Faith and Presumption: What's the difference?

A few weeks ago I started teaching Romans to our youth group. I am going verse by verse through the letter, trying to answer questions, and trying to explain in a way that is true to the text and understandable to teenagers. It's difficult.

I have studied this letter for years, but it is amazing how each time something different will catch my attention and demand special focus. Last week this happened with Romans 2:4. "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (ESV) When I read this, a thought came to my mind, and as it did I became a little nauseous. The thought was, "presumption mascarades as faith." I became sick because I began to sense the weight and horror of this thought. The line between faith and presumption is a line that divides life and death. For those who presume, Paul says, "But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." (Romans 2:5 ESV) So it is clear. To have faith is to live. To presume is to die. But presumption pretends to be faith. That's what is so scary.

Presumption can mascarade as faith because it talks like faith, it quotes scripture like faith, and it even lives like faith in some ways. After all, faith at it's core is trust. It is a specific kind of trust that believes that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is sufficient to satisfy God's wrath, bring forgiveness, and make possible our adoption as God's sons and daughters. We are called to a total abandonment of our own attempts to please God and to rest in the finished work of Jesus. Paul was so confident in the Grace of God in the Gospel that some even accused him of a kind of presumption (Romans 3:8). So the line between faith and presumption, though it is a line between life and death, is not an easy line to see.

However, there is a simple principle that will help us determine whether we are presuming upon God's grace or we are trusting in God's grace. Another look at verse 4 will be helpful. "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (ESV emphasis added) God's grace given to us in the Gospel is meant to lead us away from our sin. It is not meant to empower us in our sin. In other words, this is a primary difference between faith and presumption: Faith will lead us to repentance. Presumption will lead us to more sin. If I am going to take my faith seriously I must ask myself this question, "When I consider God's kindness toward me in the Gospel, does it lead me to repent of my sin, or does it make me more comfortable with my sin?" If I repent, then I have true faith. But if I become comfortable with sin, I can be sure that what I have is not faith, it is presumption.

Conformed to Christ?

I have to continue just a little further with the thought on Romans 8:28. Previously, I tried to make the point that it is absolutely crucial that we understand that the "good" to which Paul refers in verse 28 is a specific good. Our own sin-tainted, skewed definition of good for ourselves is not the same good that Paul is talking about. We define "good" for ourselves as more peace, greater contentment, better relationships, more purpose, greater success, etc. But Paul has something else in mind. If the truth of this verse is going to bring us peace in this life, it is necessary that we understand that verse 28 is bound to verse 29. In fact, verse 29 defines the specific good that Paul is speaking of when he says that God causes all things to work together for good. "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." Romans 8:29 ESV. Our greatest good, for which God is working, is that we be conformed to the image of Christ. There is nothing better. There is nothing higher. And there is no greater purpose. This is the greatest act of love that our Father can do in our lives. It is the work that the Cross is accomplishing in us. And until we understand that this alone is the goal, we will continue to live in disappointment as we battle to reconcile the tragedies in our lives with our own definition of "good." This is the love of our Father for us; that He calls us His own children, and in doing so, He molds us into the likeness of His only begotton Son.

But I began to think of what exactly it looks like to be conformed to Christ's image, especially in the context of these two verses. Paul is encouraging us that God especially uses persecution, tragedy, loss, etc. in His good purpose to conform us to Christ. So I began to ask myself, "What specific work does God accomplish in our lives in the midst of our distress that causes us to be more like Jesus?" My mind immediatley went to the place where Jesus Himself was under the most duress. In the garden, before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed in agony because He knew that the cup of God's wrath was about to be poured upon Him. In this moment, the nature of His relationship to the Father is clearly seen. "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." Luke 22:42 ESV. This Christ who was the eternal Word of God, through whom all things were created, and in whom all things find their being, who was literally God in the flesh, submitted to His Father's will. In John 5:19 Jesus told the people that He could do nothing on His own accord, but He could only do what He saw His Father doing. Jesus fully trusted the word of His Father. Because of this complete trust, He lived a life of total surrender to the will of His Father, even in the midst of bearing the wrath that was due to a sinful humanity. What does it look like to be conformed to the image of Jesus? And why does God use tribulation and loss to bring that conformation about in our lives? Because in the midst of tribulation we cannot trust in ourselves. We are stripped of any false idea that we are capable of defining our own purpose and destiny. We are sobored to realize that we are powerless and completely dependent upon the One who we call Father. It is in this dependence, in this submission, in this trust that we are most like Jesus. And in becoming like Jesus, He is immeasurably glorified, because He is the firstborn of many brothers.