“Well done good and faithful servant…” Mathew 25:23
These wonderful words echo what we want to hear, when our Master evaluates our lives in a future day.
But sometimes we get sidetracked into thinking that ‘faith’ has a more prominent place over ‘faithfulness.’ Our cultural surrounds promote ‘faith’ as an all-important thing, because it caters for the spiritual dimension human beings need to have, to make them complete. But the problem is, ‘culture’s faith’ can be in anything you want and it changes according to the times and the personal benefits it brings.
The believer’s faith is in Jesus Christ alone for eternal salvation, deliverance, completeness and forgiveness of sin. Without Christ as our Saviour and Lord, people merely drift on the tide of cultural whims, which they clutch at for a faith object.
But the true believer not only looks on his/her “faith” in Jesus as an escape root from the wages of sin or the wrath of God - but will also long to live ‘faithfully’! Faithfulness toward the object of our faith (Jesus) will be or should be the ongoing fruit of our ‘faith’ in Jesus. In other words in our ongoing ‘faithfulness’ we should at all times be open to be used, spent, and willing to die if necessary for the object of our faith which is Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s faithfulness! Those who are faithful are the vessels God uses to do great things for His glory! Note what Oswald Chambers once said:
The goal of faithfulness is not that we will do work for God, but that He will be free to do His work through us. God calls us to His service and places tremendous responsibilities on us. He expects no complaining on our part and offers no explanation on His part. God wants to use us as He used His own Son.