Rev Dr Malcolm Falloon/NZ Christian Network
Some kinds of knowledge can be gained from a distance. We can observe an experiment, examine the evidence, or learn from a book. But relational knowledge is different. We may know facts about another person from the outside, yet we cannot fully know that person’s love without entrusting ourselves to the relationship.
Marriage provides an analogy. Before marriage, two people can learn a great deal about one another. They can spend time together, ask questions, meet each other’s friends and imagine a shared future. Yet there is a knowledge of a spouse’s love that becomes possible only through mutual commitment. In marriage, each person places their life into the hands of the other and discovers love from within the covenant.
Christian faith has this same relational character. An inquirer can examine the historical claims of Christianity, read the Bible, attend church and observe the lives of Christians. Exploration of this kind, in which honest questions are welcomed rather than suppressed, is an important stage in coming to Christian commitment, because faith is not a blind leap made in defiance of truth.
Nevertheless, a person can remain forever at the edge, knowing much about Christianity without knowing God’s love in Christ from within. At some point, exploration presents us with a decision: will I entrust myself to this God? Faith is not merely the confident conclusion that the central claims of Christianity are true. It also involves trusting that the God revealed in Jesus Christ loves us, that his promises are reliable, and that his intentions toward us are for good rather than for ill.
This commitment does not, in itself, make Christianity true, any more than marriage creates the existence or character of one’s spouse. Rather, commitment makes possible a kind of knowledge unavailable to the detached observer. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” the psalmist says (Psalm 34:8). There are truths about divine grace that are discovered as we rely upon them: as we pray for a new heart, receive forgiveness, practise generosity, join Christian fellowship, serve those in need and begin ordering our lives around Christ.
This is why making a decision for Christ remains important. The decision must never be manufactured by emotional pressure or extracted by an evangelist intent on “closing the deal.” The inquirer is not a passive object but an active person who questions, explores, tests and responds. Christian friends can accompany that process, and the Church can make the Christian life visible and inhabitable. But no one else can exercise faith on another’s behalf.
Conversion may involve many small decisions and much gradual reorientation. Yet within that process there is a vital movement from observing to entrusting, from considering Christ to relying upon him. We come to know the love of God not only by looking at it from the outside, but by placing ourselves within its embrace.
This article was first published in New Zealand Christian Network News.
