The Righteous Shall Live By Faith

Dr. Alan Dunn

Habakkuk 3:2 & 2:4

Habakkuk has courageously wrestled with the Lord in persistent entreaty as Jerusalem is besieged and sacked by Babylonian invaders. He is awash in violence and injustice stemming from apostate Judah and now, from idolatrous Babylon. The circumstance is mind-boggling and heart-wrenching. Two questions have pushed this priest-prophet to seek YHWH, His God. How can we even attempt to intone the inflections of poignant pain as Habakkuk asks “How long? and “Why?” The Lord has answered the prophet assuring him that He is directing the course of history to its appointed end. “How long?” As long as the Lord determines necessary to accomplish His sovereign purposes. We also ask the Why question because we struggle with the reality of evil in this fallen world. “Why?” is the question of a conflicted conscience. Is there moral meaning and purpose in a world which, as Solomon tells us, is so full of vanity? The Lord assures Habakkuk of His impeccable justice. He gives Habakkuk prophetic taunt-songs, which prophesy certain judgment on apostate Israelites and idolatrous Babylonians alike.[1]

But the righteous will live by his faith, and the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him [Hab 2:4c, 20]. Habakkuk receives the Lord’s answers by faith and is surrounded by the silent serenity of YHWH’s holy temple. Habakkuk descends, as it were, from this summit text to instruct us how to live by faith in the midst of the years, between two acts of divine judgment. Habakkuk lived in the years between the judgment that fell on Jerusalem and the judgment that was about to fall on Babylon. We also live in the years between the judgment that fell on our Savior at Calvary and the judgment that He will execute when He returns at the end of the age. How shall we then live by faith?

Habakkuk encourages us to keep an eternal, transcendent perspective, to persevere in hearing
God’s Word, and to persevere in prayer. We resume our consideration of Habakkuk 3:1-2, a prayer of Habakkuk the prophet according to Shigionoth. Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear. O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the year make it known: in wrath remember mercy.

Habakkuk Encourages Us to Persevere in Prayer [Continued]

In the meantime, during these middle years, let us be a people of prayer. Habakkuk commends three petitions to us. Petition #1: revive Your work. “Lord, accomplish that work that You are doing in our days [1:5]. Lord, deal justly with your enemies and graciously with Your people. Do Your work in providence and complete the good work that You have begun in us [Phil 1:6]. Lord, work through us. Enable us, by Your Spirit, to do those good works that men can see so that they would learn to glorify You, our heavenly Father [Mat 5:17]. Lord, hasten history to its appointed goal.”

Petition #2: make it known. “Lord, reveal Your work and ways to us in Scripture. As we read and run, teach us. Enable us to know, to understand, to live by faith. Lord, we pray, that our love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that we may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ [Phil 1:9-10]. Lord, protect us from deception and confusion, from false teaching, from speculation, and worry. Lord, amidst all the competing agendas that pull at our consciences, that demand our allegiances; amidst all the truncated eschatologies that would misdirect our hope and deceive us into thinking that our satisfaction might come from the passing things of this world; Lord, help us to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness. Father, hallowed be Your name.”

Petition #3: in wrath, remember mercy. “Lord, Your wrath is already revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, but so too, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, ‘but the righteous man shall live by faith’ [Rom 1:18,17]. Lord, in wrath, remember mercy. Cause the gospel of Your grace in Christ to encompass the globe. Lord, build Your church against the gates of hell. Lord, remember, for we are so apt to forget. We forget Your words, Your law, Your gospel, Your promises. We forget to make priority of Your worship, Your church, Your people. We forget your mercies. Lord, remember mercy. You are our covenant-keeping Lord, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet will by no means leave the guilty unpunished [Exo 34:6-7a]. We know You will remember. Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you [Isa 49:15].”

Scholars tell us that Shigionoth is a specific form of poetry used to express intense, even volatile emotion. The word connotes the idea of swaying to and fro, a physical depiction of the undulating waves of passion that churn in the heart of true faith. When we experience such inner turmoil, we might claim that we cannot help but release our emotions without restraint. I doubt that many of us have experienced the feelings that seized Habakkuk. He prays while his inward parts tremble, his lips quiver, and decay enters his bones [3:16] but all according to Shigionoth. Habakkuk’s prayer includes the prophecy of chapter three. It is highly structured poetry containing vocabulary that emanates from the deep, distant recesses of God’s past deeds of judgment and salvation. Habakkuk calls to mind the works of God in creation, the flood, and the Exodus. He employs the language of apocalyptic metaphor. He delves to a depth which we cannot plunge and reaches to a height which we cannot attain. His flight of prophetic hymnody in 3:3-15 is one of the most elevated passages in Scripture. Read and run.

