Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
An old book divulges a statement that Martin Luther made, brave leader of the Protestant Reformation; a statement that is true throughout time and on into eternity. It's in 16th century verbal brevity and clarity, but up-to-the-minute spiritual truth:
"Thus from faith flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing and free mind that serves one's neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss. For a man does not serve that he may put men under obligations, he does not distinguish between friends and enemies, ... but most freely and most willingly he spends himself and all that he has, whether he waste all on the thankless or whether he gain a reward." *
Luther had the right idea here of what "faith" is: it's not grasping for a piece of heavenly real estate. There is no egocentric motivation involved in true faith, the kind that is in John 3:16, "that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
The faith that is in John 3:16 is what Luther describes. It's a heart response to the agape-love that moved Christ to deny self and take up His cross on which He died the equivalent of the second death for every one.
On one occasion, the Lord Jesus healed ten lepers, but nine of them did not have the kind of faith that Luther was describing; only the tenth had that kind of faith and came back to thank Jesus for healing him (Luke 17:11-19).
Could it be today that out of ten people who proudly claim to "believe in Jesus," there is the same percentage that do not appreciate what faith is?
--Robert J. Wieland
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* Martin Luther, "A Treatise on Christian Liberty" (1520), Works of Martin Luther, vol II, p. 338; A. J. Holman Co. (1915).
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 14, 2008.
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