For the apostle Paul and the other New Testament (NT) writers,
the Christian faith is synonymous with the faith of Jesus.
Jesus’ gospel, or "good news of the kingdom
of God 4:43 ), is the message that the historical
Jesus believed. The NT Jesus embodied his faith as both messenger and message,
persuading his disciples to believe what he believed about the kingdom of God
and about himself as its anointed ruler ("Christ" being a
transliteration into English of the Greek, Christos, meaning "Anointed
One," that is, the one whom God anoints to rule God’s kingdom; its Hebrew
equivalent is Messiah). Jesus’ faith in "the word"; in his having
come, according to the Law and the Prophets, to fulfill God’s promise to bless
all nations in Abraham’s messianic seed; led him to his death on the cross, from
which God raised Jesus, whose death and resurrection completed the message that
Paul identified with "the faith of Jesus."
Faith in or Faith of?
Several Pauline texts refer to the faith of Jesus but are
typically, and unfortunately, rendered by English NT versions as "faith in"
Jesus (Romans 3:22, 26; Galatians 2:16 [twice] and 20; 3:22; Philippians 3:9). The rendering
"faith in" points to the faith of Christians as the instrument God
uses to justify them. But the rendering "faith of" points to the
faith of the Messiah, that is, what the historical Jesus believed about himself and
the kingdom of God
That the rendering "faith of" is preferable to "faith
in" in these key Pauline texts (i.e., Romans 3:22, 26; Galatians 2:16, 20; 3:22;
Philippians 3:9) can be confirmed by comparing them with Paul’s reference to "the
faith of Abraham" (Romans 4:16), in which precisely the same original-language
construction is used: for example, pisteos Jesou (Romans 3:26) and pisteos Abraau
(Romans 4:16). (Any NT interlinear translation can be used to make these
comparisons.) The point of Paul’s paralleling the faiths of Jesus and Abraham
is to identify Jesus as the true heir of the Abrahamic faith and, therefore, as
the true recipient of God’s Abrahamic promise to bless all nations in Abraham’s
"seed" (Galatians 3:16 ; see
also Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 18:18 ).
The rendering of Paul’s references to Jesus’ faith as "faith
in" rather than "faith of" obscures Paul’s parallel between Jesus
and Abraham. Abraham "did not waver in unbelief regarding the promise of
God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully
persuaded that God was able to do what he had promised" (Romans 4:20-21). Just
so, Jesus’ faith; his persuasion regarding God’s promise; that God would raise
his Anointed One from the dead and exalt him to God’s right hand in God’s
coming kingdom; according to Paul, "to confirm the promises given to the
patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles [the nations] might glorify God for
his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9); led Jesus to his death on the cross and,
therefore, to his resurrection. This is Paul’s "gospel," which God "promised
beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures . . ." (Romans
According to Paul, then, "the righteousness of God"
(and, therefore, the hope of salvation) comes to Christians "through the
faith of Jesus the Messiah [dia pisteos Jesou Christou] to all who believe" (Romans 3:22 ). And so, Paul's words clarify
that Jesus' faith is the instrument God uses, whenever the NT gospel is heard,
to impart God's righteousness to believing hearts.
This means that Christians; that is, believers in the NT
gospel; are saved not because of their own faith but because of the faith of
Jesus, as it is revealed in the NT gospel: ". . . we believed in the Messiah Jesus
in order that we might be justified by the faith of the Messiah [ek pisteos Christou]
and not by works of law [ek ergon nomou], because by works of law no flesh will
be justified" (Galatians 2:16).
Two Approaches to Righteousness
Paul’s contrast is between two approaches to justification:
"faith," on one hand, and "works," on the other. His
contrast, however, is not between Christians whose "faith" involves
trusting God for their righteousness, on one hand, and Christians, or Jews, who
try to earn their righteousness through "works," on the other. Paul’s
contrast is, instead, between "the faith of the Messiah" as God’s
instrument of justification, on one hand, and "works of law" as the
false instrument of justification into which the Mosaic law had been turned by
first-century Pharisaic Judaism, on the other.
