Faith
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
We tend to think, and with good reason, that we live in dangerous, discouraging, and confusing times. We see much false religion and so few faithful pastors and churches. We have a government and population that have lost all reverence for God and His Word, and all sense of God as holy, God as Judge of all the earth, and God as all-seeing and all-knowing. Among professing Christians there is widespread indifference to biblical truth on the one hand and wholesale compromise and assimilation with the culture on the other. This spiritual apathy is usually attributed to some deficiency in the pure gospel which makes it ‘irrelevant’ to the modern mind rather than to unbelief and the natural hostility of fallen mankind to the true gospel. Rather than exposing the unfruitful deeds of darkness, most Christian leaders seem bent on ‘engaging’ the culture. The standards for Christianity in general, and for spiritual leadership in particular, have suffered from a long and steady decline.
It is a time of doleful spiritual decay and moral degeneracy, where the Fall of man is ignored, the necessity and nature of the new birth is sneered at, and the bulk of spiritual teaching leaves people with the impression that they are the victim of sin and the author and finisher of their own salvation. It is a time when despite the lawlessness, worldliness, flagrant immorality, open impiety, and shameless depravity, people still cling to their traditional self-made religion, their multiple forms of man-pleasing godliness, and their false hopes, assurances, and beliefs. For decades we have been fed a steady diet of statistics and pseudo-Christian propaganda that insists a ‘new era’ is only possible if pastors and churches would only adopt new, innovative, man-centered methods and ideologies, and they point to the large numbers, impressive buildings, and huge budgets of those who have adopted them as proof for the ‘success’ of their methods and message. In so doing they have introduced the unbelief of the world into the church while at the same time continuously promising the opposite effect. As a result, it is an age when the accurate in-depth exposition of God’s Word, true gospel preaching, and biblical worship are the rare exception rather than the rule. In a time of personal or national calamity people may turn from their idols to God, they may call on the name of Jesus, and like Old Testament Israel, “in a time of trouble they will say, ‘Arise and save us.’” (Jer 2:27), but when the danger is past they go right back to their idols of self and the world; nothing in their life changes, rather they grow worse. How few they are who turn to God from their idols to serve (douleuo – “to serve as a slave”) the true and living God (1 Thes 1:9).
Before there can be a recovery of the true gospel and of the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ there must first be a recovery of the true nature of the Christian ministry. There must be a new breed of men (and I do mean men, not feminized males) for whom the reality of God’s Word, His grace, His holiness, and His love in sending His Son into the world is the all-consuming passion and motivating influence of their life. Men who will “be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong (1 Cor 16:13) in a time of growing hostility and opposition from the culture and when the bulk of professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine. Men who are conscious of the great and high responsibility it is to be entrusted with the gospel of God and who will preach not as pleasing men but God, and whose message will arouse and disturb people and churches long unaccustomed to hearing anything even remotely disturbing. Men of the same faith and metal as the Reformers for whom a leading principle for the recovery of the church was that nothing in her government and worship should be adopted that lacked explicit biblical authority. Men who warned pastors of the dangers of attempting anything which God’s Word does not sanction, and men like many Puritan pastors who suffered greatly for heeding these warnings. It is Scripture, not statistics, or conventional wisdom, or common practice, or expediency, or tradition, no matter how sacrosanct, that must rule. The plea issued by the veteran missionary Mary Slessor in 1910 is needed even more today,
“Where are the men? Are there no heroes in the making among us? No hearts beating high with the enthusiasm of the Gospel? Men smile nowadays at the old-fashioned idea of sin and hell and broken law and a perishing world, but these made men, men of purpose, of power and achievement, and self-denying devotion to the highest ideals earth has known.”[1]
Everywhere in the world the heart of natural man is influenced by no other principle than self-love. When the pagan and nominal Christian begins to understand the demands of the true gospel and the effect which believing and obeying the truth will have on their lives, making a wreak of all their beloved sins, carnal pleasures, and false beliefs, they react against the truth with all the hostility and opposition of the heart of natural man. But to soften and tone-down the message simply to ‘engage’ the culture and gain a more favorable response is not only a mistake, it is cowardly and indicative of a heart influenced by no other principle than self-love. The power of God in the pure unadulterated gospel is the only hope for overcoming the hostility of the natural heart to divine truth, and only faith in the Word of God as the Word of God will provide this confident and steadfast hope when it is severely tested in a dangerous season and in an age that has largely forgotten what true Christianity really is. Nothing can ever begin to approach the importance of the Bible and a correct understanding and belief of its truths and the principles it teaches.
It is an undeniable fact that most of professing Christendom has long been busily engaged in adapting and constructing a Bible for itself; forming a religion in harmony with the development of modern thought; inventing a worship on the principles of current taste and culture; shaping a god to suit the values, morals, and temperament of the age; crafting a nominal faith that contains no principle that would lead to a holy life. This process is now so well advanced and established that disguise is no longer necessary. Nominal Christians who think much of their life in this world and so little of their own souls are unlikely to be concerned for the souls of others, much less for those of people they have never known. This unconcern is exposed by the indifference they have for biblical truth and the false security in which they live, both of which are a direct result of unbelief that is masked by a false charity, counterfeit love, and form of godliness that is indistinguishable from mere humanitarianism and universalism. People who have only been taught truth superficially and partially, and who have as it were, made up their minds to it, will only tolerate sound doctrine so long as it agrees with what they already know and believe. This is the standard by which they judge any unfamiliar doctrine, and if anyone should attempt to correct their errors, however egregious, or to rectify their ignorance, however conspicuous, they will take offence and not endure sound doctrine, and accuse them of some deviation from sound doctrine as the reason for rejecting them and their teaching. Yet without their errors being corrected or their deficiencies remedied, or their characters and lifestyles improved, their faith is wholly in vain (1 Cor 15:2).
Standing firm in dangerous times requires true faith, and if there is one thing we can say with absolute certainty it is that true faith cannot long survive where God’s Word is corrupted, neglected, rejected, denied, and disbelieved. The book of Judges records the steady incremental degeneracy and apostasy of the nation of Israel, where they went from living among the Canaanites to living like the Canaanites. They went from serving and worshiping God to serving the Baals (Jg 2:11), to eventually serving “the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him” (Jg 10:6), until after 400 years of steady decline they finally reached the point where “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jg 21:25). Spiritual and moral relativism was the norm. Right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, moral and immoral, appropriate and inappropriate were no longer determined by the Word of God, but by personal opinion, the prevailing culture, and individual conscience. The same pattern has repeated itself throughout human history wherever God’s Word is unknown, or known and rejected.
It is no wonder then, if after so long a history of religious liberty, peace, ease, and availability of divine truth, that God should at last send the fiery trial for the testing of faith, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the true from the false. There is no doubt that much hardship, trials, and suffering could be avoided by accommodating one’s self, even in the least degree, to the prevailing modern spirit, conventional wisdom, and the idols of the culture, but this is not an option for the faithful Christian. We are prone to forget, and therefore need to be reminded, that trials are blessings (Jm 1:2), and are as necessary to the sustenance of spiritual life as food and drink are to the natural. It is impossible for the long term enjoyment of ease and prosperity to not eventually corrupt and blind us.
‘Innovative’, ‘progressive’, ‘moderate’, ‘relevant’, and ‘liberal’ are simply different ways of describing men-pleasing teachers, pastors, methods, and theology, under the chilling influence of which the mass of professing Christians have acquired not only a distaste but a positive contempt for all that is properly and particularly biblical, gospel, and Christian. Today, Christianity has been reduced to little more than a mix of humanitarianism, social activism, mysticism, self-reformation, self-importance, and self-interest, and ‘faith’ to nothing more than personal beliefs and traditions, whether that ‘faith’ is Islam, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Mormonism, Agnosticism, Atheism, or some form of counterfeit Christianity without any faith in the supernatural and transforming facts of the gospel and with lives lived the same as ordinary worldly people. There is little difference from their fellow citizens, unless it is in occasional and superficial religious speech. Their interests and ambitions are the same as what might be found among any group. The common view of and criteria for the Christian ministry is that or even less than that of any other profession and far removed from the view taught by the New Testament. Being so much like the world, the ministry of such pastors and churches does not expose them to scorn, sacrifice, and hardship. Biblical truths are only matters of opinion, not truths to be believed and convictions they are willing to sacrifice and suffer to proclaim and uphold.
For the gospel to once again be taken seriously, and to once again have any credibility in the eyes of the world, its truths and commands must be given more than mere lip-service, but be truly believed, obeyed, and lived. It is by means of severe and fiery trials that God tests the genuineness of faith (1 Pt 1:6, 7); trials that are the direct result of believing, proclaiming, and living God’s Word and from a willingness to sacrifice and suffer rather than succumb to compromise, expediency, conventionality, popular opinion, and self-interest. A faith that does not stand firm in an evil day, and does not produce a life of increasing holiness, obedience, and separation from the world is not the faith that is the fruit of regeneration, but a man-made and man-centered counterfeit. It helps to remember that we are not the first generation of Christians to be called to stand firm in an evil day.
Lesson from the Past
By the early 18th century, Christianity in England had become little more than a religious ethic – sedate, comfortable, timid, and complacent. In 1662 over 2,000 Puritan pastors were ejected from their pulpits under The Act of Uniformity and replaced by men who lacked not only biblical knowledge and Christian principles, but true faith. In turn, the standards for ministry suffered a long and steady decline. The church became seen as little more than a quaint social institution whose chief end was to better mankind and help support a civil society. Eventually it lost all spiritual power, authority, sincerity, and zeal. In effect, the salt had lost its saltiness. As a result English society was plunged into depths of depravity and inhumanity never before experienced. Concerning this time in Britain’s history the great 19th century English pastor and author J.C. Ryle wrote,
“The state of this country in a religious and moral point of view in the middle of last century was so painfully unsatisfactory that it is difficult to convey any adequate idea of it. English people of the present day who have never been led to inquire into the subject, can have no conception of the darkness that prevailed….a gross, thick, religious and moral darkness – a darkness that might be felt.”[2]
This same insensitivity, blindness, and outright denial of the depth of the current spiritual and moral darkness has become the prevailing attitude of our age. We again live in a time and place where the darkness might be felt. We have yet to learn that the carnal, worldly, licentious, and self-indulgent life, far from being the life of unalloyed pleasure and freedom as represented by its exponents, no matter what century they might live in, only leads to lawlessness, violence, and misery.
In 1732 London’s leading religious publication, The Weekly Miscellany, printed an essay lamenting the prevailing conditions – an essay later summarized as follows:
“It broadly asserts that the people were engulfed in voluptuousness and business, and that a zeal for godliness looked as odd upon a man as would the antiquated dress of his great grandfather. It states that freethinkers were formed into clubs, to propagate their tenets, and to make the nation a race of profligates; and that atheism was scattered broadcast throughout the kingdom. It affirms that it was publicly avowed that vice was profitable to the state…and that polygamy, concubinage, and even sodomy were not sinful.”[3]
Some sought to better conditions by forming ‘societies’, what we would call parachurch ministries, and promoting legislation to combat immorality. However, all these endeavors failed, and they failed miserably. There was no noticeable improvement in the moral or religious condition of the nation. In fact, conditions grew worse, not better. Acts of Congress, Supreme Court rulings, and Executive Orders do not change people’s hearts nor do they alter God’s Word and spiritual realities. Both the church and nation had sown to the flesh, and from the flesh they were reaping corruption (Gal 6:7, 8), just like the mass of professing Christendom today. By 1738 conditions had become so deplorable and dangerous that Archbishop Seeker wrote,
“In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard to religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age. This evil has already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. Christianity is ridiculed and railed at with very little reserve; and the teachers of it without any at all.”[4]
The abject failure of all these attempts to better the nation’s moral and religious conditions simply proved that the nation’s troubles originated in the individual human heart, and that this “torrent of impiety” would continue until some power was found that could arrest it at its source. It is a mistake to think that the moral improvement of society in general is required to prepare the way for spiritual reform. Moral and spiritual decay can only be met with the plain, clear, and unadulterated proclamation of God’s inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient Word. Only one source is capable of answering the effects of sin in a society. Nothing but the Bible and faith in its message can save people from the misery of sin and its effects.
The situation was not much better in the American Colonies. Samuel Blair who resided in the Middle Colonies wrote of the situation in the spring of 1740, “Religion lay as it were a-dying and ready to expire its last breath of life in this part of the visible church.” In his superb biography of Jonathan Edwards, Iain Murray described the state of professing Christendom in Colonial America, a state identical to that of today where the standard for being considered a Christian has been diminished to what amounts to no standard at all:
“There was small difference between the church and the world. Almost any degree of religious interest, or of adherence to the forms of religion, was considered enough to justify a person’s Christian profession, and all who grew up in the church were commonly treated as belonging to Christ, irrespective of evidence to the contrary…It had become assumed that men could be savingly related to Christ without any prior conviction about the sin which made their salvation necessary. Men were treated as saved who never knew they were lost.”[5]
Neither in England or America were conditions favorable for a sudden transformation, but nevertheless, sudden transformation there was. In the very months that Archbishop Seeker penned his depressing words, England was startled by the voice of a twenty-two year old preacher by the name of George Whitefield who preached the Law, repentance, the doctrines of grace, and the necessity of a new birth for conversion. His was not the only voice, but it was by far the loudest. He was joined by other fearless men – men such as Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland in Wales who cared more for the glory of God than the praise of man, and who were willing to suffer the loss of all things for the cause of Christ. These men were not only viciously opposed by mobs of unregenerate people (one preacher, William Seward, died a few days after being struck on the head by a large stone thrown at him while he was preaching), but also by the established national church and other pastors who would incite the mobs against them (Jn 16:2, 3). Like the Apostle Paul, many of these men bore the brand marks of Christ on their bodies, not the imprint of the world. This was the beginning of what became known as The Great Awakening, and it began with the unadulterated preaching and teaching of God’s word, of the doctrines of grace, and of the necessity of a new birth. In America the coldness and apathy which characterized the church was suddenly jolted awake by the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent, and other likeminded men. The Great Awakening in America “broke upon the slumbering churches like a thunderbolt rushing out of the clear sky” wrote one New England pastor.
The preaching of the Great Awakening was often alarming, not because of its theatrics, eccentricity, or originality, but because of its content. There was no mood music, no altar calls, no emotional and psychological manipulation, no flattering of human pride, no elaborate staging, no showmanship; they did not even keep track of the number of “decisions”. Much of the preaching took place in fields and barns, in all kinds of weather, and in the face of hostile and often violent opposition. What is remarkable about these men and other faithful saints of the past, in contrast to the prevailing attitude toward suffering today, is the way they viewed their afflictions, not as a cause for doubt, discouragement, and compromise, not as an indication they needed to alter and update the message and their methods, but as confirmation that they were in the way of Christ (Jn 15:18, 19). They knew firsthand the paradox which the Bible declares, that there is an indissoluble connection between suffering and the courageous and joyful advancement of the gospel (Ac 5:41; Rm 5:3; 1Thes 1:6; 2:2; Hb 10:32-34; Jm 1:2; 1Pt 1:6).
True Christians would rather suffer than sin, and by allowing them to suffer God distinguishes His children from the children of the devil, and differentiates those with true faith from those whose faith is nothing but mere tradition and profession. God has seasons in which He winnows the wheat from the chaff and purifies His church. These men of The Great Awakening understood and believed that only a consciousness of the presence of God could invoke the fear and conviction that led to life and make the truth shockingly real to both preachers and hearers. They understood that if others were to be convicted and convinced of the truth then the gospel must be preached, “not…in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction;” (1 Th 1:5). In the words of Robert Bolton, a person “must be cast down, confounded, condemned, a cast away, and lost in himself, before he will look about for a Savior.”
How are people to be brought to this state? For this these men had a clear answer. First, people will not come to this conviction of themselves because they are by nature “secure.” “They do not realize that God sees them when they commit sin and will call them to an account for it. They are stupidly senseless to the importance of eternal things.” This truth has been repeatedly illustrated by the seemingly endless list of pastors and spiritual leaders who have had their sinful lives and ungodly practices exposed. They felt secure in their sin and completely insensible to the reality that God sees all that they do and will hold them accountable. Therefore, secondly, it is necessary for the Holy Spirit to apply truth to a person’s conscience in order to “awaken” them. People must be dealt with so that “their conscience stares them in the face and they begin to see their need of a priest and a sacrifice.”
So how do we stem the tide of apostasy, immorality, and lawlessness in which our nation is awash? In a word, we cannot. The problem is the depraved human heart, and only God has the power to arrest “this torrent of impiety” at its source. God works through means, and the only means God has ordained to reach the hearts of men is His Word (Rm 1:16; 1Pt 1:23). People must first be convicted and humbled before they are to be converted, and they will not be convicted by people who have no conviction that every word of the Bible is the Word of God, or who lack the faith that God’s Word will do what God has declared only it can do. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rm 10:17). As Charles Spurgeon once told his students, as only Spurgeon could,
“We have to deal with men who will be either lost or saved, and they certainly will not be saved by erroneous doctrine. We have to deal with God, whose servants we are, and He will not be honoured by our delivering falsehoods; neither will He give us a reward, and say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast mangled the gospel as judiciously as any man that ever lived before thee.’ We stand in a very solemn position, and ours should be the spirit of old Micaiah, who said, ‘As the Lord my God liveth, before whom I stand, whatsoever the Lord saith unto me that will I speak.’ Neither less nor more than God’s Word are we called to state, but that Word we are bound to declare in a spirit which convinces the sons of men that, whatever they may think of it, we believe God, and are not to be shaken in our confidence in Him.”[6]
Today there is very little interest or desire among professing Christians for this kind of unwavering conviction. We live in an age of compromise and expediency. It is an age where preaching has become passé and it is considered a mark of pride or folly for a man to stand before people as though he had something authoritative to say. Instead pastors stroll back and forth across a stage, spouting extemporaneous thoughts sprinkled with a few Bible verses highjacked from their historical and grammatical context, and mangling the gospel until it bears no relation to the gospel of Jesus Christ. PowerPoint displays and big-screen televisions have replaced the Bible in the vast majority of churches. Scripture is conformed to the modern mind and morals rather than calling people to have their minds and life conformed to the Bible (Rm 12:2). The result is a Christless and faithless Christianity. It is a time when most preaching, rather than aiming to produce conviction, is geared toward appeasing and assuaging the conscience, boosting self-esteem, flattering human nature, extenuating and ignoring sin, and redefining faith. Truth is proclaimed in such a vague, ambiguous, innocuous, and apologetic manner as to impact no one. True preaching that proclaims the great doctrines of Scripture, the majesty and holiness of God and the depravity and helplessness of man has almost disappeared. All of Scripture is rarely presented as infallible fact which must be believed, the opposite of which is deadly error and the doctrine of demons. Instead of explaining and expounding the true meaning of Scripture, the true meaning, especially if it is deemed ‘too controversial’, is usually ignored, glossed-over, or explained away. What is often overlooked in this process, however, is the fact that the attempt to explain away the true meaning of Scripture involves the admission that the Bible does indeed teach the truth that they are attempting to explain away. As the great Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield once observed, “The human mind is very subtle, but with all its subtlety it will hardly be able to find a way to refuse to follow Scripture in one of the doctrines it teaches without undermining its authority as a teacher of doctrine.”[7] Such a procedure always originates from an unwillingness to trust unconditionally the teaching of the Bible, because that teaching is either distrusted or already disbelieved and rejected. In other words, there is no faith in the Word of God as the infallible, inerrant, sufficient, authoritative, and final Word of God, and in the truths it reveals and relates.
The Christian life is a life of faith, “the righteous will live by His faith” (Hab 2:4); “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,” (Gal 2:20); “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). One of the five Solas of the Reformation is Faith Alone. But what is faith? Where do we get this faith? What distinguishes Christian faith from the faith practiced by false religions? Does everyone who professes to be a Christian have faith? Not according to Paul, “for not all have faith” (2 Thes 3:2). What distinguishes a true faith from a false faith? Is sincerity a mark of true faith? What are the means by which true faith grows and is strengthened? These are questions of the utmost importance, the answers to which will determine how we live our life in this world and where we will spend eternity. The author of Hebrews insists that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hb 11:6), and provides what amounts to an almost formal definition of faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hb 11:1). This description of faith, therefore, obviously contains in it an element of knowledge which results in behavior. As B.B. Warfield stated,
“The examples cited in Heb. xi are themselves enough to show that the faith there commended is not a mere belief in God’s existence and justice and goodness, or crediting of His word and promises, but a practical counting of Him as faithful (xi.11) with a trust so profound that no trial can shake it (xi.35), and so absolute that it survives the loss of even its own pledge (xi.17).”[8]
But what is the nature of this faith? Will just any faith please God? Obviously not! Only a true faith will persevere to the end and not shrink back in a dangerous season. Only a faith that is the fruit of regeneration will be upheld, supported, and strengthened by a supernatural power (1 Pt 1:5). It is faith that must bear the brunt and burden and provide the principle support in a dangerous season. Yet for decades many pastors, evangelists, and leaders have been discouraging people from ever questioning or doubting the genuineness of their faith once they have ‘accepted’ Jesus as their Savior and ‘invited’ Him into their heart. There is abundant evidence to convince us that professing Christians have, for the most part, neglected the discipline and duty of self-examination to see whether or not they are in the faith (2 Cor 13:5), and they have neglected it because it has been discouraged rather than urged and taught, resulting in a form of godliness without its power. Their faith is in their faith; they believe that they believe. ‘Faith’ is one of those words from which, through misuse, distortion, and corruption, the true meaning has been thoroughly washed away. The loose and popular use of the words ‘faith’, ‘believe’, and ‘belief’ cannot determine the real meaning of faith, nor can their loose and popular use be allowed to define the nature of faith. Only a true and strong faith will be ready for the testing and inevitable suffering that comes from living in perilous times.
Faith[9]
There are specific features that separate Christian faith, both in its nature and grounds, from all other forms of faith, or that comprise the more general or common exercises of faith. In the interest of precision in this day of confusion I will divide the subject of ‘faith’ into three main headings; Faith as a State of Mind, General Faith, and Special Faith.
Faith as a State of Mind
Faith as a state of mind is not limited to the Christian faith, or even to religious faith. Whenever the word ‘faith’ is used to designate a conviction of the understanding, as in John 8:30-31, its true biblical conception must be elevated to a higher level (Jn 8:31; Jm 2:14). Not all faith is biblical faith. Therefore, it is important to distinguish ‘faith’ as a state of mind from other states of mind, and to have a correct understanding and description of the state of mind we designate by the words ‘faith’ and ‘belief’. When we use the word ‘faith’, to what are we referring? Strictly speaking, by ‘faith’ we mean that for reasons which seem valid to us we are convinced of the reliability or truth of a certain statement, event, object, or person. If faith has respect to a statement, we mean that we believe that the statement is correct. How many now accept as true the claims of extra-biblical revelation received directly from God? If faith has respect to an event, we mean that we believe that the event actually happened. How many gullibly believed the claims promoted by popular books written by dishonest people who said they had died, gone to heaven, and then come back to tell us all about it? If faith has respect to an object, we mean that we consider the object is trustworthy for the purpose we intend. No one would place their faith in a slender thread if their intention was to repel down a cliff. Their faith requires a more substantial and reliable object. If faith has respect to a person, we mean that we are convinced they are a trustworthy and reliable person. How many place their trust in untrustworthy religious quacks and charlatans whose teachings are obviously false and unbiblical? The question is why do they trust and believe such things? It is because their mind judged the evidence to be creditable and sufficient. After all, how could so many other people be wrong in their judgment? The popularity and success of such false teachers is, in the minds of many, powerful and convincing evidence that they and their message can be trusted. Nothing succeeds like success.
It is obvious, especially in this day of false and exaggerated claims, dishonest comparisons, misrepresentations, scams, and counterfeits, that not all statements, events, objects, or persons evoke this state of mind on our part. And the reason is because our mind is not persuaded of the truth or trustworthiness of the report in the case of a statement or event, or convinced of its reliability in the case of an object or person. If we pursue the matter further and ask, “Why not”, it is because in our own judgment sufficient evidence has not been presented to our mind. So it is appropriate to say that faith or belief is a state of mind influenced by reasons that in our own judgment we determine to be sufficient. This is the faith of an evolutionist that his theory is true and accurate. This is the faith which people place in a politician. This is the faith people place in false and erroneous doctrines, false teachers, and false systems of religion. Whatever else faith may be, it is nothing less than this.
Two cautions need to be issued at this point. First, this conclusion on the part of the mind is not always the product of a deliberate, informed, conscious, and unprejudiced process of reasoning and evaluation. This is especially true of the unregenerate mind that is “darkened in their understanding” (Eph 4:18), and “hostile in mind” (Col 1:21) to the things of God, and blinded to spiritual truths by the god of this world (2 Cor 4:3, 4). Sometimes our judgments are hasty and based on generalizations, wrong or insufficient information, assumptions, or faulty presuppositions. Sometimes they are ‘intuitive’, spontaneous, and instantaneous leaving us completely unaware of any process by which we came to our conclusions. Then there are instances where the process of reasoning is so long and drawn out, and information has been presented to our minds in such various ways that it is impossible to trace any process by which we came to our conclusions and to what we call ‘faith’. This is especially true when it comes to placing our faith, or for that matter, not placing our faith in certain people. It was because Jesus had a perfect knowledge of the true nature of the human heart that He “was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men” (Jn 2:24).
Second, it should be obvious that our mind makes many mistakes. It often judges inadequate evidence as adequate, and sufficient as insufficient. The mind often believes what is not true and refuses to believe what is true, even when it is shown that what it believes is undeniably false and what it refuses to believe is irrefutably true. Once the mind has formed its judgment, and once someone has placed their faith in someone or something, it is virtually impossible to convince them that they have a misplaced and mistaken belief, even when all the evidence points to the object of their faith as being untrustworthy. When faith is present it has always been preceded by a judgment of the mind, whether that judgment is right or wrong, hasty or deliberate, justified or unjustified, that the evidence is sufficient.
Faith is the inevitable result when the mind concludes that the evidence, whether that evidence is real, imaginary, or fabricated, is sufficient. It is not something we can resist. We cannot remain neutral; rather faith is required, it is compelled, it is demanded. Whenever the reasons and evidence are determined to be sufficient, belief is induced, whether we will it or not. Nothing can prevent us from believing what our minds have judged to be true, and nothing can make us believe the opposite of our judgment. To put it simply, faith is trust. And faith demands an object that evokes trust once the mind has judged it to be trustworthy. Faith as a state of mind is trust that is compelled and induced by evidence.
This understanding of ‘faith’ stands in sharp contrast to the many loose, shallow, and popular views of ‘faith’ current today, none of which are more pervasive than the view that ‘faith’ is determined by how we feel about something or someone, by our emotions. The existence of true faith and real Christianity, however, requires a more substantial foundation than feelings and emotions. For the Christian the nature of that foundation is “sound doctrine”, sound words”, “the Word” (1 Tm 1:10; 2 Tm 1:13; 4:2, 3; Tit 1:9; 2:11). Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that our emotions exercise a profound influence over our judgment, and that our state of mind at any particular time may be attributed primarily to our feelings. Strong emotion may cause us to imagine or fabricate evidence to justify our feelings, and then act on this evidence as if it were true. Feeling may induce us to read evidence into something where no evidence exists. It may persuade us to consider as evidence what is not evidence, and adequate what is inadequate. Emotion, more often than not, warps our perceptions rather than clarifies them. It must be recognized, however, that there are exercises of faith in which emotion plays no significant role, and sometimes we may hold convictions that are absolutely revolting to our feelings. We are forced to believe what is diametrically opposed to our feelings and desires. Also, when feelings have prejudiced and distorted our judgment, or enlightened it as the case may be, it is not emotion that has evoked faith, but reason and judgment based on the evidence. Emotion influences the judgment, but it is the mind and not emotion that makes the judgment.
Even more widespread, perhaps, than this view of ‘faith’ is the view that faith is a product of the will, that people voluntarily choose to either believe or disbelieve, and that faith is the result of a voluntary decision to believe the validity of those religious statements and emotions that work. It is a conviction determined not by the reality of the evidence presented to our minds, but by the desire and will that it should be true, and because it satisfies our felt needs and wants. In other words, we believe it is true because we desire and will it to be true. People believe they or their loved ones are Christians because they want to believe they are Christians. People believe they will go to heaven when they die because they want to believe it, and they deny the reality of hell because they do not want to believe it. Lacking any creditable evidence, we may take something on faith because we believe it would be in our own self-interest if it were true. In response to this view several admissions need to be made. First, there is no doubt a close connection between our will and our understanding. Our willingness to accept or reject evidences has a profound influence upon our judgment. Many people are completely unwilling to accept any evidence, no matter how overwhelming, that might contradict what they have willingly come to believe, and more than willing to accept the faintest hint of evidence when it seems to support what they believe. This is what characterized the belief of the Jewish leaders with respect to Jesus; they were unwilling to come to Him that they might have life (Jn 5:40). No amount of evidence to the contrary would change their belief concerning Jesus. The same is true of those who believe (or publicly profess to believe) that Islam is a religion of peace, or that all religions worship the same God. Sometimes strong will in a certain direction may lead us to accept as evidence what is not evidence, and to ignore or reject as evidence what is clear evidence. But a person’s belief is not compelled by their will but by their judgment concerning the sufficiency of the evidence. Secondly, we often act on the basis of what we wish were true, or would have to be true, and then think that such action is an act of faith. This, however, is a misuse of the word ‘faith’; rather it is the result of wishful thinking, blind optimism, and a case of presumption, assumption, hypothesis, and speculation. Thirdly, the perceived value of something may provide a plausible and powerful argument in favor of its reality and validity. Considerations of benefit to our own self-interests may satisfy all the requirements of evidence essential to the exercise of faith and thus make up an important part of evidence. However, despite these concessions it cannot be affirmed that we ever believe simply because of the benefits and advantages that may come from believing. We believe what we are convinced in our judgment is true, not what we wish was true. We believe what we are convinced in our mind is real, not what we will or wish were real. So then, faith as a state of mind is conviction evoked by the mind’s judgment that the evidence presented to it is sufficient.
General Faith
General faith or simple faith is faith in the truth of Christianity. To be more specific, it is faith in the truth revealed in all of Scripture; it is faith that the entire Bible, every jot and tittle, is the Word of God; it is being fully persuaded of the inerrant truth and the sufficient and final authority of the Bible as the very Word of God, not the word of men (1 Thes 2:13), or a mixture of divine and human wisdom.
If this conviction is to be more than mere lip-service, and more than a blind and ignorant persuasion, and if it is to qualify as faith, it must be the result of a judgment of the mind based on evidence that is sufficient to justify such a conviction. But what is this evidence, and from where does it come? The futility and fallacy of trying to base this conviction on evidence derived from any source other than the Bible has been recognized since the Reformation, which is why the Reformers laid down the principle that the Bible is self-authenticating. This means that the Bible itself and the teachings it contains are the only evidence which evokes faith in Scripture as the Word of God. In other words, the Bible itself is the source of the evidence for its divine origin, nature, authority, inerrancy, sufficiency, and finality. This is not, as many accuse, circular reasoning. It is not circular reasoning to use biblical standards to prove biblical conclusions. Every person has an ultimate standard by which they determine whether something is right or wrong, true or false, moral or immoral, appropriate or inappropriate. The Christian’s ultimate standard is the Word of God revealed in the Bible and the principles it teaches, while the unbeliever’s standard must reside elsewhere; a standard which they attempt to impose on the Bible. Typically this standard resides with themselves; they do what is right in their own eyes. As John Frame once wrote, “The point is that when one is arguing for an ultimate criterion, whether Scripture, the Koran, human reason, sensation, or whatever, one must use criteria compatible with that conclusion. If that is circularity, then everybody is guilty of circularity.”[10]
For the true Christian the Bible is the authority that must validate all other authorities precisely because we believe it to be the very Word of God. Since the Christian believes God more than they believe anything else, even their own reasoning, sense, and sight, then God (and therefore His Word) is for the Christian the ultimate standard and criteria for truth. Without faith in Scripture and the teachings it contains as the Word of God, true Christian faith is impossible. The proof that faith in Scripture as the Word of God and in the doctrines, principles, commands, prohibitions, truths, and message it teaches is ultimate for true Christianity can be seen by what happens when that faith is missing. When faith in the Bible and its teachings is undermined, then true Christianity virtually disappears and is replaced by forms without its power.
If the Bible is the Word of God it must exhibit the evidences of being divine. Just as the heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands (Ps 19:1), and His invisible attributes have been clearly seen in His creation and bear witness of Him (Rm 1:20), in the same way the Bible, being “God-breathed” (theopnueustos – 2 Tim 3:16), must bear the marks of its divine authorship. Just like its divine author the word of God is living and abiding (1 Pt 2:23). This is to say, that the evidence upon which faith in the Bible’s divine authorship rests must itself have the attributes of being divine. In saying this, we might allow for the possibility that God could provide evidence of the Bible’s divine authorship that is not contained in the Bible. God could, by means of miracles or extra-biblical revelation authenticate that the Bible is indeed His Word. It is obvious, however, that God does not provide any such additional evidence, and the reason is equally obvious. It is unnecessary because the Bible itself, being all sufficient, contains sufficient evidence within itself to demand and require faith in its divine authorship, nature, and authority, a fact which Jesus made abundantly clear when He said, “If they do not believe Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead” (Lk 16:31). If the Bible’s own evidence to its divine authorship does not induce faith in the Bible as the Word of God, then no amount of additional evidence will persuade. In other words, the Bible itself must be of such a unique character, be so authoritative and sufficient, and invested with such power that nothing else could provide more convincing evidence to it being the very Word of God than what the Bible itself contains. There is no greater evidence than the Bible. It becomes apparent that if there is such a thing as the Word of God, it must be self-authenticating and self-evidencing.
We are now confronted with a problem. If the Bible is the Word of God and contains in itself the evidence of divinity requiring faith, why is faith not the result in everyone who hears and reads the Bible? It must be remembered that evidence does not induce or create faith; faith is not the product of evidence. Evidence must first be evaluated by the judgment before faith is produced. The evidence must engender a favorable mental response in the person confronted with the evidence. For instance, if someone were to receive a letter from the Internal Revenue Service demanding certain actions, most people would not casually ignore the letter; rather they would respond in an appropriate manner because they are compelled by evidence that the letter is indeed from the IRS. In the case of the Bible, however, we are dealing with something so completely unique and unparalleled that we should expect the response to always correspond to the nature of the evidence. The fact that this is not the case in reality merely accentuates the depth of the natural blindness and hostility of fallen mankind to the Word of God. “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot (dunatai – does not have the ability) understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). Just as the natural man suppresses the truth about God which He has made evident within them (Rm 1:18, 19), he also suppresses in unrighteousness the evidence which God has given in His Word to its divine authorship.
It is at this point that the doctrine of the necessity for the internal testimony of the Spirit enters. This doctrine insists that if there is to be faith in the Word of God as the Word of God, there must be the intervention of a supernatural power, not for the purpose of supplying some additional evidence which is missing from the Word of God, but a supernatural power directed to supply our need. The sole purpose of this power is to remedy that which our fallen and depraved nature has rendered impossible, and that is the appropriate response to the Word of God. This remedy begins with the creation of a new nature that now responds to the word of God’s message “not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God,” (1 Th 2:13). In this case the internal testimony of the Spirit is in perfect harmony and agreement with the Scripture itself. The Bible is preeminently redemptive revelation concerning the person of Jesus Christ; it is redemption from sin, its guilt, its power, and its dominion. The internal testimony of the Spirit is yet another provision of God’s redemptive and supernatural grace given for the purpose of correcting that which sin has corrupted and darkened.
The Bible is chockfull of teaching regarding the supernatural inward testimony of the Spirit that is directed toward inducing a living faith in dead sinners. For starters simply read Matthew 11:25-27; 16:17; Luke 10:22; John 6:44-45, 65; 1 Corinthians 2:6-15; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Ephesians 1:17-18; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 John 2:20-27. The Bible affirms the necessity of the Spirit’s inward testimony. God the Father sovereignly willed in eternity past to reveal the truth to some and to leave others in spiritual darkness (Mt 11:25-27; Col 1:27). This sovereign will on the part of the Father is also found in the Son, “and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Lk 10:22). No one can truly know and believe in the one true God without first believing in the true Jesus Christ revealed in the Bible. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through the person of Jesus Christ (Jn 14:6; 1 Jn 2:22, 23). The natural wisdom and understanding of this world, no matter how advanced, refined, scholarly, or scientific cannot understand, unveil, or receive the hidden things of God or bring them within the scope of human knowledge and reception, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe”; “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,” (1 Cor 1:21, 30). It is the Spirit of God who reveals these things and gives conviction, discernment, right judgment, reception, and faith (1 Cor 2:6-15).
The nature of the Spirit’s activity is called the drawing and instruction of the Father (Jn 6:44, 45). He enlightens and illumines (photismos) the heart (2 Cor 4:3-6). It is the indwelling, governing, and energizing of the Spirit (1 Cor 2:15). It is the anointing of the Spirit (1 Jn 2:2-27). The precise nature of this testimony by the Holy Spirit, while it is no less than illumination, is in fact much more than simply illumination; it is a renewing of the mind (Rm 12:2). If we are to do justice to the teaching of the Bible and handle the Word of God accurately (2 Tm 2:15), then something else must be added to the concept of illumination. When we examine 1 Corinthians 2:4, 5 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5, 6, we notice that the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit is an activity that accompanies the gospel of God; it is supplemental to the Word of God itself. This activity of the Holy Spirit is described as “demonstration” and “power”. The word “demonstration” (apodeixis) has the meaning of proof, evidence, and verification. It indicates the means or testimony by which something is known to be a fact. In other words, it is something that is supplemental to the Word of God, not something that is inherent in the Word itself. This demonstration by the Spirit always results in a full assurance or full conviction that receives the Word “not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God” (1Th 2:13). It is an additional testimony by the Holy Spirit which is necessary for the faith that rests not on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God. This power (dunamis) is also supplemental to the Word of God. It is a power that constrains faith in the Word of God and therefore is distinct from the power inherent in the Word itself. It is the power exercised by the Spirit in conjunction with the true gospel of God. This activity of the Spirit provides conformation, testimony, and seal that enforces the internal evidence of Scripture to the truth of all of God’s Word, which induces in us an overwhelming conviction of its divine authorship and authority. The internal activity of the Spirit is both illuminating and testimonial, the latter being necessary if we are to handle the word of God accurately. Only a supernatural power can induce an irresistible conviction and faith in the divine authorship and authority of the Bible, and without this demonstration and power the Bible and its truths remain a sealed book.
The effect of the Spirit’s activity is the mind discerns, knows, receives, and believes the truth concerning all the mysteries of God and His kingdom (Mt 11:27; 1 Cor 2:12-15), and they receive them with joy, even amidst much tribulation (1 Th 1:6). They have an unshakable and immovable certainty regarding the inerrancy, authority, infallibility, sufficiency, and finality of God’s Word. They are able to discern truth from almost truth and error because the Spirit was given to lead us into all the truth, not error (Jn 16:13). They are not dependent on human instruction or human testimony because they have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God (Jn 16:13; 1 Jn 2:20-27). There is one principle, however, that is necessary to stress, especially in the season in which we live where claims of extra-biblical revelation are now the norm, and that is the internal testimony of the Spirit does not provide us with any new truth. The internal testimony illumines truth and testifies to the truth already contained in the Bible, it does not give more truth. The Spirit’s testimony is confined to constraining faith in the divine authorship and authority of Scripture alone. It provides no ground whatsoever for claims of new revelation by the Spirit. A sharp distinction must be maintained between the Spirit’s speaking in the Scripture and the Spirit’s testimony bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. The Holy Spirit speaks in the Bible because it is His Word, but He does not continue to give His Word or inspire any more to be written. His voice is to be found only in the Bible and nothing is to be added or subtracted from it. Once we compromise on the finality and sufficiency of Scripture then we have no guide or authority by which we can distinguish between the clean and the unclean and between the darkness and delusions of Satan and the light of God’s Word. The internal testimony of the Spirit does not make the Bible authoritative; rather it enables us to recognize its inherent divine authority, sufficiency, and infallibility. What makes the Bible authoritative is its divine authorship, and the testimony of the Spirit enables us to receive and believe it as the Spirit inspired Word of God. If we fail to maintain a distinction between the operation of the Spirit which makes the Bible authoritative and the activity of the Spirit by which He bears witness to the Bible’s authority and impresses the conviction of that authority on our hearts, then we confuse inspiration and demonstration, and we rob the Bible of its objective authority as the Word of God.
The focus of the Spirit’s activity is the person of Jesus Christ, “He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you” (Jn 16:14). It is revealed in the practical daily living out of the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Lord and King (Mt 16:17; Lk 6:46; Jn 14:15; 1 Cor 12:3; 2 Cor 4:3-6; 7:1; 1 Jn 2:20-27; 3:4-12). This brings us to the third aspect of faith, special faith.
Special Faith
General faith concerns the belief that the Bible and only the Bible is the infallible, authoritative, sufficient, and final Word of God. This faith is inseparable from a state of salvation and true Christianity. No one can be a Christian without this faith. But it is not faith in the Bible that saves, but faith in the person of Jesus Christ revealed in the Bible. It is this special faith to which we will now devote our attention.
Saving faith is faith that is the appropriate response to the commands, offers, claims, and demands of the gospel. The gospel is addressed exclusively to sinners, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” (1 Tm 1:15). Therefore, it has no relevance for those who do not see, feel, and know themselves to be sinners under the wrath of a holy and offended God, and no significance apart from sin, its guilt, and condemnation. The true gospel can hold no interest for any person unless there is some measure of conviction of sin, their hopeless condition, and their great need. When people today talk of making the gospel ‘relevant’ to the modern mind, they do not mean a renewed emphasis on the doctrines which expose and convict people of being hopeless, helpless, guilty, and condemned sinners in danger of suffering the condemnation of hell and calling them to repent of their sin. Faith does not originate in a vacuum; rather it arises in the context of the knowledge of sin and conviction of its guilt. Faith is directed to Jesus Christ as Savior, and Christ can hold no meaning as Savior unless there is an awareness of the need for salvation from sin and its wages. Rather, Jesus becomes a Savior from low self-esteem, from a lack of personal fulfillment, from sickness and poverty, from anything other than sin, its guilt, its power, its dominion, and its condemnation. Faith is meaningless when divorced from any prior conviction of sin and its just deserts. The more sharp and painful the conviction is, the more relevant is the gospel and the commitment of faith.
By faith a person comes to trust in Christ alone, His perfect righteousness alone, for salvation. But what guarantee does a sinner have that Christ is willing and able to save? This is a question of the highest importance to a convicted sinner as well as for the faith that the gospel demands. Faith is not a leap into the dark, or speculation, or assumption, or wishful thinking, or an act of desperation. It is trust. It is confidence in the promise and provision made by God to save sinners. But what are the grounds for this confidence? I will briefly mention four.
First, there is the universal offer of the gospel. All without distinction are invited to come to Christ for salvation. It is with some hesitancy that I use the word ‘invite’. It hardly comes close to the force of what is implied in the various expressions used by the Bible (Is 45:22; 55:1; Mt 11:28; Jn 6:37; Ac 17:30; Rv 22:17). There is more in these verses than mere invitation; there is the urgency of command. To refuse is not to decline an invitation, but to defy the command of God Almighty.
Secondly, this demand, because it is predicated on the unfathomable love, grace, and mercy of God revealed in the gospel, the perfect life and sacrifice of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ to meet all our needs, His continuing work on behalf of believers, and the blessed hope of eternal life that comes from trusting in Christ for salvation, all combine to make rejection, apostasy, perversion, and corruption of His gospel sins of unequaled severity. The glory of the offer not only heightens the severity of the rejection, but it demands the response of total trust and commitment to Him.
Thirdly, there is the nature of the promise. The offer and the demand are unconditional, but the promise is not. The bestowing of the promise is conditioned by faith and is only given to faith. It is the unfailing promise that true faith can never be disappointed and it will never result in disaster. The assurance of its fulfillment is based on the faithfulness of Him who promised.
Fourthly, there is the sufficiency of Christ’s perfect life and sacrificial death to meet our greatest need.in sin and condemnation (Mt 1:21). This sufficiency is united in the work He came into the world to accomplish and the ministry He continues to perform at the right hand of God. The sufficiency of the atonement provides the basis for the free offer of the gospel. For many, a universal offer of salvation seems to require a universal atonement, but in reality just the opposite is true. Only a definite atonement, one that definitely and effectively redeems the sinner from sin, its guilt, power, defilement, and dominion, and thereby secures salvation, can be the basis for the offer of a complete and perfect salvation. The only thing that a universal atonement has to offer is a Savior who died to make the salvation of all people possible, or to make a provision for the salvation of all. But the gospel offers no such Savior, and it is not such a salvation that is offered in the gospel. Jesus is presented in the gospel as the only Savior, therefore as One who actually saves. What is offered to sinners is not the possibility of salvation, or the opportunity for salvation, but a real, full, and free salvation. So the doctrine of limited atonement which is so despised and vilified today, far from being incompatible with a universal offer of salvation, is in reality the only atonement that provides the basis for the kind of offer we actually find, the offer of a full, free, complete, and perfect salvation that is not dependent on the freewill of sinners to activate it, and a Savior who is Himself the incarnation of the salvation professed. The free offer comes from the heart of God’s sovereign will unto salvation, and it is the doctrine of election and limited atonement that provides the basis for the kind of offer proclaimed in the gospel.
Faith always has an object, and in the case of saving faith that object is Jesus Christ. But no one can truly trust without a knowledge of the object of their trust. We do not trust any person until we know something about them, and the more extensive is the trust we are asked to place in them, the more we want to know about them. So it is with Jesus. No one can have a true faith in a Jesus they do not know, or in a Jesus that they know wrongly. We live in a day when there are as many Jesus’ as the mind of man has the ability to invent. The knowledge concerning Jesus must be proportionate to the faith which we are commanded to place in Him and to the importance of the issues we are required to entrust to Him – issues of life and death, of this life and the next. Therefore we must know and be convinced that Christ is worthy of such confidence. Here is where the importance of doctrine concerning Jesus enters. It is the doctrine revealed only in the Bible that defines the person of Jesus Christ, the Person to whom we are to entrust ourselves unconditionally and unreservedly in this life and the next. Doctrine consists of truth revealed only in the Bible, and without a knowledge of this truth Jesus cannot be the object of our faith or have any meaning or relevance for us. Without this knowledge the Jesus in whom we will trust will be a Jesus of our own imagination, not the one revealed only in the Bible.
Saving faith is not merely assent to propositions of truth concerning Christ that define the person He is, or simply assenting to propositions concerning His sufficiency to meet all of our deepest needs. Saving faith must rise to the level of unconditional trust that entrusts everything to Christ. It means the renunciation of any confidence we have in ourselves or in any human resource. Herein lies the unique and distinguishing nature of saving faith. Faith is not the belief that we have been saved. It is not the belief that Christ has saved us, or that He died on the cross for our sins. It is mandatory that we appreciate the point of distinction. Faith is in its essence trust in Christ in order that we may be saved. The premise of this commitment is that we are unsaved and by nature children of wrath, and we believe on Christ in order that we may be saved from the wrath to come. Faith does not rest in or feed on some emotional experience, much less on anything done by us. B.B. Warfield expressed it wonderfully when he wrote,
“The saving power of faith resides thus not in itself, but in the Almighty Savior on whom it rests. It is never on account of its formal nature as a psychic act that faith is conceived in Scripture to be saving, – as if this frame of mind or attitude of heart were itself a virtue with claims on God for reward, or at least especially pleasing to Him (either in its nature or as an act of obedience) and thus predisposing Him to favor, or as if it brought the soul into an attitude of receptivity or sympathy with God, or opened a channel of communication from Him. It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ: faith in any other savior, or in this or that philosophy or human conceit (Col.ii.16, 18, 1Tim.iv.1), or in any other gospel than that of Jesus Christ and Him crucified (Gal,i.8, 9), brings not salvation but a curse. It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith, or the attitude of faith or the nature of faith, but in the object of faith; and in this the whole biblical representation centers, so that we could not more radically misconceive it than by transferring to faith even the smallest fraction of that saving energy which is attributed in the Scripture solely to Christ Himself.”[11]
Only this faith will endure the fiery trial of a dangerous season, stand firm in the evil day, and not shrink back as so many have and continue to do today. Only this faith will make us more than conquerors in the day of battle, “in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith” (Eph 6:16). This faith is so rare, so precious that Jesus, who was seldom impressed by anything, marveled when He encountered it in the centurion (Mt 8:10). It is so rare that Jesus wondered if the Son of Man would find this faith on the earth at His coming (Lk 18:8). It is by this faith that a Christian lives when all other supports and comforts forsake and fail them, “and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,” (Gal 2:20). The necessity of this faith will become apparent once we consider the numerous ways it relieves and comforts the soul in a time of trouble, and unburdens the heart and mind of all the cares, fears, and pressures that would otherwise overwhelm us, especially in a dangerous season. By God’s grace this is what we will consider in our next study in living in dangerous times.
[1] W.P. Livingstone, Mary Slessor of Calabar (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 34th ed., 1931), 320.
[2] J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (First published 1885, reprint Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1978), 13, 14.
[3] Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The life and times of the great evangelist of the 18th century revival, vol. 1 (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1970), 28, 29.
[4] J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders, 15.
[5] Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1987), 125.
[6] C.H. Spurgeon, ‘The Need of Decision for the Truth’ in Lectures to My Students (Christian Focus, Great Britain, reprint 1998), 252.
[7] B.B. Warfield, ‘The Real Problem of Inspiration’ in Revelation and Inspiration (reprint Baker Books, Grand Rapids,. 2003), 207.
[8] B.B. Warfield, ‘The Biblical Doctrine of Faith’, in Biblical Doctrines (reprint Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 2003), 501.
[9] John Murray, ‘Faith’ in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 2 (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1977); B.B. Warfield, ‘The Biblical Doctrine of Faith’ in Biblical Doctrines
[10] John M. Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, NJ, P&R Publishing, 1994), 10.
[11] Warfield, ‘Biblical Doctrine of Faith’ in Biblical Doctrines, 504.