‘You can’t depend on him’ must be one of the saddest things that can be said about a Christian, because it is the polar opposite of what we know to be true about God.
His great plan for his people is to change us progressively into his likeness, so that the image of God is being restored in us believers, in our characters and therefore in our lifestyle, words and actions. So, when the Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the life of God in the souls of redeemed men and women, a key characteristic will be ‘faithfulness’ (Galatians 5.22).
Reliable God
From the very beginning of the Bible this quality is a bedrock foundation of God’s self-revelation. Way back in Genesis 12, he commits himself to Abraham and his descendants in terms of his promises and commands, which we summarise in our thinking as the ‘covenant faithfulness of God’. Everything depends upon that. What God says, he will do. He has the power to fulfil his promises, but he also has the steadfast, unchanging determination to carry them out. He is not one thing today and another tomorrow, like the false gods of our human imagination.
The Old Testament is full of ringing assertions about the reliability of God. So Numbers 23.19 affirms: ‘God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind’. God’s faithfulness is being taught as a direct contrast to our human fickleness and changeability. This quality is not something which comes naturally to our sinful humanity, but ‘I, the Lord, do not change’, God declares through the prophet Malachi (3.6). The very name of God (the Lord, or Yahweh) means ‘I am who I am’ (Exodus 3.14), the unchanging, dependable, present-tense God, whose character and faithfulness to his word are utterly trustworthy.
No wonder then that when the Lord Jesus comes into the world as the ultimate fulfilment of all that God has promised down the centuries from Abraham onward, the New Testament echoes this theme over and over again. ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever’ (Hebrews 13.8), because he is God incarnate. He is therefore the greatest gift ‘from above, coming down from he Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows’ (James 1.17). Jeremiah can exclaim in the midst of the destruction of God’s temple and God’s city ‘great is your faithfulness’, because he realises that ‘the Lord is my portion’ (Lamentations 3.22-23).
Faith and faithfulness
But we are not like that, so that it requires the miracle of the new birth to begin to reform our lives according to this ‘faithfulness’, which the Lord exemplifies in all his ways.
How can this be developed? Faith and faithfulness are closely linked together. Indeed, the same New Testament word is used for both. When we consider God’s great faithfulness in the record of Scripture, down the ages, culminating in the coming of the Lord Jesus, we see that his word can be trusted, because it is the expression of his unchanging nature. This fact encourages us to put our faith in him, because, although we live in a world where circumstances constantly change, God does not. He is the only assured fixed point in all our human experience. The more we are convinced of that reality, the more we shall actively trust him, even when we cannot see where things are going, or why they are happening. ‘We live by faith, not by sight’ (2 Corinthians 5.7).
Reflecting his character
Because this faith in God’s faithfulness is the channel for all our benefits in this life, it will develop in us the desire to please God more and more, by reflecting his character in our own spiritual development. One of the ways we become more like Jesus is by increasing in our own trustworthiness, as we depend increasingly on his faithfulness, through all the changing scenes of life. If you were to have access to a limitless treasure, you could be relied upon always to meet the needs of others, because the source of supply lies not in yourself, but in the infinite resources on which you draw. It is like that with our dependence on God.
The more we hold on to the God who is faithful, the more we shall begin to mirror his rock-like stability in all our human relationships. ‘Faithfulness in little things’, it is said, ‘is a very great thing’, because when the truth and reliability of God’s character begins to shape us into his image, the extent to which it penetrates all the little details of our lives is the real measure of our transformation. That’s a challenge for the right sort of change, which only the dynamic of the Holy Spirit within us is able do achieve. But what a stimulus to follow our master, who is called ‘faithful and true’ (Revelation 19.11).
