Take It to the Bank!
Why Christ’s faithfulness doesn’t depend on yours.
What’s the most bankable thing in the universe? Some would likely point to a theory of everything that finally resolves the tension of the cosmos. Others might dutifully reply, “Gravity,” that ever-present force that keeps our feet grounded. Or the entropy that makes our bodies wrinkle with age, coffee refuse to stay at optimum temperature, and everything else slowly succumb to decay. Death and taxes have also been cited as existential constants, or so I’ve been told. And while these are, more or less, fine answers, I actually think there is something truer, deeper, and more bankable than all that — something that undergirds every moment of our lives, whether we realize it or not.
In his last canonical letter, the aged Paul penned a heartfelt missive to his beloved pupil-become-pastor, Timothy, who, by this time, was serving the Ephesian congregation. Paul’s penchant for offering timeless counsel to his long-time friend and ministry partner was not one the apostle could soon shake. Even though they both had well-worn ministerial résumés, Paul couldn’t resist passing along one more “trustworthy saying” Timothy could take to the bank, so to speak, on which to rest his life. And it ends like this: “If we are faithless, he [Christ Jesus] remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13).
This saying comes amid a series of aphorisms that some have theorized hailed from an early church confession. Whether or not that’s true is immaterial in the grand scheme of things. What’s profound to notice, though, is the apostle’s insistence that, of the most trustworthy elements in life, Christ’s faithfulness is the cream of the crop, precisely because he won’t and can’t go back on his word. What he promises remains valid, both throughout eternity (Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2) and through our ever-fluctuating passions. The ebbs and flows of our loyalty and devotion to him have no bearing on his faithfulness to us. He remains our loving and trustworthy friend to the very end.
That Paul furnishes Pastor Timothy this word of encouragement is no accident, as we can surmise that Timothy was given to inconstancy, as we all are. Our endeavors at piety aren’t often marked by a clean, upward slope, but a helter-skelter amusement park ride that sends one’s insides all over the place. We imagine the life of faith as a tidy religious enterprise. But it’s not that. It’s far messier and more complicated. Just like life. Just like those neatly cropped and edited family pictures you post on Instagram or include in Christmas cards, where everyone’s smiling and staring straight at the camera. What appears to be a snapshot of a familial ideal belies the dozen-odd takes it took to get there, with dogs interrupting countless shots and toddlers melting down and disgruntled parents snapping, “Just smile and look happy!”
Faith in Christ, like life itself, doesn’t follow our manicured imaginations. It’s confusing and chaotic, where the only certainty seems to be uncertainty. This, in many ways, is why the Old Testament feels so messy, because it’s conveying this very reality. From patriarchs to kings to prophets to everyone in between, the paragons of righteousness are few and far between. Instead, you find hapless and helpless sinners trusting in a God who told them he’d be with them (Gen. 28:15), even if that’s more than a little difficult to believe in the moment. But this is why Paul’s words are so affecting. God is faithful, and for God to not be faithful, he’d have to stop being God. That’s what the apostle is saying.
The eternal kindness and everlasting faithfulness of God are manifest in the person of Christ, who is the Yes and Amen of every promise (2 Cor. 1:20). His words, accordingly, are bankable. They’re time-tested. Despite how often his people have pushed the limits of his patience and grace, he remains “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious” (Exod. 34:6). That’s who he is. And he can never not be who he is. “He cannot deny himself,” Paul affirms. “He will not break his covenant,” eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cleric Charles Simeon once said, “though we have broken ours: nor will he violate his oath, though we have violated ours times without number” (8:442).
Theologically speaking, we are circling the doctrine of immutability, the fact that God can’t change. The constancy of his character, nature, and word is unique to him alone. “For I the Lord do not change,” the prophet Malachi plainly declares (Mal. 3:6). With him, there’s “no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). He is the same, “yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). This, of course, doesn’t mean he is an unfeeling deity. The complexities of the Godhead surpass our finitude, but at least we know that the Second Person of the Trinity was and is touched with all the feelings of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15 KJV). The cornucopia of human emotion is present in him, the God-Man. But what this does mean is that God’s heart of grace, holiness, faithfulness, and the like, isn’t subject to the vicissitudes of humankind.
