Living Faith

Living Faith

Acts 8:14-17

By Everett Wilson, Pastor

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Peter and John went to Samaria to check on a report that Samaria had accepted the word of God. That would be mysterious to the Apostles because Jews like themselves, as a whole, did not like Samaritans much and would make cheap jokes at their expense—the ancient equivalent of the modern ethnic putdown.

The Samaritans gave them ammunition for this abuse, because the Samaritans refused among other things to accept the Temple in Jerusalem as the center of worship for the living God. Do you remember the Samaritan woman saying to Jesus, ²⁰Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem’? Jesus answered her exactly as she probably expected a Jewish male to answer. ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

“Salvation is from the Jews”? How close-minded can you get?

So Peter and John step into a rat’s nest of bigotry, on both sides, when they go to Samaria to find out what is going on. They find a bunch of Samaritans who think they are Christians but are not. They have come just half way. They have accepted the Word of God but they have not received the Spirit of God.

You have probably heard the saying, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” It means that no one will blame you for your ignorance, but there is an exception when the thing you don’t know is the very thing you are supposed to know. When you are driving a car and don’t know how to stop it but you think you do, "what you don't know” can hurt you plenty. Somebody improved the saying with this: It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you; it’s all the things you know that ain’t so.

The Samaritans thought they knew they were Christians, but they were not because they had not received the Holy Spirit. A Baptist preacher I knew forty years ago put it this way—they were professing but not possessing Christians. They accepted the Word of God without receiving the Spirit of God—something like acquiring a new car, but not the keys.

To make the situation more complicated for Peter and John, Jesus had included Samaria in his great commission, which were the last words he said to them before he ascended to heaven: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ Samaria was to be one of their stops on the way to the ends of the earth. I can imagine John saying to Peter, “I guess we had better check this out,” and Peter answering with a deep sigh, “I guess so.”

So they come to Samaria and sure enough, they discover that the Samaritans had got it wrong. They had missed the point again. Whatever accepting the word of God meant to them, it apparently didn't include an accurate understanding: for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

We don’t know why they were going by an incomplete gospel, but we know that it was incomplete. We cannot understand or apply the Word of God without the Spirit of God.

Peter and John, however, did not allow whatever prejudices they may have had to alter their commitment to the Great Commission. They were to go to Samaria, so go they did. They did not criticize what they found there. They did not say, “What do you expect of Samaritans?” Instead of criticizing the people, they correct the problem. They pray for the Holy Spirit to come. They lay their hands on the Samaritans, the Spirit comes, and they receive him and awaken to a living faith.

Without the Word of God, we remain in the dark; without the Spirit of God, we are dead in sin.

Light and Life

Living faith requires both the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Often seekers appear to want one more than another. Some want the Word of God as a mental hammer with which to beat their enemies; others want the Spirit of God as a tool to manipulate emotions, both theirs and others.’ I suspect there are a few who want to misuse both the Word and the Spirit, both the light and the life.

A Spiritless word is not the Word of God. A wordless, uninformed spirit is not the Spirit of God. The biblical model of living faith may be simply stated: In a living faith we live by the Word of God as we are filled and directed by the Spirit of God. That is the biblical model of living faith. In it we discern and do the will of God. A Lutheran layman named Robert Longman, on his webpage Spirithome, offered a description of spiritual discernment that I found biblical, sensible, and therefore useful. Here it is. Spiritual discernment:

· is governed by love, for if it is not, it's worthless (1 Cor 13:1-3);

· centers us onto Jesus the Christ and Lord (1 Cor 12:3), and His good news;

· directs us to Scripture, not away from it (Isaiah 8:19, 20);

· builds up the church and its members (Ephesians 4:11-12), giving it power, wisdom, character, boldness, and unity.

· helps create in us a love of righteousness, a heightened sense of sin, and a turning away from known evil.

Good Enough

The other day in conversation I remarked to someone, maybe one of you, that we say something is “good enough” when we suspect that it isn’t. We know when something is good, so we don’t have to say that it is good enough. We don’t have to justify it. It justifies itself by being what it is.

The Samaritans who thought they were Christians because they had accepted the Word of God—though they had not received the Spirit of God—probably thought in terms of good enough.

I was just fourteen years old, and under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, when I tried to make a deal with God. I would do my best, and that would have to be good enough for God. I didn’t grasp the fact that God did not want to improve me. He wanted to change me. I was not to resolve which changes I was willing to make, but to accept the changes that he wanted to make. . The only way for the prayer, Not my will but yours, can be answered is by God doing his will in us, and us consenting to it. Without that we are in a no-man’s land of trying to do for ourselves what is impossible for us to do for ourselves. The change is the work of God. You may call it new birth, you may call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit; but it is the work of God, not your own. That is what those Samaritans learned when they received the Holy Spirit and discovered a living faith. Amen.