Proverbs 20:6

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?

Faithfulness stands high amidst the pantheon of qualities which draw us to people, fictional and real. We admire fidelity; we long for others to be faithful to us; we aspire, right now, to be faithful. But in the everyday, plod and plod and plod, in the moment of making each decision, faithfulness can be hard. I am always close; the other person is often very far from my thoughts, even when that other person is God. Faithfulness, though, means always, not sometimes.

The difficulty, I believe, is part of what makes this virtue attractive to us in others. We do not admire and like those who are virtuous without effort, who never face challenges to their desire and never meet what should lure them into vice. That’s not to say they must waver or be tempted, for Christ had no sin, but we find it empty when a man does the right thing because it is easy, not because it is right (for all we all want the right thing to also be easy). Samwise Gamgee would not be so great a hero if he did not have to struggle through the greatest difficulties, even the temptation of the Ring. It is for this reason that we can like characters in stories despite their lapses: these flaws demonstrate to us that when they are righteous, they win a victory.

Now, righteousness is not inherently difficult. While the sin incorporated into this world, coming from men and echoing through their works and down through all which is in man’s dominion, while that sin makes righteousness often painful (as it was for Christ, assuredly, though He chose that pain, else justice would ne’er let Him suffer), in a person rightly constituted, every motive would bend towards righteousness. While the right thing might be painful, it would be in a way easy to choose rightly, because all value would rest on the right, not on the merely pleasant.

The difficulty is the pervading sin of our natures. In His people, who have been remade by His Spirit (John 3:1-15), sin has lost dominion, but it has still a foothold (1 John 1:10). We have a stubborn habit of sin (I and you both), a habit which hurts and makes us hurt, a habit we must root out for love of Him but which ever re-surfaces while we walk incompletely changed (having still a body dying, rather than a body resurrected (1 Cor. 15:26-45)).

The solution is not cheap.

The solution is not easy.

The solution is truly painful.

Faithfulness is integrity and continuity in love. I stand by truth, and I stand in relationship despite all the momentary advantages of abandoning it. The husband holds to his wife despite their difficulties, and despite all their individual passions he seeks (and she seeks, by His grace) to overcome those problems. The friend, rather than merely saying his affection, walks alongside his friend through the utter destruction, bringing wise counsel, knowing where counsel ends and growth-in-companionship continues. The mother prays for her wayward children and reaches for their souls at every step; perhaps, by God’s grace, one or all will return to Him, though she lives not to see it (it’s a story nearly as old as the church of God).

The good news—and the bad—is that love is a habit, not a moment. “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” Paul tells us (Rom. 13:8-10), and he makes clear, in verse 9, what that means: not that love replaces the law but that love means walking by the law of God. We love by at every choice obeying His law, and so we are faithful. (For faithfulness without law is mere treachery against the other.) Each choice builds a greater accretion of habit; while our native desires for evil do not ever cease completely, by choosing righteousness at a turn we make our vantage against those evil desires just a little stronger for the next time. Thus He builds us peace, giving us strength to that end (Is. 26:12), even if our every submission to temptation tears a breach which only His power will mend.

From faithfulness to Him comes faithfulness in anything else, so far as faithfulness is good. My love for God orders my love for all else, and in ordering those other loves, they become more true to their proper form. I love my father as my father, my brother as my brother, my friend as my friend, each more properly as I found that love in my love for Him, which is founded in His love for me (1 John 4:19). And ‘love,’ here, is the love of faithfulness, of one whose fidelity is not guaranteed by flesh and blood but by the saving work of Christ.

God bless.

Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.