Question 86

Faith in Jesus Christ—“Faith, belief, Lat. with English suffix -th. The suffix was added after the adoption of the word, in order to make it analogous with truth, ruth, wealth, health, and other similar words. Earlier from fey. Lat. fides, faith, trust” (Skeat).

Faith in its first and most elementary sense is simply the reliance that is placed by one man on the truthfulness and integrity of another. Nor is this foundation and initial sense of the word unknown in the Holy Scriptures. And thus it is that Luther, who would be the last man to secularize or impoverish any Pauline or Scriptural word, says: “The apostle sometimes useth faith of the fidelity and humanity of one man towards another. Faith sometimes in the Scriptures means the credit one man giveth to another in things pertaining to this present life; for what manner of life should we live in this world, if one man should not credit another?” But it is with the highest, most sacred, and most fruitful sense of the word we have here to do. And a better definition of faith, in its scriptural, Pauline, and evangelical sense, is nowhere to be found than in the fourteenth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith. In the second section of that chapter we read: “By saving faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word of God; for the authority of God Himself speaking therein; and it acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth: yielding obedience to the commands; trembling at the threatenings; and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.” Now it is with one of the principal acts of saving faith, if not with its very principal act, that we have here to do.

“The import of the word faith is nothing recondite; otherwise it would be a term altogether unsuitable for being used in an exhibition of the duty of universal man, uncultured as well as cultured. Faith is such a persuasion or conviction of the mind in reference to things unseen, and, so far as direct intuition is concerned, unknown, as supplies the place of vision. Its moral power, in its relation to the gospel of Jesus Christ, is resolvable into the peculiarity of its object, and not into any peculiarity in the act. . . . It is apparently in virtue of this mighty moral power of faith in Jesus that it has been divinely invested with what is called its justifying function” (Morison).

“So that they who know what is meant by faith in a promise, know what is meant by faith in the gospel; they who know what is meant by faith in a remedy, know what is meant by faith in the blood of the Redeemer; they who know what is meant by faith in a physician, faith in an advocate, faith in a friend, know, too, what the Scriptures mean to express when they speak of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ” (O’Brien).

a saving grace—Grace as it is used and described in Answers 33, 34, 35, is a divine disposition toward us; grace in this and the following Answer is a divine gift in us, and especially a disposition or inclination wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost. Thus the fruits or graces of the Spirit are love, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance, and such like. Now faith is such a divine gift or disposition, that when it turns to and rests on Jesus Christ it saves the soul; that is to say, He saves the soul which inclines to Him, receives Him, cleaves to Him, and reposes on Him.

receive and rest upon him—We receive what is offered us; we rest on one who is able and willing to help us. Now the text says that Christ is offered to us in the gospel, and consequently to believe the gospel and to accept Christ are one and the same thing. Receiving needs no explanation; and when God offers Christ to the sinner who has faith wrought in his heart by the Holy Ghost, the sinner opens his heart and receives Christ for salvation. “I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian Church has ever suffered, has been the effort of man to earn, rather than to receive his salvation; and that the reason that preaching is commonly so ineffectual is, that it calls on men oftener to work for God, than to behold God working for them” (Ruskin). (See Calvin’s definition of faith criticised by Dr. Cunningham in his Reformers, p. 119.)

alone for salvation—See on Question 33. Every one has heard of that watchword of the Reformers, sola fide, by faith alone. And that doctrine was not more the doctrine of Luther and Knox in the sixteenth century, than it was the doctrine of Paul and John in the first century. This doctrine, namely, that forgiveness of sins and eternal life have been purchased for us by Jesus Christ, and that faith in Christ, and faith alone, “putteth on Christ to justification.” And this is still the peculiar and characteristic message of the evangelical pulpit, the all-sufficiency and aloneness of Christ’s obedience and death for the taking away of sin, and the corresponding aloneness of faith in the matter of justification. Dr. Donne, a standard divine of the Church of England, and originally a convert from Romanism, thus states the Calvinistic and evangelical doctrine on this point: “Deus solus justificat, God only justifies us; efficienter, nothing can work towards it but only the mere goodness of God. But it is also truly said of Christ, Christus solus justificat, Christ only justifies us; materialiter, nothing enters into the body and substance of the ransom of our sins but the obedience of Christ. It is also truly said, sola fides justificat, only faith justifies us; instrumentaliter, nothing apprehends, nothing applies the merit of Christ to thee, but thy faith. And lastly, it is as truly said, sola opera justificant, only our works justify us; declaratorie, only thy good life can assure thy conscience and the world that thou art justified.” “And I, my loving Brentius,” writes Luther, “do use to think as if in my heart were no quality or virtue at all which is called faith or love, but I set all on Christ, and say, my formalis justitia, that is, my sure, my constant and complete righteousness, in which there is no want or failing, is Christ my Lord and Saviour.”

as he is offered to us in the gospel. “Freely offered to us in the gospel” (Answer 31). Now when any offer is made to us, by the mere fact of that offer we are placed in a new, and peculiar, and responsible position. We are not after the offer just as we were before it. The offerer has put a constraint, and an obligation, and a responsibility upon us. For we must either accept the offer or refuse it. And, indeed, not to accept is to refuse. Not to say we refuse and yet not to accept, is to do worse than refuse, it is to despise. Prov. i. 29–33. “I have despised His Person, I have despised His righteousness, I have counted His blood an unholy thing, I have done despite to His spirit of grace: therefore I have shut myself out of all His promises; and there now remains to me nothing but threatenings, dreadful threatenings, faithful threatenings of certain judgment, which shall devour me as an adversary” (The Man in the Iron Cage).

“There is all reason to suppose that God deals with particular believers as He dealt with His Church, which he first made to hear His voice in the law, with terrible thunders and lightnings, and kept her under a schoolmaster to lead her to Christ; and then comforted her with the joyful sound of the gospel from Mount Zion. And it seems to be the natural import of the word gospel, glad tidings, that it is news of a deliverance and salvation after great fear and distress” (Edwards).

Uses

1. “Truly, I am persuaded, if it were possible all men could agree in what signification those three words, faith, grace, and spirit, were to be understood in each place where any of them are found, three full parts, at least, of four of those unhappy controversies that have been held up in the Christian Church would vanish” (Sanderson).
2. The Confession says that faith acteth differently upon that which each particular passage in Scripture containeth. And so it is with faith in Christ. Faith acts differently on the Lord Jesus, according as He is set forth in the gospel before the believing soul. Faith answers to all Christ’s fulness. There is nothing in God, as He is the God of all grace; there is nothing in Christ as containing the fulness of the Godhead bodily, nothing that faith is not fitted and intended to appropriate. As a believer contemplates and considers Christ in His one Person, in His two Natures, and in His three Offices, he receives Him in all, and still says, as he sees so much he cannot appropriate, Lord, increase my faith!
3. “Why did He choose faith of all graces to save a man by? Because the poorest in the world, the weakest understanding, can believe and trust. When he heareth that God will save sinners, he is able to trust God, as strongly and as firmly as the wisest understanding man in the world. Nay, your weak men, they are aptest to believe, they are more suited for faith” (Goodwin).
4. Bellarmin, the great Romish controversialist, after all his disputes about works and relying on saints and angels, says, “After all, it is safest to place our trust in the mercy of God alone.”

Questions

1. On the elementary and first sense of Faith consult Heb. xi.; Dante’s Paradise, xxiv.; Luther’s Galatians, v. 22; also Cruden’s excellent table under Faith.
2. Explain Goodwin’s four phrases: Faith, my brethren, is a passion, viii. 467; faith answers to the whole of Christ, ii. 411; faith is the most modest of all graces, ii. 327; of all works, faith is the easiest and hardest, i. 449.
3. Explain Luther’s paradox: Cavendum est a peccatis. Sed multo magis ab operibus bonis: a man must take heed of his sins, but much more of his good works.
4. Consult Christian’s answer to Ignorance’s confession of his faith.
5. Philippi, a German commentator, says: Sola fide was the Reformation Shibboleth. And Sir James Stephen, in his essay on Martin Luther, says: The Labarum of Luther was a banner inscribed with the legend, Justification by faith. This was the Alpha and Omega of his distinctive creed. Explain the allusions.
6. Explain and support Bengel’s saying: Infidelitas proprie damnat, unbelief exclusively damns.