The Faith Of Jesus Christ

I just finished reading Dr. Mark A. Seifrid’s article in the Concordia Theological Quarterly from January 2008 entitled “The Narrative of Scripture and Justification by Faith: A Fresh Response to N.T. Wright.” I really enjoyed reading Dr. Seifrid’s article and am awaiting the book he is editing entitled The Faith of Christ Debate (he writes an essay in this book called “The Faith of Christ). I really liked what Dr. Seifrid said about faith in this article (pp 42-44; 26-28 of pdf),

The righteousness of God revealed in Christ for salvation is made ours by faith. More precisely, it is “through the faith of Jesus Christ.” Neither the traditional reading of this expression as “faith in Christ,” nor the currently popular reading “faith/faithfulness of Christ,” is fully satisfying, the former because Paul generally presupposes the object of faith in the term πίστις itself and the latter because we never find in Paul a verbal expression of Christ’s faith/faithfulness. Furthermore, there are a number of signals in this passage, and elsewhere, that in this usage Paul views the crucified and risen Christ himself as the source from which faith flows. Already his description of justification taking place “in Christ Jesus,” and that implicitly as the restoration of the glory of God (Rom 3:24), points in this direction, as does his concluding description of the believer as one who is “of the faith of Jesus” (Rom 3:26). It is also important to see that Paul describes Abraham’s faith in the following chapter as the work of the promissory word of God the Creator “who makes alive the dead and calls (for his purposes) that which is not as if it exists” (Rom 417). Abraham believes and acts, yet, in Paul’s reading of Genesis, Abraham is more fundamentally- acted upon: despite his aging body and Sarah’s barrenness, with respect to the promise “he was made strong in faith” and “is made fully assured” that the Creator could do what he promised. Abraham’s “giving glory to God” -Paul here overlooks his rather remarkable failure (Genesis 20)-is nothing other than the work of the Creator in Abraham (Rom 420). Our believing in “the One who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” is no different. Faith for Paul is nothing other than the word of promise performing its work in those who believe…

Faith is the creation of God by the word of promise, the gospel of Jesus Christ, which stands over against the unfaithfulness of the human being.