Becoming faithful to Christ — and staying that way.
by Stephen R. Clark
Once upon a time, “hi-fi” was a big deal. Telling your friends, “I got a cool hi-fi for my birthday!” was an impressive boast and might have earned you a high five.
The term was a contraction of the term high fidelity. In the case of your birthday, it meant you got a hot new record player.
Faithful to the original
Music rendered in high fidelity simply meant that what you heard coming from your speakers was as close as possible to how the music sounded live. It was faithful to the original.
The term fidelity also shows up in several mottos. You’ll likely hear “Semper fi!” when hanging around Marines. It’s short for the Latin phrase semper fidelis, meaning “always faithful.” The motto of the French Foreign Legion is Honneur et Fidélité, which translates to “Honor and Fidelity.”
When I was a Boy Scout, we had to memorize the Scout Law, consisting of twelve character traits: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. What’s interesting is the terms fidelity and faithfulness aren’t included, but all these twelve words animate the concepts of both.
If you’ve ever heard someone say, “My word is my bond!” they mean that you can depend on them to do whatever you and they agree to. They are committing to being true to their promise, to exhibit faithfulness through integrity.
Faithfulness is multifaceted
Faithfulness is a robust and multifaceted concept.
Jon Bloom, theologian and cofounder of the Desiring God website, sums it up like this: “True to your word. That is a concise, clear definition of what it means to be a faithful person. There is consistency between what you say and what you do, between what you believe and how you behave, between what you promise and what you perform.”
When we sing (hopefully in high fidelity) “Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me,” what are we actually saying? That we can trust God to do everything He says. That He is true and faithful to His Word. Period. There is perfect consistency between what God says and what God does. This is our model, the original we aspire to.
Faithful and fruity
How does this apply to us?
More relevant for us than the Scout Law is the fruit of the Spirit in its full, nine-fold expression in Galatians 5:22, 23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things” (emphasis added).
The thing to note here is that fruit is singular. Faithfulness is one aspect of a Spirit-filled life, yet each of the fruity expressions support the fuller meaning of faithfulness. They are inter-connected and mutually dependent. When the Holy Spirit takes root in our lives, these are the character traits that should come popping out of us in abundance.
In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus explains that we can know who is serving whom — God or Satan — by the fruit they produce. Why? Because “A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit” (Matthew 7:18). By being faithful or faithless, we show our true colors. In other words, when we are faithful and bearing good fruit, we are true to the original and operating in hi-fi faith!
Faithfulness and legalism
In Matthew 23, Jesus takes on the scribes and the Pharisees, repeatedly calling them hypocrites. His assessment of them is devastatingly negative. While the Pharisees are extremely picky about the law in such matters as tithing on their herbs, He declares to them, “yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy, and faithfulness” (v. 23, emphasis added). He then sums it all up and calls them “Snakes! Brood of vipers!” (v. 33). Harsh!
The point Jesus is making is that faithfulness isn’t legalism — checking off boxes of proper and accepted behavior and adding up your points. Legalism attempts to bypass proper fruit growth. Instead of a tree properly rooted and watered that grows fruit naturally from its branches, legalism is like a dead tree on which someone hangs plastic replicas of fruit. Or like a fig tree that looks like it should have figs but doesn’t. Mark 11 recounts how Jesus reacted to such a tree: It was cursed and later seen shriveled and dead. Faithfulness is not showiness. It’s not about just looking good.
Faithful to the end
In eternity, when we are finally face to face with Jesus, we want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” This phrase shows up in Matthew 25, where Jesus offers a parable describing faithfulness within the kingdom of God.
He begins the story in verse 14. A man, about to take a trip, brought together those in charge of his business and entrusted some money (talents) to the care of each one: “To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent, depending on each one’s ability” (v. 15). The expectation was that they would use the funds to earn a profit.
When the man returned, he checked in with each servant. The servants given the five talents and two talents both doubled his money. To them, the master said, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy’” (vv. 21, 23). So far, so good.
Then the servant who was given only one talent reported that he feared the master, didn’t want to take any risks, and so buried what he was gifted. Now he was returning the same single talent. The master’s response? “You evil, lazy servant!” (Matthew 25:26). The one talent was taken and given to the servant who had ten, and the lazy servant was banished into “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (v. 30). Again, harsh!
Faithful to Jesus
Faithfulness to Christ means we produce good fruit that draws others into His kingdom. We take what He has given us and, even when it’s risky, uncomfortable, or a little scary, we live out His command to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you” (28:19, 29).
To be faithful, to exhibit a high-fidelity Christian walk, we must be faithful to the original: Jesus. He is the original who gave His life for us. He is the original who gives us our very lives, who was there at the beginning of all things and is with us “to the end of the age” (v. 20).
Jesus gave an entire Sermon on the Mount full of guidelines on how to live faithfully. He summed it up: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48). Paul breaks this out, saying that we are to be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29), have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), and adopt the same attitude as that of Christ (Philippians 2:5). Peter adds that we are to share in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:13). By being Christlike through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we will be faithful to the original and pleasing to God (1 Thessalonians 2:4).
Faithfulness and failure
What was the real issue with the servant who was given a single talent and buried it? He simply did not exercise even a mustard seed amount of faith. His fear of failure overrode his trust in the Lord. Had he at least tried to do something with that one talent, even if he lost it in the process, it’s likely his master would have been okay with that. We have examples.
When Jesus was walking on the water, Peter, in faith, got out of the boat, took a couple of steps on the water, then sank. He failed. Yet Jesus lifted him up. Later, when Peter denied Jesus three times — failing Him big time — Jesus restored him. In fact, all the disciples failed and bailed on Jesus in the garden. But all, except Judas, were forgiven and lifted up into faithful service to the kingdom.
Writing to the younger Timothy, Paul explains, “If we are faithless, he [God] remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). This is the wonder of faithfulness: Our faithfulness toward God and others is possible only as we trust in His faithfulness toward us. But that’s also our hope and our calling. There is no higher-fidelity faithfulness than the Lord’s toward us. Semper fi, indeed.
