Conscientious, Carefully Considered Faithfulness Is Very Great

Conscientious, Carefully Considered Faithfulness Is Very Great

And yet there is something that is still greater! It is: simple faithfulness1 (2 Cor. 11:3) or what we could call “baby-like” faithfulness. Matt. 11:25. The English Bible translation of this passage is: “And have revealed them to babes.” Most people are not even conscientiously faithful, and even less baby-like faithful. The first-mentioned faithfulness is faithfulness to what people understand and approve of in God’s Word and law; in other words, it is faithfulness to what is left of the Word (i.e., the Sermon on the Mount!) after they have carefully shut out or skipped over everything which they do not understand as it is written. The result is a kind of “mini-faithfulness”!! As far as many people re concerned, not much is left. In a manner of speaking, they have neither peace nor a good conscience until they have made every imaginable objection and rationalization possible, until they have properly sorted out God’s words in their own, personal and “reliable” sieve!?

A baby is completely oblivious to this kind of thing! He obviously does not have any kind of sieve.

Such people walk simply and innocently right into the Word, without any kind of circumvention or objection, assuming that God is considerably wiser than they are and that the Word is fine as it is and that they cannot improve on it in in any way. .

It was not without reason that Paul feared that the Corinthians would turn away from that simple faithfulness.