The heart of the matter, though, is discerning what’s unfailing, what’s undeterred and undeterrable. The psalmist touches on this when he contrasts the Lord’s unchangeability with the entropic forces that whittle away at the foundations of the earth. “They will perish,” he says, “but you will remain . . . you are the same” (Ps. 102:25–27). But even more to the point, especially in light of what Paul says to Timothy, are the words of the writer to the Hebrews — Apollos, maybe, probably — who evokes the scene of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15 to convey the unequivocal permanence of God’s character, purpose, and word.
The “oath” made with good ole Father Abraham wasn’t an arrangement that was contingent on his ability to keep his end of the bargain. Instead, on “two unchangeable things” — namely, his promise and his oath, both of which come from his immutable purposes — God assures his servant of what he’d sworn to do (Heb. 6:17–18; Gen. 15:17–21; 22:16–17). In so doing, since it’s “impossible for God to lie,” those who grovel in faith and repentance before him find a ready refuge and “strong encouragement” in precisely what he has made possible: the ungodly made righteous through the blood of his Son (Rom. 4:5). This, the writer says, is the hope to which we are able to hold fast, come what may. This is the “sure and steadfast anchor” of our souls (Heb. 6:19), that God swore on himself to bring to bear that which he promises to do and to give to those who belong to him, despite how little they bring to the table.
If the life of faith is as helter-skelter as it seems, then any confidence constructed from our ability to be steady is little more than a castle made of sand. “If our continuance in his favour had depended altogether on our stability,” Simeon bluntly wrote, “who would ever be saved at last?” (8:442). The answer, of course, is no one. Not Timothy. Not Paul. Not Father Abraham. And certainly not you or me. But that’s the point. God wasn’t duped by those whom he chose to save. He didn’t go through with the cross because of some chimera of potentiality he thought he saw in us. No, as Martin Luther stated in his Heidelberg Disputation, “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it” (41). “He knew what we were, and what we should be also, if left to ourselves, before he chose us,” Simeon concurs, “yet did he bid us live” and, staggeringly, “entered into covenant with us” (8:442).
God’s love, demonstrated in his Son’s crucifixion and death (Rom. 5:8), is more permanent than the dirt beneath your feet and the ground that you till year after year. Mountains might be leveled and hills worn down by the pelting seasons, but God’s love is steadfast and will never depart from you (Isa. 54:10). In unfathomable compassion, God, through his word, has “engaged, not only never to depart from us,” Simeon continues, “but never to leave us to depart from him” (8:442). Irresolute as we are, God in Christ perseveres on our behalf, keeping us, even when we are apt to let go. And we don’t have to submit guesses as to what that might look like, since we have four Gospels that tell us the same thing.
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus’s closest friends either dozed off or scattered, with one even swearing up and down he wasn’t associated with the rumored blasphemer from Galilee. Every last one was faithless. And yet, he who is “the faithful witness” proceeded toward Calvary, keeping his word to those who’d already broken theirs, people like you and me. There he loved us and freed us from our sins by his blood, which spilled into the very dirt that his love outlasts (Rev. 1:5). Entropy, gravity, and taxes will one day expire. Soon, death itself will be swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:54). But the Crucified and Risen One, who loves us to the end (John 13:1), is faithful, even when we aren’t. And you can take that to the bank. Grace and peace to you, my friends.
Works Cited:
Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation, 1518” in Luther’s Works, Vol. 31, Career of the Reformer: I, edited by Harold J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957).
Charles Simeon, “Isaiah XXVII—LXVI,” Horae Homileticae: or Discourses (Principally in the Form of Skeletons) Now First Digested into One Continued Series, and Forming a Commentary Upon Every Book of the Old and New Testament, Vols. 1–21 (London: Holdsworth & Ball, 1832).
Bradley Gray
Bradley serves as the senior pastor of Stonington Baptist Church in Paxinos, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife Natalie and their three children, Lydia, Braxton, and Bailey. He is the author of Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment and is a regular contributor for 1517 and Mockingbird. He also blogs regularly at www.graceupongrace.net.
