by Dr. Harold Sala
“The better I know some people, the more I love my dog!” goes a bit of doggerel. Why? Dogs are faithful: they love you no matter what. The same cannot always be said of people, ourselves included. Though man is made in the likeness of God, it is in the area of faithfulness and commitment that we are so vastly different.
One of the great differences between the fickleness of the flesh and the unchangeable nature of God is His faithfulness. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself,” says Paul to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:13, NKJV).
Moses, a man who knew something of the mercurial nature of humankind, wrote, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands” (Deuteronomy 7:9).
In 1923 Thomas Chisholm wrote the words of a hymn often sung for harvest or Thanksgiving festivals. A stanza goes, “Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father! / There is no shadow of turning with Thee; / Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not: / As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.” Then the chorus goes, “Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! / Morning by morning new mercies I see; / All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; / Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!”
It is still true. Though we tend to focus on certain characteristics of God that we call attributes, it is really unfair to single out one, such as faithfulness, and isolate it from the whole of God’s character. Actually, the attributes or characteristics of God are so intertwined that the function of one becomes the adjunct of another. Nonetheless I think of faithfulness as the sinew which holds the whole together, or the foundation upon which all the attributes and character of God really rest.
God is faithful in His promises of Scripture. Playing no favorites, God will let me come boldly into His presence, my heart assuring me that what God has done for others who have met Him, He will do for me. I like the way Paul put it when he said, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Paul is saying that when God honors His promise, we smile and say, “Amen, God! You did it again!”
All that God does is in perfect accord with what God is, and it is here that we sometimes go wrong. Naturally, we like to receive from God, but we often divorce the reality of who God is from what we want. This often means that we think of God only in terms of what we can get out of Him, rather than in terms of a relation with God, worshiping Him for who He is.
God is faithful in responding to the needs of His children. Many people—perhaps you included—find this hard to understand because their dad was not there when they were growing up. “Unfaithfulness” was more accurate than a “faithful” Father. He abides faithful, is Paul’s testimony.
God is also faithful, executing justice upon the wicked and mercy upon those who seek Him. In life we see many inequities and wrongs, but ultimately God will right the wrong and reward the faithful. Of one great truth you can always be confident: God is a faithful God, keeping faith with a thousand thousand generations, even to the end of the age.
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