Formulas for Faith

For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith. (Romans 12:3, 6)

I recently wrote some thoughts about formulas in life on my other blog site. As I look at these verses I see phrases that look to me like they contain pretty obvious elements of formulas. These two verses not far from each other seem to repeat something very similar that creates opportunity to learn much from both their differences and their similarities.

The subject or values used in these formulas is grace and faith. Both of these, according to these verses, are received from God and not something we can come up with ourselves. The first verse talks about the grace given to Paul and the next refers to the grace given to each and all of us. The first verse talks about a measure of faith and the next uses the term proportion of faith. Those two words are similar but add additional meaning to our understanding of how to quantify faith, if that can really be done.

This whole section is addressing the need for each person in the growing body of Christ to have a proper understanding of how they fit into that body and how they are to relate to others. Paul is speaking from a vantage point of experience and wisdom and is modeling to his readers what it looks like to relate and function from within the body. He starts out by saying more or less that in using the grace and gifts that he has been given by God he is going to share with others by instruction and example how to best live and operate within the true body of Christ, the bonds of believers.

His very first instruction speaking from the grace received is to admonish us to first of all have a correct evaluation of our relative relationship to those around us and to have proper balance within our own thinking. I spent some time on this verse previously and I believe that implicit in this verse is the exposure of our need to have a healthy and proper balance between our mind and our spirit, our left and our right brain, to be properly experiencing what is called the joy/peace cycle that is most conducive to having a healthy and thriving life. That means that we should not only resist the temptation to think of ourselves using the world's false system of comparisons (hierarchy or variegated values) but we should learn to have a solid, bold, yet humble, proper sense of our enormous worth in the eyes of heaven.

Humility, I am coming to understand, is not feeling worthless or degraded, discounting ourself or being put down by others; that is not humility but humiliation which is something completely different – a counterfeit. Humility is really freedom from false notions about ourselves, freedom from feeling worthless and then trying to do, say or act in ways that might make us feel more superior and valuable. When we begin to see the real truth about God and how He sees us as infinitely valuable to Him and worthy of everything possible to save us and restore us to intimate fellowship with Himself, when we begin to grasp this with our hearts even more than with our heads, we will have the freedom to be humble and not worry about what anyone else thinks about us because none of our true value can ever be received from any other source.

This is really the grace that Paul is talking about in these two verses. The grace that we receive from God is the value and blessings that we receive for no reason that we can produce or earn. That is in sharp contrast to the assumptions of most religion but it is the real truth as taught in the Bible. When that grace is received at the heart level, that sense of value and worth and being cherished by the greatest Being in the universe, then we experience true freedom from all our attempts to get others to like us and fill our emptiness inside. The more we understand and accept the grace of God which includes the gifts of God as itemized in the following verses, the more free we become to not only live in confidence and peace and joy but we can also learn to view others as just as valuable and equal in the eyes of heaven.

But verse six also points out that though we all receive the same grace that doesn't mean we are all carbon copies of a single pattern. God has made everything beautiful and everyone special but also different. Our differences do not in the slightest affect our worth in God's eyes, though in the world's system it has everything to do with our value. In the body of Christ, the kingdom of heaven, everyone is always equally valuable but is widely variegated in the heart expressions of their reflections of God. God intended it to be this way in order for us to be dependent on all the rest of the body in order to function properly and truly find our highest fulfillment.

In Genesis we are told that God created man in His image, male and female He created them. As the human race has expanded and also seriously deteriorated since that time it is very necessary that for a more complete reflection of His image more and more people are needed to fill in the many details and nuances that need to be revealed about God. For anyone to somehow think they have a better handle on what God is like than most other people is to live in a most sad state of self-deception and illusion. Fresh truths about God can easily be discovered by observing differences in cultures, personalities, genders and the unlimited other various differences of categories of people in this world. Instead of focusing on differences as being opportunities for finding faults in others we should view them as positive opportunities to catch fresh glimpses of facets of God.

Of course Satan has exploited this aspect of God's creation to terribly distort the image of God in humanity which is one of his primary objectives. He wants to obliterate the face of God from the earth in every way he can, so many of the differences we see are far from accurate revelations about God. Many of them have taken on the evil image of Satan instead. But we must learn to look past the externals which is primarily Satan's arena of life, look past the artificial and the damaged and we must utilize the eyes of our spirit conditioned with the corrective lenses of heaven to see others as God sees them and appreciate their value and contributions as heaven values them instead of our “normal” way of seeing things. Like Paul we must approach the body of Christ in humanity through the grace given to us and not through our prejudices and bigoted opinions about our superiority.

