Thomas Chisholm did the Christian community an enormous service when he penned the words taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah in chapter 3, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not; they are new every morning; Great is Thy faithfulness.” And, of course, from those lines, he wrote that majestic and uplifting anthem, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”. It reminds us of the immutability of God stated in Malachi 3, where the Lord said, “I am the LORD; I change not; therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed,” and both passages, from Malachi and Jeremiah, imply the same truth that it was not Israel’s good behavior that caused God to stay His hand from raining deserved judgment down upon them. It was only the immutability and the faithfulness of God that spared them. God is always faithful to whatever He has promised or committed Himself to do or be. He cannot deny Himself or the Word that He has sent forth.
Extolling God’s faithfulness in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wrote in (1st Corinthians) chapter 10, that there is “no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to bear, but will with the temptation provide the way of escape, so that you may be able to bear it. “ And John echoes God’s faithfulness with the all-important forgiveness issue in chapter 1 of 1st John, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Faithful, dependable, reliable, always making good on whatever He has promised. And, perhaps, the most remarkable and comforting feature of God’s faithfulness is that it is not conditioned upon our faithfulness. Second Timothy 2 makes it very clear with the statement, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” That is tremendously comforting. Even if we are unfaithful to God in our obligations to Him, He does not retaliate by being unfaithful to us. God will not allow us and our disobedience to Him to make Him respond in kind by being unfaithful, and this is priceless. God can be counted on to fulfill all He has promised, no matter how much we fail Him.
Somebody has to be constant. Somebody has to be strong and utterly dependable, and that Somebody is the ever-immutable, dependable, faithful God. And well should man write hymns of praise extolling this purely God attribute of faithfulness. Significantly, the Bible closes by describing Jesus Christ, in chapter 19 of the Revelation, as seated upon a white horse, and He is called “Faithful and True”, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.” From Genesis to Revelation, as the drama of redemption is played out, God is ever identified consistently as the God who is faithful.
CC-05-17
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