This article is the twenty-third installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith." Find the whole series here.
Every day thousands of people die from complications linked to lack of clean drinking water. Here’s the tragic irony. The pure water that they need is often in the ground, right beneath them, easily accessible with a basic well-shaft and hand-pump. Still, it isn’t enough to be near good water or to know that it is accessible. People need clean water in them.
This is the point of Scripture’s teaching about faith. Knowing that Christ died and rose again isn’t enough. Saying that Jesus is a savior isn’t enough. Jesus did die and rise again. He is a great savior. But you need to receive Christ’s saving benefits. You need “Christ in you” (Col. 1:27).
Like when a thirsty person opens her mouth to receive life-giving water (John 4:10–14), you must trust in Christ to receive all his blessed accomplishments for your salvation. The way you do that is by the exercise of true faith.
What Does Faith Do?
Our most basic problem is that our sin separates us from God. The Lord is so pure that he cannot tolerate evil (Hab. 1:13). As long as we remain in our sins, God’s holiness is a terrible threat to us. Until we take hold of Christ by faith, God’s righteousness is foreign to us and opposed to us (John 16:8–11). We are all “guilty before God” and fall short of his glory (see Rom. 3:19 KJV, 23). So how can unrighteous people have intimate fellowship with a holy God?
The gospel is Scripture’s answer to the enmity between God and sinners: “Jesus Christ is our righteousness, crediting to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place’” (see Jer. 23:6). Salvation is receiving God and all his blessings as an undeserved gift. Faith “embraces Jesus Christ, with all his merits and makes him its own.” Martin Luther said that faith is like the clasp of a ring that holds the jewel of Christ. J.C. Ryle said that faith is like the hand of a drowning man that grasps Christ (Heb. 6:18), the eye of a dying man that looks to Christ as his cure (John 3:14–15), the mouth of a starving man that eat and drinks Christ (John 6:35), and the foot of a hunted man that flees to Christ and finds in him a refuge (Prov. 18:10). Only by faith can we say that “Christ … lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
And this faith is exclusive; it “no longer looks for anything apart from [Christ].” We may not rely on our religious experiences, even our sense of closeness to Jesus. “He who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely.” This message is amazing news for those of us who know we are inadequate. Strong fears and weak resolve can’t cancel the gift of Christ’s righteousness for believers. Nothing more is needed. The price for our sins has been paid. The righteous deeds that he has done are now ours. So “To say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God—for it would then follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior” (BC 22).
God’s gift of faith enables his people to receive Christ as Savior and Lord. When his “benefits are made ours they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.”
What Is Faith?
It would be easy to see faith as a kind of work, as a righteous deed we perform to earn God’s favor. The medieval church emphasized an elaborate system by which people might be saved. The church officially taught justification by faith. But the faith that saves was seen as a grace-infused life that becomes worthy of God’s favor. In such a system, assurance of salvation is always elusive. It is impossible to know whether you ever become sufficiently worthy of God’s embrace.
Justifying faith is not a work but a gift (1 Cor. 4:7; Eph. 1:17, 2:8). Paul is firm, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the laws” (Rom. 3:28). We are justified—accounted righteous in God’s sight—by his grace received through faith. The law is not a ladder we climb to God. After all, Christ is the only one who has ever fulfilled the law (Matt. 5:17). So “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4).
Faith is “only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness.” The faith the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts discourages us as we look at ourselves and comforts us as we embrace Jesus. Faith is an emptying of self. By it we admit that “by the works of the law no human being will be justified in [God’s] sight” (Rom. 3:20). Faith is the opposite of works. It denies all self-righteousness. It doesn’t boast of merit but admits demerit. By faith we express that we cannot establish a righteousness of our own (Rom 10:3). All we can do is believe and receive.
The saving faith that receives Christ has three important ingredients.
Faith is true knowledge of God. John says that Jesus was in the world “yet the world did not know him” (John 1:10). By contrast, he says of believers, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 5:20). Faith is not first a feeling but accurate knowledge of who God is.
Faith is agreement with God. Saving faith agrees with the content of the Bible. It affirms God’s full revelation centering on the good news that Christ has come to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). Believers accept that they are great sinners and that Christ is a great Savior.
Faith is trust in God. Trust transfers our reliance from ourselves to Jesus. By faith we become so exasperated with ourselves and so sure of Christ that we say with Peter, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). By trusting Christ, believers receive complete salvation that can never be lost.
We must be reminded of this truth again and again—we are constantly tempted to imagine that our relationship with God rests on our works. We might define saving faith as Scripture does but suppose that we are justified because we work hard to please God. That is not good news. This is good news: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). God has given a rich Christ for poor sinners. And he is pleased to kindle “in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ with all his merits, and makes him its own, and no longer looks for anything apart from him.”
Footnotes
J.C. Ryle, Old Paths: Being Plain Statements on Some of the Weightier Matters of Christianity (London: William Hunt and Company, 1877), 228–229.
