⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please Him …

What is seen in Enoch, we now discover is absolutely essential for a relationship with God, namely, pleasing Him. The phrase “it is impossible” is identical to what we found in Hebrews 6:4, which spoke of the impossibility of a genuine believer losing his salvation. It is not that it is difficult to please God without faith—it is impossible! Some things just cannot happen as a matter of intrinsic reality. Just as “it is impossible” (same phrase) for someone to be saved by their own efforts (Matt 19:24-25), and as “it is impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18), so also it is impossible for someone through their own efforts to keep their salvation, that is, to not fall away through their own efforts. Here in our passage for today, we see that “it is impossible” to please God apart from faith.

First we must point out that faith is not a human effort, as though it merits for us salvation. God saves us by His grace, and He does it through our response of faith (Eph 2:8-9). We do not “earn” salvation, such that God owes it to us to save us. His grace comes first, then comes our faith, similar to how God’s love comes first, then is responded to by our love (1 John 4;19). Faith is simply accepting as true what God has promised, even though we cannot see the end result of His promise of salvation. Faith, as we saw in verse 1, is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Now faith is not simply a cognitive adherence to a doctrinal truth. Faith is a relationship; it is all about bringing pleasure to God. We agree with the sages who say that we were created for God’s pleasure. As a clay pot that functions well according to its intended design, giving the potter much pleasure, so also, when we function in faith we bring our Creator much pleasure, for we are living in the way He designed. In other words, we simply cannot fulfill God’s purpose for our existence unless we are living by faith.

Some religions are all about morality and serving others. True Christianity is about pleasing God. Not the way a sniveling subject abjectly grovels before a terrible tyrant, but as image bearers of the Almighty whose hearts are made to lean toward God. We were created not to be servants, but to be children of our heavenly Father. It is true, that is some aspects we serve Him, but like the Hebrew slave who, set free upon fulfillment of his debt, might choose to remain a servant out of love for His master (Deut 15:17), we who are set free from slavery to sin, choose to serve our loving Master, in order to please Him.

Lord, You have set me free from the law and from sin, so that I might live in relationship to You, as Your child and brother of the Lord Jesus Christ.