For many years, I have been impressed with a little verse from the second chapter of Habakkuk. It is a verse that the Apostle Paul picked up many years later, in his Epistle to the Romans (1:17). It is a verse that Martin Luther picked up, too. Or maybe better, this little verse picked up Luther — and led him to a wonderful discovery of the grace of God.
“The righteous live by their faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).
By their faith, you see. Not by their effort or merit or striving. When this basic Gospel insight broke upon Luther, he felt as if he were born again. “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates… That place in [the Scripture] was for me truly the gate to Paradise.”
It is another little verse, however, that I bring to your attention today — verse two of the same chapter, just before Habakkuk’s insight regarding faith. It is a practical sort of verse that is often overlooked.
“Write the vision: make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it” (Habakkuk 2:2).
The Gospel message should be written down, Habakkuk is told. And not in any careless way. It should be written “plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.” Eugene Peterson translates, “Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run.”
We can get too subtle about the Gospel message, sometimes. We can nuance the message beyond intelligibility. But God wants to write this message plainly, clearly — in “big block letters.” Faith is what counts. The righteous live by their faith.
When a missionary friend was pregnant, she sometimes wore a large tee shirt that read in big block letters, “BABY.” An arrow pointed to her tummy, if viewers might have wondered where the child was carried. You could tell, even on the run, that this was a woman on a mission. She was expecting a child.
Our lives should be equally clear. We are “pregnant,” as it were, with a radical vision of hope. And we should look like it! Righteousness is ours by grace, through simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The message should be readable in big block letters — even by viewers on the run.
It is especially important to keep our messages clear in times of confusion and distress. In Habakkuk’s day, near the end of the seventh century before Christ, the Chaldeans were right at the door — and about to ransack and ruin the tribe of Judah. There wasn’t much time for nuancing. The people of Judah needed big block letters.
In our day, ransack and ruin appear on the nightly news with stunning frequency, much as they did during the days of Habakkuk. Violence. Injustice. Political intrigue. Instability. We need some big block letters, too.
In times such as these it is especially important to be clear about the fundamentals of our faith. Politics cannot provide the answer. Peace cannot be imposed by any other agency. Habakkuk reminds us: Faith is what counts. Faith in the grace of our Lord Jesus.
Write that big.