Discovering Perfect Faithfulness

Perfect faithfulness is neither seen nor an expected virtue from any child of Adam. We know and have experienced that no human can be perfectly faithful to another, no matter how hard one may attempt to be faithful. We can never achieve it and seldom obtain it.

You might have hoped those in your life would always be faithful to you, whether your parents, spouse, children, or friends. We all fall short of this. Even Christian people may greatly disappoint you. Human life is full of pain, unfulfilled expectations, and shattered hopes.

Humans have indeed been unfaithful from the garden to each other and to God. They blamed each other for their sin and ultimately accused God Himself. When the first children of Adam and Eve were born, the older son betrayed his younger brother in the most horrific way imaginable, which was by murdering him.

Such experiences mark human life. These circumstances of faithlessness in our lives many a time leave us in deep despair. Where do you find hope in that dark dungeon of your pain and the pit of your dismay, and to whom do you run as your one true refuge? These are some of the crucial questions we must tackle in our lives.

In a totally depraved world, pain produces bitterness in the human heart. People blame and hate God for the calamities they encounter. Many claim to be unbelievers just because of the suffering they have experienced and witnessed. Their pain drives them further away from God. Yet persecution and adverse circumstances are God's tools of sanctification for a believer. A potter carves and sometimes breaks his pots to transform them according to his desire, and in the same manner, our God molds and shapes His children.

The children of God find Christ faithful, even in the most severe forms of persecution and suffering imaginable. God preserves their faith. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

When people run to others for hope and joy, those people change. They are left disappointed and depressed. All the idols to which we run will fall short and prove to be unreliable sources of happiness. Their changing character renders them untrustworthy. It is impossible to expect perfect faithfulness from people prone to change, and fallen sinners cannot maintain a righteous character all the time.

Change is part of the human experience, for better or worse. Sinful change and lack of faithfulness go hand in hand. Since humans cannot always keep performing righteousness, they fall into sin. For a person to be perfectly faithful, he has to be immutable, but no human is immutable.

Dr. James White once said in a sermon: “One day you will need to know the God who never changes." Your spouse may change and stop being faithful, your parents might change and even forget you because of some mental illness, and your best friend might betray you. However, there is a God who gives you complete assurance of His faithfulness. "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow" (James 1:17).

In the most debilitating of pains, the unchanging character of God is something to which we can run. He always stands with open arms for His children. Other people might not intend our betterment and our good, but we can trust God to be seeking our greatest good.

This might seem to you as an abstract concept you might not have experienced. Even the apostle Paul felt severe abandonment in his life: “At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that through me the preaching might be fulfilled, and all the Gentiles might hear. And I was rescued out of the lion's mouth” (2 Tim. 4:16-17). Everyone left Paul except for his faithful Savior. Even in his imprisonment, Paul gave a message of joy to the Philippians, and he sang hymns in jail.

This was the secret behind his hope in affliction and his joy in severe pain: God loved and was on his side, no matter who might leave or abandon him. He unflinchingly took all of the risks that were his lot because he knew that nothing could separate him from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39). Faith grabs Christ and his promises with a death grip because it can think of no other place of refuge and security.

Our adversities should not distract us from looking at the face of God. Sometimes the fog of calamity blurs our vision of the grace and love of God in Christ Jesus. We grow in bitterness and unbelief. Our vision becomes dimmer as our troubles multiply. We groan, mourn, and complain. You might be asking whether a true believer can fall so deep into despair, but the answer to this question is in the affirmative. In profound pain as believers, we should not stop looking unto Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:1-2).

Jesus was bruised and crushed, well acquainted with betrayal, abandonment, defamation, and grief. None of us has ever come close to experiencing the pain that our Lord faced at the cross. Our crosses may feel heavy to us, but they all seem very light compared to the pain Jesus experienced for us. We must believe that our God strikes us in love. We need to read and believe His Word when He says, “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He flogs every son whom He receives” (Heb. 12:6).

Here we can think about Peter's betrayal of Jesus. Like many of us, he was vehement in confessing Jesus' Lordship and deity. Yet he shrunk back in the face of adversity and left Jesus like the other disciples. Jesus did not leave him, nor did He forsake him, regardless of his unfaithfulness. We might do likewise; even so, our Good Shepherd will never leave His sheep alone (John 10:1-18). His sheep may wander off temporarily, but our loving Savior never departs from His own.

We can find hope that His grip on us, not our grip on Him, is what keeps us in the faith. Perfect faithfulness can only be found in an immutable being, and God is the only one who possesses this attribute. We can therefore rest assured that all might leave us, but Jesus will stay with us, even when we might deem ourselves in the most helpless of states. John Bunyan once said, “In times of affliction we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of God’s love.” I pray that this may be the experience for all of us and that we may have the most profound experience of God's glory and love in our deepest anguish.

JOEL RIAZ
1689 Federalism | Amillennialism | General Equity Theonomist
Joel Riaz lives in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with his wife, Irum. Having grown up in a Christian community, Riaz is well-acquainted with the Christian Faith and is the first person in his community to embrace Reformed Baptist Doctrine. He serves as an elder at Jesus The Holy Lamb, a Reformed Baptist Church.