Feb 12
25
Through Faith Alone
A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law (Romans 3:28).
”By faith alone” was the motto of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was radical then. It is just as radical now. It does not mean quietism, that is, “Let Christ live the victorious life in you.” Nor does it mean the slothful indolence of spiritual do-nothingism. The Reformation was revolutionary. “Faith alone” was not the slogan of a delicate, cloistered piety. It was the battle-cry of a movement that turned the world upside down.
What does “faith alone” mean? “Faith alone” is the confession that all which is necessary for our acceptance with God has been done by God himself in Jesus Christ. It is an acknowledgment that Christ himself, in our name and our behalf, met all our obligations before the bar of eternal justice. This redemptive act was so complete and perfect that we cannot and need not add anything to it. “Faith alone” means that we cannot in the least contribute to our salvation, but that we must submit to what God has already done – fully and completely.
”Faith alone” does not mean that faith in itself will make us pleasing and acceptable to God. Only one is righteous. Only one is pleasing. “Faith alone” is a confession that God’s saving work has been done completely outside of our own experience. There are some who will admit that God alone saves, but they imagine that this saving work is done inside of them. But faith is always directed to the outside-of-me action of God in Jesus Christ. As John Bunyan wrote, “It is the righteousness which resides with a person in Heaven which justifies me, a sinner, on Earth.” The book of Revelation shows that the ongoing cause of Christ depends on the action of Christ in the control room of the universe. He alone can move history on toward its great consummation. He alone must come to bring salvation to those who eagerly wait for him (Hebrews 9:28). “Faith alone” is therefore a confession that salvation has been won by mighty, conquering acts in which we had no share.
”Faith alone” is a confession that our righteousness is not in us, but in Jesus Christ at God’s right hand. It means that we continually confess that we are sinners and have no righteousness to justify us save that which is outside of us in the person of our mediator. It means that life is not fulfilled here and now in this historical process. We know that all that we do is unworthy. Our best deeds, when tried before the undimmed splendor of God’s law, are no better than filthy rags. Notice that Isaiah says that all our ”righteousnesses” – not our “unrighteousnesses” – are filthy rags.
We are never righteous before God by virtue of being born again, or by being filled with the Spirit, or by lives of new obedience, or by acts of “surrender” or “trust.” The truth of “faith alone” is a great No! against the aspirations of humanism, Romanism, Pentecostalism, neo-evangelicalism, Arminianism, Wesleyanism, and all other -isms which promise fulfillment through internal and earthly experience. “Faith alone” says, “Our completeness is realized only in him” (Colossians 2:10). “Faith alone” means that we admit our destitution. We confess before justice that we have nothing to pay.
”Faith alone” means that we come to God relying on his love and mercy and forgiveness. “Faith alone” is a humbling of man in the dust, a dependence upon God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Nothing empties a man like “faith alone.” That is the reason why we are filled with the Spirit by faith (Galatians 3:14). Let us never speak of faith plus self-crucifixion, but of faith as self-crucifixion. “Faith alone” is the fountainhead of all true obedience. The first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” In his Catechism, Martin Luther says:
A God is that to which we look for all good and where we resort for help in every time of need; to have a God is simply to trust and believe in one with our whole heart…. If your faith and confidence are right, then likewise your God is the true God. On the other hand, if your confidence is false, if it is wrong, then you have not the true God…. I say, whatever your heart… confides in, that is really your God…. If the heart is rightly disposed toward God and this commandment is kept, obedience to the remainder will follow of itself.
”Faith alone” frees a man for a life of good works. On the other hand, when a man fails to understand the Gospel and the law, he labors in vain and spends his strength for nothing. His effort is directed to do what God alone can do. Deep down, every soul is conscious of the need to be right with God. But justification is a great work that only God can do. When a man blindly spends his strength and effort to do God’s work, he cannot be about his own work. When he works his fingers to the bone trying to save himself, he cannot love his neighbor, for he has no time for him. “The soul released from anxiety about itself is free to exercise concern about others. The heart is at leisure from itself to set forward the salvation of those around” (W. H. Griffith-Thomas, The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-nine Articles [London: Church Book Room Press, 1956], 194). This is a far cry from that false religion which removes all urgency for ethical action. “Faith alone” puts a man to work for God as nothing else can. It is not an opiate to put a Christian to sleep, but a stimulant to stir him to action. “Faith alone” is mighty. What makes it mighty is its mighty object. Like John the Baptist, it points away from itself to the Lamb of God, who alone takes away the sin of the world.
Extensively revised and adapted from Present Truth, a defunct magazine.
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“God has given no pledge which He will not redeem,
and encouraged no hope which He will not fulfill.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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“Now the just shall live by faith.” Hebrews 10:38
We cannot too frequently nor too deeply study the profound meaning of these words. God will have his child perpetually looking to, leaning upon, and receiving from Him. At present we are but in an immature state. We are not, therefore, in a condition to be trusted with grace for the future. Improvident and careless, we would soon squander and exhaust our resources; and when the emergency came, we should find ourselves unprepared to meet it. The Lord, in wisdom and love, keeps all our grace in His own hands, and deals it out just as our circumstances demand. Oh, who that knows his own heart, and the heart of Christ, would not desire that all his supply should be in God, and not in himself? Who, so to speak, would wish to be his own spiritual treasurer? Who that knows the blessedness of a life of faith, the sweetness of going to God in everything, and for everything, would wish to transfer his mercies from Christ’s keeping to his own, or wish to hold in the present the supply of the future? Be satisfied, dear reader, to walk by faith, and not by sight. You have a full Christ to draw from, and a faithful God to look to. You have a “covenant ordered in all things and sure,” and the precious promise, “As your days, so shall your strength be,” to lean confidently upon all your journey through. Be content, then, to be poor and dependent. Be willing to travel on empty-handed, seeing God’s heart opened, and Christ’s hand outstretched to supply your daily bread. Oh! it is sweet to be a dependent creature upon God- to hang upon a loving Father- to live as a poor, needy sinner, day by day, moment by moment, upon Jesus- to trace God in ten thousand ways- to mark His wisdom here, His condescension there- now His love, and then His faithfulness, all combining and exerted for our good- truly it is the most holy and blessed life upon earth. Why should we, then, shrink from any trial, or flee from any duty, or turn aside from any cross, since for that trial, and for that duty, and for that cross, Jesus has provided its required and appropriate grace? You are perhaps exclaiming, “Trouble is near!” Well, be it so. So also Divine grace is near- and strength is near – and counsel is near- and deliverance is near- and Jesus is near- and God is near- and a throne of grace is near; therefore, why must you fear, though trouble be near? “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
“Have faith in God.” Mark 9:22
Have faith in Him as God. His character justifies it, His word invites it, His promises encourage it, His blessing crowns it. How frequently in the word does God condescend to invite the exercise of faith in Himself by a declaration and on the ground of what He is. Thus to Abraham: “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God: walk before me, and be perfect.” And again to His Church: “I am the Lord God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” How kind and condescending in God is this mode of asking and encouraging the confidence of His people! How signally does He come down to our weakness and infirmity! What a foundation for faith to build upon does He reveal! what a field for faith to work in does He open! what amplitude, what scope, and what riches amid which it may revel! “I am God all-sufficient. Is anything too hard for me?” Faith needs and asks no more. Less than this would not meet its case more than this it could not have. When faith feels that it has God’s word for its warrant in believing, God’s command for its rule in obeying, God’s promise for its encouragement in suffering, and God Himself as the foundation of its confidence and the center of its rest, it becomes invulnerable, and almost omnipotent. The exact measure of our faith is the extent of our experimental knowledge of God. Acquaintance with God must inspire the mind with confidence in Him. The more truly we know, the more implicitly we trust in Him. It is in this way, among others, that He answers the prayer of His people, “Establish Your word unto Your servant, who is devoted to Your fear.” God establishes the truth of His word by enlarging the believer’s knowledge of Himself, and this knowledge is mainly attained through the truth. The word reveals God, and an experimental knowledge of God confirms the truth of the word; the one thus establishing the other. Our faith, then, if it be a real principle, must have respect to God as God. “Have faith in God.”- Octavius Winslow
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“The just shall live by faith.” –Romans 1:17
A life of faith in Christ is as necessary to our present and experimental salvation, as his death upon the cross was to our past and actual salvation. If you are alive to what you are as a poor fallen sinner, you see yourself surrounded by enemies, temptations, sins, and snares; and you feel yourself utterly defenseless, as weak as water, without any strength to stand against them. Pressed down by the weight of unbelief, you see a mountain of difficulty before your eyes, sometimes in providence and sometimes in grace. You find, also, that your heart is a cage of unclean birds, and that in you, that is, in your flesh, there dwells no good thing; neither will nor power have you in yourself to fight or flee.
How then shall this mountain become a plain? How shall you escape the snares and temptations spread in your path? How shall you get the better of all your enemies, external, internal, infernal, and reach heaven’s gate safe at last? If you say, “By the salvation already accomplished,” are you sure that that salvation belongs to you? Where is the evidence of it, if you have no present faith in Christ? How can that past salvation profit you for present troubles unless there be an application of it? It is this application and manifestation of salvation which is being saved by his life (Rom. 5:10).
See how it works; and what a suitability is in it. You are all weakness, and he is and has all strength, which he makes perfect in your weakness. You are all helplessness against sin, temptation, and a thousand foes. But help is laid upon Christ as one that is mighty; he therefore sends you help from the sanctuary and strengthens you out of Zion (Psalm 20:2), that these sins and enemies may not get the better of you. J.C. Phillpot.