisy is, by definition, playing a role. 00:18:02:19 - 00:18:31:29 Michael Gewecke Because what it means is we're not connecting the truth of what we say with the reality of how we live. So if our character is forged by what we believe, that is revealed by what we practice, and no doubt Christians should be people who are worthy of trust, we should be exemplars of moral living, practitioners of love. We should be the kind of people who demonstrate forgiveness in the world. 00:18:32:02 - 00:19:02:01 Michael Gewecke But we should not, at our core, be people who are looking at our lives from a checklist of moral maxims, like to say, the perfect student in your classroom who could get an A on all the character marks, good for them. That would. That's great. But a Christian has to look at that and recognize that if we're not living out a thing that we profess to be true, then it's not facing our character. 00:19:02:06 - 00:19:27:02 Michael Gewecke And if our character hasn't been transformed, then we're not yet within the relational connection with the newer transformer of the universe. Right? It so it it's a connection between what we say we believe, what's internal and the lives that we live externally. And so therefore, life together should be the highest witness of Christian character. The church should demonstrate the truth of our profession. 00:19:27:04 - 00:19:51:12 Michael Gewecke In fact, if you want to see that played out, I encourage you to keep reading on the text that we read for the sermon today in Corinthians, because Paul makes that literal argument. He goes on to say that people who have the mind of Christ are the very people who live their lives as if they do. And here's an accusation against the Corinthians, or that they're not living up to it. 00:19:51:15 - 00:19:59:11 Michael Gewecke And so the church becomes a place where the truth of our witness is seen, and the lives that we live together. 00:19:59:13 - 00:20:32:03 Clint Loveall And this is, this is a challenge for the church. I think we are at our absolute best in terms of witness when we do this. Well, imagine that the church is a place where someone could come and lose $1,000 and guarantee they'd get it back. The place where someone could show up hungry, and we would guarantee that they get fed or show up needing prayer, and we would pray over that. 00:20:32:06 - 00:20:56:27 Clint Loveall The idea is that as community, we would be a place where the character of Christ would be on display. And sure, none of us are going to hit that note perfectly. We are always going to be out of tune a little. But when the church is able to live into that reality, it is an incredible demonstration to the world. 00:20:57:00 - 00:21:25:21 Clint Loveall You may know this, the word Christian is essentially a word that means small Christs, miniature Christs. So, so that Christians, the very thing we call ourselves, is a reminder of the one we're trying to imitate, which we can do only through his grace. What Christian character is to keep primary. What would Jesus have me do and say? 00:21:25:24 - 00:21:59:06 Clint Loveall Who would Jesus have me become so that a Christian tells the truth? Not because telling the truth is important, it is, but because Jesus Christ said, I am the truth and a Christian loves their neighbor, not because that makes community better, which it does, but because Jesus said, love God and love neighbor. And so the end of Christian character for us is what we hear and see in Jesus Christ. 00:21:59:08 - 00:22:32:17 Clint Loveall And sometimes, sometimes that's hard to discern. I suspect all of us have had a moment where we've wrestled with what's the right thing to do. We've genuinely struggled. I have this moment. I don't know if A is the Christian thing to do, or if B is the Christian thing to do. That happens. But in my experience, it's rarer than we like to admit, because mostly the Christian thing is not hard to figure out. 00:22:32:20 - 00:22:56:29 Clint Loveall It's hard to do. And most of the time, I would say we generally know what Christ would have us do. We don't want to do it. We don't want to be honest. We don't want to love our enemies. We don't want to stay silent. We don't want to give or forgive. And and many Christians, as we know, get caught stepping outside the boundaries of the faith. 00:22:57:01 - 00:23:26:25 Clint Loveall And many more don't get caught. And many tell us how sorry they are after they get caught. But none of that is the point. Because the point is, what would Jesus have me be? What would Jesus have me say when we bend the rules and leave the path? My experience is that most of the time I know it, and most of the time, though, I'd love to claim otherwise. 00:23:26:28 - 00:24:01:22 Clint Loveall I did it willingly,
