ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Conforming to Our True Nature

Sermon preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis, Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford, 9 November 2008

Galatians 2: 16-20;  Luke 8: 5-15

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today both the Gospel and the Epistle speak to us about faith. In the Gospel we hear the story not only of the woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years and who simply touched the hem of Christ’s garment and was healed. We also are told of the faith of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, which was strong enough to enable Christ to bring back his daughter from the dead.

Paul, in today’s passage from the Epistle to the Galatians, talks at great depth about faith. The word faith in English is unfortunately rather vague – it covers a wide range of meanings and overlaps very much with the way we use the word ‘belief’. Somehow we have to divide up these meanings in order to gain clarity. Is faith the same as belief?  Is it only a kind of mental assent, the way we say that we believe something – or is it more? It seems to me that Paul here talks about a faith that is much more than assent. To have faith does not simply mean that I believe such and such to be the case, so that if it proves not to be the case, then I will change my mind and believe something else. St Paul is speaking of a faith that is more than an intellectual, provisional judgement made in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

Faith is much, much more than this. It is an activity, and that is why St Paul can speak of a ‘dead’ faith. A dead faith is a faith that is no longer at work, no longer active, so that James, too, from an entirely different point of view, can say in his Epistle that ‘faith without works is dead’ (Jas 2:17). In other words, a living faith can become merely belief.

In Galatians Paul also speaks of having died to the Law, in the sense that he no longer thinks that the Law can save. But then he goes on to say that he has done this ‘that I might live to God’. That he might live towards God, in the direction of God – and this actually tells us the true meaning of faith. Faith is actually an alignment of our whole being towards God. It is not just content of our minds. It is content plus intentionality. Faith is the focusing of our being in a certain direction.

It is this, St Paul says, that justifies us. It is this that makes us righteous in God’s eyes – our ability to focus ourselves on Christ, to align ourselves on Christ, and therefore, through Christ, on the Father. Now, according to St Paul, the effect of our alignment on Christ is that we are filled with the life of Christ. Christ lives in us. It is as if – to use the language of Maximos the Confessor – our mode of being, our tropos hyparxeos, is conformed to the deep structure of our God-given nature, our logos physeos. And when that takes place, when we are conformed and aligned to our true nature - and are therefore aligned with the God who created us - we are able finally to be filled with the life of Christ and with the Spirit of Christ – who is also the Spirit of the Father.

St Paul goes on to say that ‘it is no longer I who live, ‘but Christ who lives in me; the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God’. In other words, I live the life of Christ by bringing my whole being into alignment with Christ through faith. Why has St Paul done this? Because, as he says, Christ ‘loved me, and gave himself for me.’ It is the person of Christ and his incarnate love that draws us to align ourselves to him through faith.

Thus it is ultimately the love of God that draws us to align ourselves on God in Christ and to bring our lives into conformity with his. You might ask yourself whether this is some form of Pelagianism, in the sense that through my own efforts I can align myself with Christ and thereby be saved. But this is not at all the case. My alignment on Christ is the result of faith – and faith always appears in our lives as a gift. Faith is a gift of God. It does not have its origin in ourselves, but is a response, an active response, to what God has done for us.

For just as we cannot say: ‘Tomorrow I will repent’, and know that tomorrow we will truly repent, so we cannot say, ‘Tomorrow I will have faith’ and be sure that tomorrow we will have faith. St Paul is an extraordinary analyst of the inner life. And nowhere is this clearer than in this passage from Galatians. We can thank the Church for reminding us of this when we read this passage once a year.

Amen.