The error of Pharisaic Judaism was to misconstrue the Mosaic
law as a foundational and, therefore, permanent, element in God’s purpose for Israel
Paul's correction of this error consisted in pointing out
that the Mosaic law, rather than being foundational and permanent element in
God's purpose, was instead structural and temporary.
The Mosaic law was structural in that it was built on the
foundation of God’s Abrahamic promise, which preceded the giving of the law by "430
years" (Galatians 3:17 ). For what
purpose? "It was added"; being a structural addition to the foundation
of the Abrahamic promise; "because of transgressions" (Galatians 3:19a). The
Mosaic law was given; in fulfillment of God’s promise to make of Abraham a great
nation; to impart to Israel, through the nation’s "transgressions" of
the ten commandments, an understanding of its alienation from its God: "For
by works of law shall no flesh be justified before him, since through the law
comes knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20; see also Romans 7:7-25). The "knowledge
of sin" came to faithful Israelites in light of the nation’s habitual
failure to obey the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods
before me" (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7), its idolatry resulting in its inability
to faithfully obey the other commandments.
And the Mosaic law was temporary in that it "was added .
. . until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made" (Galatians 3:19b),
namely, Jesus.
From Old Covenant to New Covenant
According to Paul, then, the Mosaic law lasted from Moses to
Messiah, the true Abrahamic "seed," in and through whom all of
Abraham’s descendents, both Jews and Gentiles, would enjoy the promised
blessing to all nations.
God fulfilled his Abrahamic promise according to his own
timetable—"when the fullness of time had come" (Galatians 4:4); by sending
his Anointed One to display a perfect faith in God’s Abrahamic promise. In so
doing, God transformed the old covenant between God and one nation (Israel
The Mosaic law was "the letter" (Romans 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:6),
which could only condemn God’s people because it formed, by definition as a
legal system, a record of their transgressions. As the writer of Hebrews says, "under
law . . . without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22 ), because no legal system can forgive (in
that forgiveness, by definition, is freely extended: the cancellation of an
unpaid debt). God’s forgiveness could only be ceremonially, and therefore
imperfectly, experienced under law, and this required that the ongoing and
unending condemnation of the law be mitigated by "the shedding of blood."
The animal sacrifices of the Mosaic law served the purpose of conveying to Israel
The function of the ongoing sacrifices required by the
Mosaic law was not to "perfect those who draw near" (Hebrews 10:1) with
an assurance of God’s forgiveness but, instead, to serve as "a reminder of
sin every year" (Hebrews 10:3). While it is the nature of love (and,
therefore, of God) to freely forgive, God’s people could not experience the
assurance of God’s forgiveness until the Mosaic law, as the instrument through
which God governed his old-covenant people, came to an end. (Though the Mosaic
law no longer governs God’s people, it continues, along with "the
Prophets," to "bear witness to" God’s righteousness [Romans 3:21 ] by telling the story of God’s
faithfulness to his Abrahamic promise.)
Jesus’ faith in God’s promise led him to the cross, which
brought the old covenant of "the letter" to an end (see Galatians 3:13-14;
Ephessians 2:14-16; Colossians 2:13-14). What the blood of animals could do only
imperfectly and temporarily; offer to believing hearts the experience of God’s
forgiveness; the blood of Jesus has done both perfectly and permanently. And
having brought to an end the rule of "the letter" at the cross, God
raised Jesus from the dead, entering into a new covenant of "the spirit"
with all of all nations who believe the NT gospel and, thereby, identify
themselves with the faith of Jesus.
Jesus’ faith in "the word" of promise instilled on
his mind and in his heart the love of his God, making him the embodiment of the
new covenant: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their
minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall
be my people" (Hebrews 8:10; Jeremiah 31:33). The new-covenant law of God would
no longer be "letter" but now "spirit," no longer a matter
of the coercive power of a legal system but now the persuasive power of a
spiritual (i.e., God-breathed) message: the NT gospel of Jesus and the kingdom
of God
Another Jesus?
