A Firm Foundation

Anything that is built without a firm foundation is destined to crumble.

This is why we hear the word ‘foundation’ used in phrases like: “The foundation of a solid marriage is trust” or “The foundation of a healthy lifestyle is diet and exercise.” It’s clear that foundations are really important for the success of something.

When it comes to being a Christian – a Christ follower — we know that our foundation is Jesus himself. We know this mainly because Jesus says so in Luke 6. But we’ve also probably heard people say it. We’ve heard songs about it. We’ve belted out the lyrics with Cody Carnes:

“Christ is my firm foundation, the Rock on which I stand. When everything around me is shaken…”

But if we stop to think about it, what does it really mean to have Christ as our firm foundation? What does that actually look like? And perhaps a more pressing question – if Christ isn’t my foundation currently, then what is?

What is a Firm Foundation?

When Jesus talks about the firm foundation in Luke 6:46-49, he illustrates two houses being built by two men. The first digs and builds on solid rock, and the other builds right on top of the ground.

The parallel in Matthew 7:24-27 depicts the ground as sand. This passage also offers us a clear distinction between the two men; the first is called wise (7:24) and the second foolish (7:26). While it may seem harsh, it turns out he was foolish, as his house collapsed at the first sign of a storm.

It’s obvious to most people that building a house on top of sand is not the best idea, but to someone with little knowledge of construction, starting from ground level may not seem unwise. In fact, it may even seem a little counterintuitive to dig down first in order to build up.

But indeed, Jesus knew what He was talking about. Every building you see standing today was constructed atop a base, rather than materials just placed on the ground. Before the invention of concrete, stone was the way to go. Soil had to be dug up and smooth, even stone laid down. Now, most builders still dig first, but they lay concrete slabs instead of stone. Either way, a solid house is anchored to a solid substructure.

Jesus is not just offering construction advice in these passages. These are his final remarks in the famous Sermon on the Mount. Everything Jesus said in this sermon was meant to shake the paradigms of the listeners, challenging their love for God the Father and their perception of the Law and Jewish traditions. He is doing the same for us today.

Identifying Our Foundation

Our foundation is what we’ve been digging into and building up. It’s what we’ve been investing in tirelessly, thinking about constantly, and being intentional to foster.

It’s also what we find security in when things get hard. The trials of life, or as Jesus illustrates, “the wind and floods,” tend to reveal the substructure that our hope is built on. As our well-maintained exteriors are battered and perhaps a few panels come flying off, we begin to see more clearly what we are really standing on.

A good litmus test for identifying our current foundation is to finish this sentence: As long as (fill in the blank) remains intact, I will be okay.

Personally, my “fill-in-the-blank” was always the approval of people. I needed to know that I was liked and valued by friends and people I looked up to, so I constantly sought attention and praise. It was what I put most of my energy into. Regardless of what else was going on in my life, as long as I was receiving affirmation, I was happy. But any hint of rejection sent me spiraling.

I would estimate that many of us might fill in that blank with ‘career’ or ‘family.’ When troubles come, we might cling to our success, our bank account, or our spouse. We might think to ourselves, even subconsciously, “as long as my kids are healthy and safe, I’ll be okay.”

For the Jewish people in Jesus’ audience, their foundation was their adherence to the Law— how well they could comply and how religious they could appear by performing rituals and going to the temple. This was how they exercised their faith, and it seemed like a solid footing to them, but it was lacking something crucial.

Many of us might similarly claim that our faith is our foundation – what keeps us steady when the storms of life come. But like the Jews of Jesus’ day, our faith and trust in God can easily become shallow; it can look like praying and reading our Bibles a lot, serving at church, or being generous with our money. While these are not bad things, the problem is they’re not Christ. And anything short of Christ as our foundation will send us crashing down with the wind and the waves.

Making Christ Our Foundation

The good news is that Jesus gives us the answer, the blueprint of sorts, for reconstructing our spiritual homes. As he describes the wise man who built on the rock, Jesus says that everyone who does the following is also like that wise man:

“Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them” (Luke 6:47).

Three things Jesus asks of us in order to make him our foundation: Come to me, hear my words, and do them. This is what faith really looks like – not just professing with our mouths that we believe in the Lord, but actually doing what he says.

Jesus is after a few things here, but primarily our obedience. That’s what he was aiming at with the Sermon on the Mount — that the people would see his words were the way to eternal life, that they would listen and respond in obedience.

Fulfilling the requirements of the Law was not only impossible, it was blinding the Jewish people to recognizing that Jesus, the better way, the actual fulfillment of the Law, was right there in front of them. It can be so easy for us to become blinded too.

But, thankfully, it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been resting on our current foundation, there is a continual offer from Jesus to rebuild. Perhaps Jesus was your foundation at one point, and then you began to replace parts here and there until it was no longer him. As Christ followers, we need to perform regular inspections to make sure everything is “up to code” — that we are still leaning on him and him alone.

Come to Me

When pondering on Jesus’ instructions, it’s easy to get fixated on the “hear my words and do them” part, but we cannot neglect the first request — “come to me.” This is what enables us to do the rest.

Jesus is our salvation, our righteousness, our hope, our peace — everything. His death and resurrection satisfied the requirement of the Law, and his Holy Spirit empowers us believers to follow his commands. But in order to take hold of this, we have to dig down into it, and we have to build upon it.

It begins with coming to the man Jesus Christ – resolving to not just go through the motions, but to learn his character and his ways as we read our Bibles, as we talk with others about him, as we engage in community.

Hear My Words

While we are coming to Jesus and learning from him, we are hearing his words. All of scripture are his words – it is “God-breathed and useful for teaching” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

This requires faith to believe that the entirety of the Bible is trustworthy and true. But we can have confidence in knowing that Jesus himself confirmed this. In fact, after his resurrection, Jesus explains to two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus how the writings of Moses and the Prophets – and all of the Scriptures – were about him (Luke 24:27).

It also requires consistency. We can’t start our construction project and then abandon it partway through. We have to commit to dedicating time to reading the Word daily, and this can start with as little as 5 minutes a day.

Do Them

Doing what Jesus says is how we demonstrate our obedience. Once we have invested our time and our thought life in knowing him and learning from him, the next step is to put into practice what we have learned.

This may seem like a daunting task initially, but we can find comfort in the promises of Scripture that assure us we are not alone in this endeavor, and it’s not completely on our shoulders. One promise is that as we know Jesus more, we will love him more. And as we love him more, we will naturally desire to do what he says (John 14:15). Obedience will come organically as a result of following the first two steps.

An even greater comfort lies in our Helper, the Holy Spirit. We have full access and permission to pray and ask the Holy Spirit as often as we need to: reveal Jesus to me; help me to love him more; help me to obey his commands. He will not leave us to build the foundation on our own. He will come in power and in grace and he will labor alongside us.

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