God has alloted to each a proportion of faith. This word proportion is really like the word percentage. Very clearly a portion is not the whole, it is only a part of a whole. This clearly indicates that God has in a sense divvied up His reflection in humanity into many small pieces that need to be assembled tightly together to better see His true nature and beauty. He has done this, according to this passage, by investing many different gifts that, while different complement each other. These gifts never make one person more important or valuable than another but all are important and valuable because they partially reflect the real and only Source of value anywhere.

These gifts are also designed to be needed by the rest in the body so that we will become completely interdependent as God desires us to be. The most basic description of real love, which is the essence of God Himself, is other-centeredness, a focus on living for the good and benefit and increasing happiness of others. This is not only the principle that should make the world go around but is the basic principle that makes the whole universe go around. It is the core formula by which everything has been created and until we are restored into living and thinking and functioning in perfect harmony with this most basic of all formulas we will be at odds with the rest of the universe and reality itself.

But even more than that, we must learn to live this love from a spontaneity that can only spring from a transformed spirit that is vitally connected (like with an umbilical cord) with the heart of God. Anything less than this is a counterfeit and a cheap imitation that will not be able to stand the fiery exposure to the presence of the center of love. If we are to be truly prepared to face the presence of God successfully – and everyone will be exposed to His presence whether they believe in Him or not – we must be first transformed by the renewing of our mind and have our spirit come alive and be the leading part of our being as it was designed to be by God. Our spirit is our primary communication tool with which God can lead us and influence us. When we cling to an intellectual-heavy, unbalanced religion based primarily on doctrines, lists, proof-texts and fool-proof arguments instead of allowing God's Spirit to transform our hearts into reflections of His heart, we are inevitably setting ourselves up to be disqualified to live in the presence of God and be able to walk in the fire of God. (read Isaiah 33:13-17)

Faith is the natural and spontaneous result of heart-trust that is ignited whenever we encounter another being who demonstrates they are worthy of our trust. It is not something we can work up ourselves or force ourselves to do. It is something innate that just happens at the heart level and it increases as our relationship deepens and our experience proves more and more how trustworthy this person really is. God has implanted in every heart a seed of faith so that no one has any reason to not trust at least to a small degree. Jesus talks about faith the size of a very tiny mustard seed that has the potential to grow dramatically when given opportunities and nourishment.

While we cannot produce faith ourselves, we certainly have the ability to cultivate the conditions to encourage its growth. Faith is a very robust seed and if we give it a chance and feed and water it properly we can experience amazing transformations in our lives as that seed of faith, our proportion of faith, is awakened by exposure to the trustworthiness of the One who put it in there to start with. I have come to realize that instead of focusing on vain attempts to whip up more faith (sort of like trying to pull on a plant to get it to grow faster), I simply need to expose my faith to the real source of life that makes it thrive and flourish – the trustworthiness and the real truths about what God is like. The more beauty and attractiveness that I perceive in my changing perceptions of God the more faith is naturally awakened in my heart.

The whole purpose of all these listed gifts in this passage is to promote this very process. These gifts are not given to make us more or less important than others, or to assault people with facts and doctrines and ideas to coerce them to join our church or to comply with our rules and traditions. These gifts are given to us to empower us to share fresh revelations of God with others and each other in ways that complement each other's gifts and enhance the attractiveness of God to those who are starving from their lack of feeling valuable. Gifts are given to nurture and care and attract, not to force or intimidate or create fear. Our gifts need to be exercised from the context of hearts warmed and filled with the sweetness and purity of God's true Spirit that reveals the passion of His love for every creature.

We are each given a percentage or proportion of faith to begin with but we should not be content to let it remain locked in that small seed forever. For faith to have its intended effects and transform our lives it must spring to life, put down deep roots and spread its branches out into the open for all to enjoy. When it matures it will also spawn more seeds of faith that will infiltrate the hearts of others and spring up to produce even more fruit and the cycle of life is expanded.

The following verses in this passage are all relative to this phrase in verse six that I will take a closer look at later. Each gift is to be used and exercised according to the proportion of our faith.

God, please increase my faith by showing me Your faithfulness, Your beauty, Your heart today. Show me the gifts You have given me and how I can better use them to induce faith growth in others. Bless me abundantly today and make me a clear channel of blessing much more than what I am accustomed to. Fill me with Your Spirit and give me the corrective lenses of heaven for the eyes of my heart today. Show me Your glory and reveal Your glory through me.

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