Perhaps the major problem with the rendering "faith in"
rather than "faith of" is that it suggests that the Christian’s faith
in Jesus was Paul’s central concern rather than what Jesus himself believed
and, therefore, called his disciples to believe about the kingdom of God, that
is, about God’s original and international purpose, and about Jesus as the one whom
God anointed to fulfill his purpose and promise. For Paul, the critical
question was whether the faith of the Christians to whom he wrote continued to
correspond to the faith of the "Christ" Paul had proclaimed to them.
Paul warned his readers about "someone [who] proclaims
another Jesus than the one we proclaimed," which would lead them to "receive
a different spirit from the one you received [and] accept a different gospel
from the one you accepted" (2 Corinthians 11:4). For Paul, "Jesus" and "spirit"
and "gospel" were equivalent terms, each being synonymous with the
faith of the historical Jesus, which Paul believed himself to have proclaimed
and his readers to have believed when he had been in their presence.
What if Christians have been led to place their faith in a "Jesus"
other than the risen Jesus whose "spirit" revealed his "gospel"
to Paul? What if the "Christ" of ecclesiastical Christianity, the "Christ"
whom it reinvented as "God the Son" in the Church councils of the
fourth and fifth centuries, the "Christ" who rules "the Church"
through its clergy and reveals "Himself" to its members through its
rituals is "another Jesus than the one [Paul] proclaimed"?
Unlike Paul, the evangelical branch of ecclesiastical
Christianity has nothing to say about the "faith of" its Jesus
because as "God the Son" he had no need for faith when he was in the
flesh. All that the evangelical Christ proclaimed is presumed to have come not
from his faith in "the word" God revealed to him through the Hebrew
scriptures and through "the Spirit" but from the memory of his "pre-existent"
presence in "eternity past" as "God the Son" with God the
Father. (This is a gnostic concept that has been read into John’s Gospel and,
thereby, puts John’s testimony about a supposedly "divine" Jesus in
conflict with the testimony of the three synoptic Gospels, each of which
present; as, in truth, does John’s Gospel; a fully human Jesus.) The question is
whether the apostolic "Son of God" is equivalent to the post-apostolic
"God the Son"; if not, the churches of ecclesiastical Christianity
have been led to worship "another Jesus."
Jesus believed what all the biblical messengers of God who
preceded him believed: God’s Abrahamic promise. God promised Abraham to give
him a son, through whom God promised to make of him a great nation, through
which God promised to bless all nations (see Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 18:18 ). Of course, like all his fellow Jews,
Jesus believed that God had already fulfilled the promise of the son, in the
form of Isaac, and the promise of the nation, in the form of Israel
The Faith of Jesus and Christian Faith
Jesus revealed his faith, then, to his disciples, and to the
multitudes, through his proclamation of the kingdom
of God Israel kingdom
of God 4:43 ).
Jesus’ faith; his proclamation of the kingdom of God; constituted
his service to the Jewish people, and through them to all nations: "For I
tell you that the Messiah became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s
truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in
order that the Gentiles [that is, the nations] might glorify God for his mercy"
(Romans 15:8-9). As Jesus himself put it, "For even the Son of Man came not
to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark
10:45 ). And so, Jesus, "the
pioneer and perfecter of faith . . . for the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the
throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2). Which is to say that Jesus died because of his
faith, that is, because he was persuaded that God would raise His Anointed One
from the dead in keeping with his Abrahamic promise to bless all nations with
everlasting life in the kingdom of God
The NT faith of Jesus, then, encompasses his proclamation of
the kingdom of God
Accordingly, the NT gospel is the call to believe what Jesus
believed, and so, to live in hope of resurrection to everlasting life in the
coming kingdom of God and in love for oneself and others, just as God
demonstrates his love for one and all in the sacrificial death to which Jesus
was led by his faith in the promise of God.
Written by Robert Hatch and edited by Bruce Lyon
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