IS GOD FAITHFUL? 089

When the scripture says that God is faithful what does that mean to you?

1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Here this verse says that God is faithful, after, it mentions two ideas, one, that He will not allow you to be tempted above your capacity and two, that in every temptation He will make a way of escape.

We usually liken God being faithful to Him being trustworthy, this is not wrong but is only one side of the story. The greek word used as the basis for translation of the English word "faithful" there in 1 Corinthians 10:13 has also been translated as "believing" in other verses.

This is huge, let us look at an example,

1 Timothy 6:2 And they that have believing G4103 masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful G4103 and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.

The number G4103 beside the words believing and faithful indicate that they come from the same greek word. Let us look at another verse that sheds more light.

John 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. G4103

In this verse, what was the opposite of the word believing? Faithless. Jesus told Thomas to not be faithless be believing, or synonymously, do not be faithless but be faithful! that is to say be ful-of-faith!

Taking this idea back to the the original verse in 1 corinthians 10:13 we can look at the verse from a new angle and see that in addition to being trustworthy, God can be "believing" or ful-of-faith. Someone says why is this relevant? well in the verse it says that God will not permit us to be tempted above our capacity and will always provide a way of escape - THEREFORE - He believes, He is ful-of-faith that in every situation/temptation we can overcome! Someone says that God does not need faith. This is true but always remember we make a grave assumption when we ascribe any human element/emotion/experience to God, especially when using human words. For example, when the bible says that God gets angry, we can run into the error of assuming that God's anger is identical to human anger. Instead these thoughts add to the pathos and poetry of the Bible. We could say that God does not need anger anymore than He needs faith. I believe these words are our best attempts at portraying God's posture towards us.

Therefore when the text says that God is faithful, I imagine the burden of the verse to be that there is someone in our corner rooting for us and cheering us on. Some people have no one that believes in them, [how powerful is it when someone just believes in you?] to that person I would say, lay hold of divine power, for GOD in heaven, believes in you.

More on this tomorrow, Godspeed.

Father, thank you for believing that we can make it.

IJN,

amen

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