Living by Faith in an Age of Panic
John Calvin on why the righteous (still) live by faith alone.
One of the great preaching joys I had last year was when I preached sequentially through the oracle of Habakkuk, which you can listen to here, here, here, here, and here, if you feel so inclined. What’s striking about that prophecy is not only its timeliness, which is rife, but also its insistence on living by faith. “Walking by faith and not by sight,” you might say, has become my muse, as I think Paul’s words to Corinth are some of his most prescient, both then and now. And in fact, as I’ve been tracing the forming of God’s church through the lens of God’s people in the wilderness, which is what my sermon series on Exodus is all about, the same motif comes to the fore. Those who belong to God have always been a people of faith.
As a defining quality, then, it makes sense to digress on it even further, especially since the notion of faith is so often juxtaposed against more rational alternatives. There is a sense in which faith and reason (or logic, or science) are pitted against each other to make sense of things, which is a rather pitiful scenario. I’ve heard it explained that faith is like a blind leap in the dark, hoping and/or knowing that something or someone will catch you. That’s a rather ludicrous idea, though — one that doesn’t cohere with the biblical message of faith alone.
1. Faith When Panic Makes More Sense
I admit, along with Joel Houston and Michael Guy Chislett, that faith in God does often “make a fool of what makes sense.” Take, for example, the scene at the Red Sea (which I recently preached on), where Moses invites God’s people to fear not and stand firm, and trust in the salvation God was going to work for them that very day, despite not having much in the way of evidence that any of that was true (Exod. 14:13–14). Or, more to the point, consider how Habakkuk is beckoned to trust in the work that God was already doing in his day, even if he couldn’t see it (Hab. 1:5). What made more sense for Moses and for Habakkuk was panic; for both, faith in God appeared rather foolish.
But, even still, this doesn’t mean that faith is a summons to something inherently nonsensical or illogical. This is often the binary that scholars and skeptics would have you believe is the only option. Faith in God is the choice of the halfwitted, those who are irresponsible enough to take someone else’s word without employing sound reason. But that’s not the invitation put forth in Scripture to sinners and saints. The summons to live by faith isn’t akin to being summoned to live by something irrational or illogical, since faith is neither against reason nor against logic. Rather, the invitation to put our faith in God corresponds to faith being “supra-rational” or “supra-logical” — “supra (‘so͞oprə)” being the Latin prefix for “above or beyond.”
2. The Foolish Wisdom of God
Transcending any reason, logic, or rationale found here “under the sun” is the wisdom of God, which, more often than not, looks like folly than anything else. Like some sort of ill-timed joke, God brings down the wisdom of the world through the foolishness of the cross and the empty tomb (1 Cor. 1:20–25). What is deemed wise in the eyes of humankind is naught to him who defeats death through death. In other words, the Christian gospel — a.k.a. the word of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18) — isn’t a message of religious nonsense. Rather, it’s a message that’s been steeped in the logic of God, whose ways and thoughts aren’t like ours (Isa. 55:8).
From the Red Sea to Golgotha to Corinth to right now, the through-line is always faith, but specifically faith in the word of God’s promise, over, above, and in spite of what little evidence there is to corroborate it. The thread that ties Scripture together is that which is found in Chapter 2 of Habakkuk’s prophecy: “The righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4). Lots of ink has been spilled attempting to dissect what this phrase means and how it ought to be interpreted by those who have a vested interest in orthodoxy (myself included). Suffice it to say, though, that the premise of living and walking by faith inherently divests us of any other preconceived rationale. Genevan reformer John Calvin once put it like this:
It is indeed certain that the Prophet understands by the word אֱמוּנָה, that faith which strips us of all arrogance, and leads us naked and needy to God, that we may seek salvation from him alone, which would otherwise be far removed from us.1
3. Sola Fide and the Only Mechanism That Saves
I make no qualms in saying, then, that the righteous live by bare faith, sola fide. Stripped of the hubris of our own machinations, whatever those may be, the mechanism by which humanity is both saved and sustained in this world of woe is the word of God’s promise, e.g., the gospel. This has always been so, from Abraham to Moses to Luther to today. As I said at the top, those who belong to God have always been a people of faith. Paul makes this apparent when he blatantly connects the Lord giving the promise to Abraham to the Lord “preaching the gospel beforehand to Abraham” (Gal. 3:7–8). All of which to say that Paul’s subsequent assertion in his letter to the Romans, that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17), also prevails.
It’s always been the case that God’s people have been called to live and walk by faith by putting their faith in God’s supra-rational and supernatural promise that the pervasiveness of sin and strife is no match for him who comes to subsume all of that detritus in a flood of grace. Like Moses and Habakkuk, ours is a world submerged in the debris left behind in the wake of iniquity, injustice, and insipid conceit. Amid all that wreckage, there is no haven to be found. There is no rest for humanity’s weary bones, save that which is found in what the Lord has said he will do and has done already. “There is nowhere rest,” Calvin says, “except the mind recumbs on God’s grace alone.”2 He goes on to say:
When our minds are agitated with unbelief, when doubts respecting God’s providence creep in, when things are so confused in this world as to involve us in darkness, so that no light appears: we must bid adieu to our own reason; for all our thoughts are nothing worth, when we seek, according to our own reason, to form a judgment.3
4. Faith When the News Won’t Let You Rest
The reason this is so prescient is probably self-evident. We inhabit the same world, with the same deluge of headlines populating our newsfeeds. Whether it’s the impending A.I. apocalypse or whatever the heck is going on in the Epstein files, or our society’s ever-deepening distrust in our elected officials, or the mounting fragmentation of neighbors over political opinions, there’s much about which we can be worried. We aren’t lacking for anxiety fodder. Apprehension is in surplus. This is why Habakkuk feels so trenchant, because I sense the same from him.
I mean, his prophecy opens with a searing complaint directed towards God for his apparent idleness and nonchalance in the face of injustice, violence, and strife. He cries out how long, but wonders if he’s not just crying into oblivion. Everyone’s corrupt, and everything seems crooked. There is no law, let alone any hope. This is the world Habakkuk inhabited, which, fittingly, doesn’t feel too dissimilar to our own. It’s fitting because of the way in which God answers his troubled prophet. “Look among the nations, and see,” the Lord tells him, “wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told” (Hab. 1:5).
I’ve gone back to that verse countless times since I studied it and preached on it last year. It’s indicative of our moment, whatever that may look like. “It is hence the trial of faith to acquiesce in God’s word,” Calvin concludes, “when its accomplishment does in no way appear.”4 We can’t necessarily see the work that God’s doing in our midst, and even if he told us in blistering detail what he was doing, we wouldn’t believe him. But this is why faith in God is always an invitation to trust in God’s promise, to be convinced of even the things we cannot see (Heb. 11:1), and to fling the weight of our existence on a Word that’s infinitely steadfast. We live and walk by faith, not because it always makes sense, but because it’s all we have when everything else doesn’t.
Grace and peace to you.
John Calvin, “Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,” Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, translated by John Owen, Vols. 1–5 (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1848), 4:74.
Calvin, 4:72.
Calvin, 4:58–59.
Calvin, 4:68.