The Greatest Faith Christ Saw

When Christ was approached by a Roman officer and asked for a miracle, the officer specifically said that he was "unworthy" or "not deserving." I would like you to try to imagine the way many modern evangelicals would respond to that statement. Frankly, they would attack such a pronouncement as being "negative" and "untrue", possibly a "lie from satan". Instead, the centurion would be told that he "should acknowledge his worth and the glory he was created for as a person of dignity..." etc. etc. etc. This is such a frequent picture lately that the idea of our great worth is regarded as an inviolate truth from On High.

Please notice however, that Christ did not tell the centurion to think better of himself, or stop thinking worthless thoughts, or to "love himself" or to "forgive himself" or whatever it might be. He said that this soldier had faith. Not just any faith, but greater faith than he'd found anywhere in Israel. You see, significance and worth doesn't come from fomenting feelings of power and majesty in people. All that creates is a diversion towards the self. Lots of people are making lots of waves by preaching a gospel of human potential and glory, but this is not how God has chosen to save us. In fact, this is a short-cut and a regression.

Watch: Adam and Eve sinned and fell from grace. That's why it's called The Fall. Christ came with all the majesty and glory of the Godhead as one of us - he brought the human race a glory and majesty and righteousness which had nothing to do with Adam. Our original created state was the highest pinnacle of creation, and it failed. Redemption is the hand of God reaching down from eternity and it cannot fail. When we focus on the glory we were originally created with we are looking backwards, not forwards. We are forgetting the fact that we are fallen and sinful and miserable. Redemption requires that we go through the temporary darkness of realizing our worthlessness (just like the centurion) and only when we do, can we leave it behind. It doesn't matter how we were once created; that potential was spoiled and lost in the garden of Eden. Christ offers us something new and something more, namely, the righteousness and the glory of God.

Redemption requires that our ego be defeated and abandoned, not refurbished and defended. Christ accepted the worthlessness of the centurion, and by accepting it, by naming it Faith, he raised that anonymous Roman to a higher level than all the others around him. Do you remember that right up to the night of Christ's death, his followers were still arguing about who was best? They had a very firm grasp on human glory. They knew how magnificent they'd been created to be. They knew they were made in God's image, children of Abraham, worthy and worthwhile, deserving and well-chosen. Christ's spirit never worked through their faith until all the greatness of their humanity had failed and left them as writhing, yellow cowards, hating their actions and acknowledging their weakness.

The church in our country is weak today because we are increasingly focusing on our strength and our worthiness. Christian leaders are so busy telling us not to feel bad about ourselves that we've forgotten how much we have to feel bad about. This is called repentance. It requires us to hate one thing in order to leave it behind and accept something else. That "something else" is Christ and he is looking for faith. He found it once in a pagan foreigner who compared himself not to Adam, but to Jesus Christ, and found himself worthless. Do you want great faith? Get your focus off yourself, get rid of the advice telling you to pump yourself up with inspirational back-pats, and memorize Philippians 3:7-16. At least read it. It would do all of us a world of good.