How Christ Strengthens Faith

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity

We often think of faith as a binary thing – ones and zeros, on or off. We either have faith or we don’t. That is a Biblical way of looking at faith. There are believers and unbelievers. Without faith it is impossible to please God. No one enters the kingdom by kind of believing in Jesus Christ, you either do or you do not. There is no part way in that sense.

Faith can also be seen as something that grows and develops. For those who are already believers, those who have faith, one can have strong faith or weak faith or gradations in between. While faith is something that is purely a gift of God, it is strengthened as we exercise it in this life. Think of muscles as an analogy. They were given to you at your birth. In your life, you have opportunities to use those muscles, or not use them. They will either get stronger or weaker. This is the life of the Christian. If you did not have muscles, it wouldn’t matter what you did – that is the unbeliever, he can’t make himself have muscles.