Habakkuk Encourages Us to Persevere by Faith

The righteous will live by his faith [Hab 2:4b]. This is the faith of Abraham, a passive faith that simply trusts in the promises of God, and yet an active faith that is fruitful and evidenced in deeds of obedience. This is the faith of Abraham, who believed in the Lord, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness [Gen 15:6]. This is the faith of Abraham seen in his obedience when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar [Jms 2:20-24; Gen 22:1-19]. There is an ambiguity here. These most important words can be translated and applied to the life of faith at its inception and on to its completion.

On the one hand, the phrase can read, for the righteous by faith shall live. Paul uses this phrasing to teach us about justification in Romans and Galatians. Here is the salvation celebrated by the church confessing salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone. On the other hand, the phrase can read, for the righteous shall live by faith. Read in this way, the phrase exhorts us to sanctification, to the life of faith. Hebrews 10:38 cites Habakkuk 2:4 to introduce us to the biographical vignettes of those who lived by faith who are then profiled in Hebrews 11. We learn that God’s people not only lived by faith, they also died in faith [Heb 11:13]. They persevered by faith. “The perseverance of the saints” is a slogan with which Habakkuk would concur. We are righteous by faith, and we live righteously by faith. We persevere by faith in life, and we die in faith, and we overcome Satan’s onslaught because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of the testimony and our love for Christ even when faced with death [Rev 12:11].

In Habakkuk 3:3-15, our faith sees the arrival of our Warrior God, our triumphant King. From out of the farthest reaches of divine mystery, the Lord arrives clothed in the attire of military might. His brilliance is overwhelming. Creation collapses before its Maker. Death, man’s great enemy, yields the field, vanquished by our exalted Victor. The elements of heaven and earth fall prostrate beneath the judgment of this divine Warrior who comes for the salvation of His people, for the salvation of His anointed [Hab 3:13]. In wrath, He remembers mercy. The hordes of hell are finally defeated and dismembered by the weapons wielded in the hands of triumphant holiness. See with your eyes of imagination and look at the warriors of Babylon. A scary scourge, aren’t they? Now, see with your eyes of faith and look at our Warrior King come for our salvation! Consider this – here is the hiding of His power [Hab 3:4c]!?! Read Habakkuk 3:3-15. You will feel like you are being tossed about by cosmic cross-currents, swirling forward into starry heights, falling backward into watery depths.

“Anomie” is the experience of disorientation when all the familiar points of reference are lost. Things that once seemed secure totter and collapse, and an unnerving sense of vulnerability and uncertainty seep into the soul. It is what the victims of violence and injustice experience in tumultuous times of social, economic, political, and moral upheaval. Habakkuk experienced anomie when he initially agonized over the injustices of Judean society and called to the Lord at the beginning of chapter one. His anomie intensified as his life was upended by invaders idolatrously devoted to war and destruction. Now, after all that, in an apocalyptic vision, he sees the arrival of the Warrior God come to conquer and save – and he sees the entire cosmos come unhinged. Anomie.

The approach of death brings anomie. Different people react to the inevitability of death differently. Some check off their “bucket lists.” Some anesthetize themselves with intoxicants and distract themselves with entertainment. Some seek significance in the good things of this life as men of the world, whose portion is in this life, and whose belly You fill with Your treasure. They are satisfied with children and leave their abundance to their babes [Psa 17:14]. Some add rituals to their supposed goodness and hope to become religiously good enough to satisfy death’s demands. Some, in vaunted courage, turn to confront the approaching darkness. “Do not go quietly into that good night… rage, rage against the dying of the light,” we are told, while that dark wall inexorably closes in.

We innately know that death is an enemy, an invader. We know that death, impervious to our cries, inevitably silences our screams of protest. We need a Deliverer. Habakkuk calls us to cry out in faith to the Lord. Habakkuk points us to our victorious Warrior God, who defeats death. Before Him goes pestilence, and plague comes after Him [Hab 3:5]. Death, in its varied forms, is trampled beneath the feet of our conquering King. Our Lord Jesus vanquished death when He rose from the grave. He now calls us to faith in the gospel that announces His triumph. We must live by faith in Christ and die by faith in Christ knowing that we will live forever with Christ in resurrection glory. Faith must overcome the anomie of death, indeed, death itself. Faith must endure through traumatic life-altering experiences when our world is turned upside down [see Psalm 46]. Faith must persevere even through the cosmic cataclysm of Final Judgment.

What can outlast and rise above the disorienting devastation of evil and the destruction of death itself? Faith: we are justified by faith in Christ alone. The righteous by faith shall live. Faith: we live a life of sanctification by faith. The righteous shall live by faith.

[1] Your personal reading of Habakkuk as you consider the content of this article will bring additional benefit. Habakkuk and other Scriptures are frequently referenced using italicized words.

First article: Lord! Look! Violence and Injustice!

Second article: Read and Run

Third article: The Silent Serenity of Sovereignty

Fourth article: The Righteous Shall Live By Faith

Fifth article: Wait Quietly

The following books by Dr. Alan J. Dunn are available at Trinity Book Service and Cristianismo Histórico: