The Inheritance of Faith

“Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.”

 ~Hebrews 11:16b (NRSV)

Because it is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6), those who know God have inherited the resources to live by faith, not sight. We, who are Christians, are set apart from the world by our faith. By faith—just like the much-vaunted exemplars of faith in Hebrews 11—we prove we are God’s. By faith, we are examples to nobody in particular, but, we please God.

God, therefore, is not ashamed to be called our God. What unlegislated freedom that is! That the Creator of the universe, and of all things, is by possession our God: a genuine and irredeemable spiritual wonder of magnificence.

The inheritance of faith is a gift handed down through the spiritual genome of humanity under God. It is accessible to all humanity, but each person must choose.

Faith Is What Separates Us From The World

At any time we can be one or the other, never both: under God or under the world. Those who pick and choose for selfish or short-sighted or silly gain are of the latter. Those who choose to opt for faith, even against themselves at times, are of the former.

When we want what God wants, we live by faith. It separates us from the world.

When we are separated from the world, saved for God’s purposes alone, we fulfil our potential—that hidden, invisible, and even the unspeakable, potential.

By faith we prove our holistic outlook. Having been separated out from an insistence upon our free will, we are useful for God. Whenever we live by faith God accepts our actions. They are holy and sanctified. We have proved our reliability, trustworthiness, and faithfulness. And God is pleased. To God we are “very good” by our faith.

But this is ever contingent on our relationship with God, for if we relate with God correctly our faith is fuelled by constant godly revelation. For, it would be impossible to act by faith if God didn’t reveal himself, and his will, to us.

Revelation Defines Us As Family

Because we are connected to God, and we relate with the Divine Being, heaven is revealed to us moment by moment. This revelation of God is our promise of inheritance and proof that we belong to God and that we have knowledge of how to live by faith.

Revelation is evidence of our inheritance. The inheritance of faith is engendered by God’s relating with us. God doesn’t have to relate with us, but wants to, in love. By revelation God relates with us.

So, we ought to be thankful for God’s revelation, which is a foretaste for faith, and the seed for obedience. And when we water such a seed by faithfulness we please God.

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By faith we are recognised as possessing what is freely inheritable in the world: the skill for living in obedience to God. Trust unites with revelation to become faith.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.