Childlike Faith

Our Lord calls us to be childlike in faith. What does that mean for an adult?

For one thing it means receiving rather than earning. By this I mean that we need to learn, really re-learn, how to take something for our good without always giving in to the compulsion to try to earn it. Normally young children do not try to pay for a gift someone has given them, especially if that someone happens to be a parent. In fact the idea of paying for what is clearly a gift does not even cross their minds. This is part of the innocence of childhood and it is a very good thing. We tend to lose that kind of “innocence in receiving” as we grow up and take our places in an often loveless world which tells us nothing is free. We especially lose it if certain people either unconsciously or purposefully teach us that love, itself, is not free.

But God is the original “no-strings-attached” Giver. He gives because it is in His nature to do so. God is love and love is never earned, it is only freely given and freely received. When a good parent gives his or her child a gift simply out of love it is a faint echo of what the Creator of the universe gives to all humankind. This kind of love that extends to all is what has been called common grace. To become His children in Christ we are to become the recipients not only of such common grace but of saving grace as well, the receiving of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. For this to happen we must somehow become like a “little child” again. (How exactly this happens in salvation is a mystery to me. God enables us to receive even the childlikeness that makes it possible to receive Him, but we must will to do so. Whether that will is ours alone, or somehow also the gift of God I will leave to the Calvinists and Arminians to debate)

But even after the miracle of salvation our sanctification requires us to remain childlike. For many of us this means continuing to seek to be that way. Perhaps the critical question now becomes how we can enjoy our salvation, and its earthly blessings, rather than trying to continue to justify why we should have both. Even Christians fall into the trap of attempting to earn the ongoing love of their God. Salvation may be free, but sanctification costs, or so we think.

The Christian life does “cost” in the sense that it requires us to progressively give up the worldly things we continue to cling to for our sense of security. But even that process is enabled by the completely unearned love of God and it, again, can only be received with the trust of an innocent child. We cannot “earn” that state of trust either. We can only ask for it, in the name of our Lord.

This may seem like a circular argument: “we cannot earn the trust of a child, but we must trust God enough to give us that trust”. Maybe this is true from a purely rational standpoint, as far as that goes. Ironically children do not ever ask such questions. Their trust is, to a large degree, both innate and trans-rational.

My position is this: if we have truly known salvation we can simply ask our Father in Heaven for the further restoration of a childlike spirit because our very salvation proves we have some of it back already. As Christians we do not have to worry if we have the faith that requires. This is because the same mustard seed of faith we somehow found ourselves having to put our trust in God for our salvation still exists to also help us with this aspect of our sanctification.

I suppose that position requires some childlike faith as well. I trust I have it. I hope you have it too.