Faith­ful­ness (Greek, pis­tis; Antonym: dis­loyal or unfaithfulness)

This photo was taken in the final months of my grandfather’s life and while it might not be the most flat­ter­ing pho­to­graph, it is an image of faith­ful­ness for me. As you can see my grand­fa­ther looks ill and weary, but at the same time, as usual you also see my grand­mother right by his side.

My grand­par­ents for me have always been the image for me of what it means to be faith­ful. Going back to when they met—uncharacteristic of my grand­fa­ther, on the dance floor at a New Year’s party in the 1930’s, he spon­ta­neously kissed my grand­mother who he had just met. That kiss even­tu­ally led to a mar­riage that lasted fifty-five years. At the start of the Depres­sion, and through var­i­ous chal­leng­ing times, my grand­par­ents never wavered from their love and com­mit­ment to one another. When­ever you were with them, you saw very clearly how com­mit­ted they were to one another. They were faith­ful to the very end.

So with this, faith­ful­ness is the fruit of the Spirit that describes one’s trust­wor­thi­ness and deter­mi­na­tion. Con­stant and devoted might be two other words we would use to describe a faith­ful per­son. The per­son with this qual­ity keeps their word, their promises, and their vows no mat­ter what the cost. As a model of being true to those she served tire­lessly, Mother Teresa was quoted as say­ing, “I don’t pray for suc­cess, I ask for faith­ful­ness.” In life, in dif­fi­cult times, it can be so easy to give up, and yet the fruit of faith­ful­ness asks us to hold on just a lit­tle longer.

Of course our great­est exam­ple for faith­ful­ness is God. The Scrip­tures declare over and over that he will never for­sake us, never give up on us. Let’s lis­ten to a few passages:

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not ful­fill? (Num­bers 23:19)

I will declare that your love stands firm for­ever, that you estab­lished your faith­ful­ness in heaven itself… O LORD God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O LORD, and your faith­ful­ness sur­rounds you. (Psalm 89:2,8)

He remem­bers his covenant for­ever, the word he com­manded, for a thou­sand gen­er­a­tions. (Psalm 105:8)

Though the moun­tains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfail­ing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has com­pas­sion on you. (Isa­iah 54:10)

These are just a hand­ful of verses and these are just from the Old Tes­ta­ment. We could go on and on dis­cov­er­ing that there are count­less pas­sages through­out the Scrip­tures that declare that God is always faithful—that he is trust­wor­thy, deter­mined, con­stant and devoted. Again and again, the Scrip­tures declare that his love for us is unfail­ing and not shaken—he is a God who is faith­ful to the end even to the point of sac­ri­fic­ing himself.

Obvi­ously, when it applies to faith­ful­ness we often think of mar­riage. As the French author Paul Carvel penned in a witty man­ner, “One thou­sand one night stands are no match to a sin­gle one life stand.” As attested by a divorce rate that at least half of all mar­riages fail, faith­ful­ness can seem­ingly be impos­si­ble.  This is pre­cisely why God gives very lit­tle room for the pur­suit of divorce within marriage—he wants us to expe­ri­ence what it looks like to be faith­ful just as he is to us. To one per­son, He wants us to live out a com­mit­ment over the course of fifty years that even in those moments when it looks like there is lit­tle hope, we stay com­mit­ted no mat­ter what. Even though we want to be happy and ful­filled, we hold on. If we can be faith­ful like that, per­haps in a lit­tle way, we can expe­ri­ence a deter­mi­na­tion and devo­tion like He has for us.

To look at this from another angle, I have a story—some years ago, I worked with a man who had mul­ti­ple affairs; he was often unfaith­ful. Time after time, he found him­self in the arms of another woman falsely believ­ing that she could make him happy. After his con­stant unfaith­ful­ness, his wife left him and dis­ap­point­ingly, so did his church. Because of the unend­ing lies and decep­tions, I can under­stand why his wife did so; in end­ing her mar­riage, she was guard­ing her own heart (Proverbs 4:23) and attempt­ing to heal from the many betray­als he had put her through. The sad thing was that all of his friends and com­mu­nity gave up on him as well, and that’s how he ended up on my doorstep in coun­sel­ing. No mat­ter what a per­son has done, we should never give up on them. While we may need to take a break from the rela­tion­ship, to give up on some­one for good is not what faith­ful­ness is all about. Faith­ful­ness, like love, always pro­tects, hopes, and per­se­veres (I Corinthi­ans 13:7). Just as Jesus never gives up on us, we should fol­low his exam­ple. This is the epit­ome of what it means to become a faith­ful person—even when there doesn’t seem like a chance that some­one can change, we hang on in some way or another, because we know that Jesus has done the same for us at some point in our lives.

Ques­tions you can ask your­self: how faith­ful a per­son are you: to your friends when they request you to make some sort of sac­ri­fice, to com­mit­ments you make (do you too often find ways to get out of things?), to your com­mit­ment to God? How depend­able or reli­able are you? If you are mar­ried, how faith­ful are you to your spouse, espe­cially in times of difficulty—do you run and hide or do you stay the course? Even if you have been mar­ried for thirty years, is your mar­riage thriv­ing and are you there for your spouse in all ways: e.g., emo­tion­ally, spir­i­tu­ally, affec­tion­ately? In rela­tion­ships other than mar­riage, how do you need to become more faith­ful in these—how do you need to become more trust­wor­thy, deter­mined, con­stant and devoted? What do you need to change in your life to become a faith­ful person?