Can Jesus Trust Us?

When Christians use the word faith, we ordinarily think about the believer's response to God. We have faith in Christ. We trust His promises. We depend upon His finished work rather than our own ability or merit.

That direction of faith is fundamental to the gospel, but the biblical vocabulary of faith is broader than the English expression "believe in." The Greek word pistis can communicate faith, trust, confidence, faithfulness, and reliability, while the related adjective pistos can describe someone who is faithful or trustworthy.

That broader semantic range allows us to ask whether there is a reciprocal dimension within the believer's relationship with Christ. The relationship is certainly not symmetrical. Christ does not depend upon us for salvation, nor does He need to believe something about us in the manner in which we believe the gospel. Nevertheless, Scripture can describe Christ as regarding a servant as faithful and consequently entrusting responsibility to that servant.

Two-way, therefore, does not mean equal.

Our trust in Christ is dependence upon the perfectly faithful One. Christ's trust toward His servants is better understood as His willingness to entrust His work to those whom He has called, strengthened, and formed into faithful servants.

Paul thanks Christ Jesus for strengthening him because Christ "considered me faithful, putting me into service."

The important expression is piston me hēgēsato. The adjective pistos belongs to the same word family associated with faith and faithfulness, while hēgeomai can carry the sense of considering, regarding, reckoning, or judging something to be so.

Paul therefore describes more than receiving an assignment. Christ regarded Paul as faithful and entrusted him with ministry.

The sequence of the verse is important:

The order protects the passage from becoming a celebration of human self-sufficiency. Paul does not present himself as someone whose natural ability impressed Christ. The Christ who entrusted Paul was first the Christ who strengthened Paul.

Paul immediately reminds Timothy that he had formerly been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent aggressor. His history makes Christ's entrustment even more striking.

Christ did not examine Saul of Tarsus and discover an unblemished record of reliability. Saul's former actions demonstrated precisely the opposite.

Grace intervened.

Christ called him, showed him mercy, strengthened him, transformed him, and entrusted him with ministry.

The passage therefore does not teach that believers make themselves worthy enough for Christ to trust them. Faithfulness itself grows within a life already touched and empowered by grace.

The movement is not:

It is:

Paul develops the same principle through the language of stewardship. Believers entrusted with the mysteries of God are servants and stewards, and the defining requirement of a steward is that the person be found faithful.

A steward does not own what has been placed under his care. He manages something belonging to another.

That makes faithfulness inseparable from entrustment.

Christ entrusts His gospel, His ministry, His gifts, His opportunities, and the care of other people to servants who remain accountable to Him for what they do with what they have received.

The question is therefore not merely whether we possess faith.

The question is whether faith in Christ is producing faithfulness in us.

Careful language matters here. Saying that Christ can "trust" a believer must never imply that Christ depends upon us in the same way that we depend upon Him.

Our relationship with Christ is fundamentally unequal.

Nevertheless, asymmetry does not eliminate relationship.

A master can entrust something valuable to a servant precisely because the servant has been judged trustworthy. That is the relational dimension seen in Paul's language.

A careful formulation is therefore:

The application of this teaching reaches far beyond formal church ministry. Every believer lives as a steward of things that ultimately belong to God.

For teachers, there is an additional stewardship: Scripture itself must be handled carefully, honestly, and faithfully.

The mature Christian therefore moves beyond asking only, "Do I trust Jesus?"

Another question gradually becomes unavoidable:

Christian faith, therefore, is never merely intellectual agreement. Trust in the faithful Christ should gradually produce trustworthy people.

The Christian life begins with dependence upon Christ, continues through the transforming work of Christ, and bears fruit in lives that increasingly reflect His faithfulness.

The Christian life begins with faith in Christ, but genuine faith was never intended to remain merely an inward conviction. Trust in the faithful Christ forms faithful people.

Paul could look back upon a life once characterized by hostility toward Christ and marvel that the same Lord whom he had opposed had shown him mercy, strengthened him, regarded him as faithful, and entrusted him with the gospel.

That should change the way we think about Christian responsibility.

We do not serve in order to persuade Christ to accept us. We serve because grace has already reached us. We do not manufacture faithfulness apart from Christ. The One who calls us also strengthens us.

Yet grace does not make faithfulness irrelevant. Grace makes faithfulness possible.

We place our faith in the One who is perfectly faithful, and as He forms His character within us, we increasingly become people to whom He can entrust His work.

Perhaps, then, the question is worth allowing to remain with us: