SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE GOSPEL AND
ITS MINISTRY
Chapter Four -
FAITH.
FAITH is a mystery to many, a stumbling-block to not a
few. By some it seems to be regarded as the condition upon which God compounds
with men who ought to have righteousness, but have it not: with others it is
the last mite added to make up the price of our redemption. At times it appears
like a new barrier set up between the soul and God, when the work of Christ had
broken all the old barriers down; and not unfrequently it is represented as an
operation, like the new birth itself, in which the sinner is a passive agent in
the hands of God. There is the rationalist view of faith, making it merely the
assent of the mind to truth demonstratively proved; there is the Romanist view
of faith, which makes it a sort of good work of a mystical and spiritual kind;
and again, there is what I may term the fatalist theory of faith, which regards
it as a kind of grace imparted to the soul by God. But when we turn to
Scripture all such subtleties and errors vanish like mists before the sun.
"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." What simplicity, and
yet what reality and power are here! "Faith cometh by hearing," whether it be
faith of the gospel, or of the news of some temporal calamity or good. There
are no two ways of believing anything. And hearing comes - the true hearing -
by the Word of God:not by reasonings founded on it, it may be rightly founded
on it; not by " enticing words of man's wisdom," but by the Word of God. And
here is where the difference lies, not in the character of the faith, but in
the object of it. The sinner is brought into the presence of God. He hears God,
he believes God, and he is blest with believing Abraham, and just on the same
ground, for "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for
righteousness."
In its first and simplest phase in Scripture, faith is
the belief of a record or testimony; it is, secondly, belief in a person; and
it has, lastly, the character of trust, which always points to what is future.
To speak of trust as the only true phase of gospel faith, is wholly false and
wrong. In fact, the word generally rendered "trust," is never used in this
connection once in Scripture. It is etymologically "hope," and the element of
hope invariably enters into it. In what is pre-eminently the gospel book of the
Bible, it occurs but once, and in.the sermons of the Acts we shall seek for it
in vain. "We are saved by trust," is a statement at once true and scriptural,
if only we understand salvation in its fullest sense, as yet to be made good to
us in glory;' but the salvation of our souls is not matter of trust, but of
faith in its simplest form. The redemption of our souls is a fact to us,
because we believe the record God has given of His Son, no less so is the
redemption of our bodies, but it is because of our trust in God. As the apostle
writes to Timothy, "We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men,
especially of those that believe." Trust springs from confidence in the person
trusted, and that again depends on knowledge of the person confided in. In this
sense, faith may be great or little, weak or strong " I write unto you, little
children" (says the Apostle John), "because your sins are forgiven you for His
name's sake."' Here is a testimony and a fact. Upon our state of soul may
depend the realisation, the enjoyment of it, but this faith can admit of no
degrees. But trust in God has as many degrees as there are saints on earth.
Some believers could not trust Him for a single meal others can look to Him,
without misgivings, to feed a thousand hungry mouths, or to convert a thousand
godless sinners. Our faith in this sense, depends entirely on knowing God, and
on communion with Him, the faith of the gospel comes by hearing Him.
At every pier along the new embankment of the Thames, there hangs a chain that
reaches to the water's edge at its lowest ebb But for this, some poor creature,
struggling with death, might drown with his very hand upon the pier. An appeal
to perishing sinners to trust in Christ is like calling on a drowning wretch to
climb the embankment wall. The glad tidings, the testimony of God concerning
Christ, is the chain let down for the hand of faith to grasp. Once rescued, it
is not the chain the river waif would trust for safety, but the rock beneath
his feet; yet, but for that chain, the rock might have only mocked his
struggles. And it is not the gospel message the ransomed sinner trusts in, but
the living Christ of whom the gospel speaks; but yet it was the message that
his faith at first laid hold upon, and by it he gained an eternal
standing-ground upon the Rock of Ages.
He who truly hears the good
news of Christ believes it just as the little child believes a mother's word.
And none but such shall ever enter the kingdom. There is neither mystery nor
virtue in the faith, in the one case any more than in the other ; the only
difference is in the testimony itself. He who believes the gospel, receives a
word that is nothing less than "the power of God unto salvation."
The
case of Cornelius affords a striking example of this. "A devout man, and one
that feared God with all his house, and prayed to God alway," it might well be
asked, What did he lack? Yet to such an one the message came: "Send men to
Joppa and call for Simon Peter, who shall tell thee words whereby thou and all
thy house shall be saved" (Acts xi. i3, Z4).
If, in fact, none can
believe apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, the difficulty depends on no
peculiarity in the faith itself. It is not a question of metaphysics, but of
spiritual depravity and death. As far as the act of faith is concerned, the
gospel is believed in the same way as the passing news of the passing hour. The
hindrance lies in the apostasy of the natural heart of man. And, doubtless, the
reason faith is made the turning point of the sinner's return to God is just
because distrust was the turning point of his departure from Him. Disobedience
was not the first step in Adam's fall; it was the last, and it followed
disbelief.
Faith then in its simplest character is not trust, nor even
faith in a person, but belief of a record. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is
the Christ, is born of God." "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that
believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.?" And so, if we read through the
chapter from which these words are quoted, we find it is the witness, or
testimony of God, that is in question between the sinner and Himself. "There
are three who bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the
three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is
greater; for the witness of God is this, that He hath borne witness concerning
His Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He
that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he hath not believed in
the witness that God hath borne concerning His Son." And so also if we turn to
the Gospel of John. The Book was written that we might believe "that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, we might have life through His
name.
Nor will this seem strange to any who understand the gospel. The
gospel is not a promise or a covenant, but a message, a proclamation. It is the
"good news of God, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord."' And the belief
of that good news is life: not indeed when retailed as the word of man, to suit
the whims or errors of the natural heart, but when it comes in the power of the
Holy Ghost, and, "as it is in truth, the word of God." "The words that I have
spoken unto you, they are spirit and they are life," the Lord declared,. when
many of His disciples were offended at His teaching. The many heard but the
words of Jesus the Nazarene, and were offended and went back. To the few, these
same words were "words of eternal life," and called forth the confession of Him
as Christ the Son of God.' The ioth chapter of Romans claims notice here,
confirming, as it does so fully, what the other Scriptures already quoted amply
prove. God has brought the gospel as near to men as in the old time He brought
the law. "This commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from
thee,. neither is it far off," said Moses in his parting charge to Israel, -"It
is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven,
and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the
sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it
unto us, that we may hear it and do it. But the word is very nigh unto thee, in
thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it."
Thus spake the
righteousness of law, now, hear the righteousness of faith. "Say not in thine
heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from
above:) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again
from the dead). But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and
in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach, that if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that
God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." It was for Israel to
have the commandment in their mouth, and to do it with their heart it is ours
to have the gospel in our mouth, and to believe it with our heart. There is no
mystery in the one case any more than in the other Metaphysical distinctions
between believing with the head and with the heart, are wholly untenable A
Christian believes with his heart, just as a Jew obeyed with his heart. It was
the obedience of the inner man, the real man, that God required, and so it is
with faith.
In modern English "the heart" is synonymous with the
affections; but not in Scripture. The Lord speaks of "the heart" as the moral
being, the true man as distinguished from the mere outward man. And so also
here. With the mouth man speaks, but the confession of the lip may or may not
be the expression of what is within, and therefore secret. The confession of
Christ by the outward man is the sequel and complement of the faith of the
inward man. A man cannot believe with lus affections; indeed, all such
expressions are fanciful. Love and hope and faith and fear are not independent
entities with rival or co-ordinate rank in the complex being, man. It is the
man himself who loves, and hopes, and believes, and fears. Just as he may say
he loves, and never love at all, so he may say he believes, and the profession
may be a sham; but if he really believes, and believes God, the gift of God is
his. But there is no subtlety in the faith. "Faith comes by hearing"; faith in
God comes by hearing God. "Every one that hath heard from the Father,"- said
the Lord Himself, or perhaps, making due allowance for the English idiom, the
verse would be better rendered, "Every one that hath heard the Father, and hath
learned of Him, cometh unto Me." But as for them to whom He spoke, they could
not hear.
Some men speak of the Spirit's work in the soul, as though the
sinner were an irresponsible vessel which God fills with faith; and yet these
same men, when faith itself becomes their theme, seem to forget the Spirit's
work entirely, and enlarge on subtle distinctions between head faith and heart
faith. "faith in" and "faith on," faith of saving truth, and faith in. general,
until faith itself looms great and mysterious upon the burdened sinner,
shutting Christ out altogether.
Let us then get this great fact
implanted firmly in our minds, that there is neither merit nor virtue in faith,
no; even in the letter of the truth believed; but that to believe God is
eternal life. To believe God, whether it be, as with Abraham, the promise of a
family, or, as with us, the testimony to a Person and a fact. Faith is the
opened lattice that lets in the light of heaven to the soul, bringing gladness
and blessing with it. It is only in ophthalmic hospitals that people are always
thinking of their eyes, and it is due entirely to the prevailing errors and
follies of modern teaching that so many Christians are hypochondriacs
respecting faith. In Scripture, faith is like healthy eyesight, unheeded and
forgotten in the ease and enjoyment of its use. Nowadays it is more like the
glasses of people with failing or defective visicn, sometimes lost, often dim,
and constantly a trouble.
But faith not only receives the word of
Christ; it reaches on, and lays hold upon the person of Christ. Belief of His
word leads to belief in Himself. And here, again, there is no difficulty, save
such as men have made. To receive Christ, to come to Christ, to believe in
Christ - for all these words are used in Scripture - means today just what it
meant when the Lord was living upon earth. To come to Christ, was not outward
contact with the son of Mary, but submission of heart to the Son of God. "No
man can come to Me except the Father draw him," was His word to those who had
followed Him from Capernaum to Tiberias, and back again across the sea. Anyone
might come to Jesus, and rone need leave His presence without proof of His
power and grace. He fed the hungry just because they hungered. He healed the
oppressed of Satan, just because they were oppressed, and His mission was to
destroy the devil's work. But how few there were of those who thus came to
Jesus, that ever truly came to Christ!
"If ye believe not that I am He,
ye shall die in your sins." "That I am He" : it was this that faith laid hold
upon. They who did believe it as a divine revelation came to believe in Himself
in a further and fuller sense, and this again led to confidence and trust,
j.ust in proportion as they were abiding in Him, and His word in them, and,
moreover, as their knowledge of Him increased. "How is it that ye have no
faith?" was the Lord's appeal to the terrified disciples on the Sea of Galilee,
when they awoke Him with upbraidings for neglecting them. In the gospel sense
they believed on Him then, as they ever did; and indeed their remonstrances
were based on their unchanging confidence othat, being the Christ the Son of
God, He had power to deliver them, but did not. They believed on him, but as
yet they did not know Him, and therefore their knowledge of His power only led
them to doubt His love.
"Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at
peace," is a word for the tempest-tossed believer. The faith that "comes by
hearing," brings us salvation and the knowledge of salvation. The faith that
springs from abiding in Him and acquainting ourselves with Him, is the secret
of a peace-ruled heart and a holy life. Like all the sons of faith, Saul of
Tarsus believed God, and so set out upon the Christian course And the "faithful
saying" that brought life and joy to him at the starting-post, was the strength
of his heart even to the goal. It is the same gospel that is the resting-place
for our feet as we lay hold upon the Rock of Ages, which becomes the pillow of
our dying hout as we pass away from our service and our sins on earth Whether
as the converted persecutor on the Damascus road, or as the Apostle of the Lord
at the close of that matchless life of labour and testimony, Paul's faith in
the gospel was the same. Here it is not growth we speak of, but steadfastness.
At the beginning, just as at the end of his race, he "believed God," but at the
end, when looking back upon his life from his Roman prison, he could add "I
know whom I have believed" , and having come to know Him, he had learned to
trust Him.
Everybody understands what it means to believe in the claimant
of a fortune or a title. It is just to receive him for what he represents
himself to be. And believing in Christ means primarily nothing more than this.
It leads to more, doubtless, but that depends not on any peculiarity or virtue
in the faith, but on Him who is the object of faith. They who thus believe in
the Lord Jesus come to confide in Him, to trust Him, and to love Him, but to
believe on Him is simply to "receive His testimony," and thus to "set to our
seal that God is true." And yet, such faith is impossible apart from the work
of the Holy Spirit in the soul. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ
is born of God." Not, I repeat again, for it needs to be repeated, that faith
in Christ is a metaphysical achievement so difficult that man is insufficient
to accomplish it; but that the heart is utterly apostate, and man's natural
condition is that of pure distrust of God.
More than this, "the carnal
mind is enmity against God." Man is capable of the firmest and most implicit
faith in himself and in the world - aye, and in the devil too, as will be
proved one day; but his whole spiritual being is so utterly estranged from God
that not only does he not know Him, but, if left to himself, he is incapable of
knowing Him. Just as a warped window pane distorts all objects seen through it,
so the human heart perverts even the very truth of God, and changes it into a
lie. A heart in fellowship with God would have found proof in every act and
word of Christ that He was divine; but men heard His words and saw His works -
sincere men, too, and good and estimable - and yet adjudged Him to be an
impostor. Because He told them the truth, they believed Him not. And as it was
then, so is it still. It is not the head that is at fault, but the heart; it is
not that man is silly, but that he is sinful ; not that he is weak, but that he
is wicked.
Indeed, if Christians were made, as certain writers upon
evidences would lead us to suppose, by reasoning out Christianity from the
miracles of Christ, the company of the Lord's disciples would have numbered
thousands more than the little band who owned His name. Those who believed on
Him thus were not few, but many. But He who could judge the heart refused to
commit Himself to such. The true faith is not based on "evidences," but on the
word of God; and these miracle-made believers could not and would not hear that
word. To acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Son of David, on account
of the miracles He did, was one thing; to receive eternal' life in Christ was
quite apart from it.
There had never risen a greater prophet than John
the Baptist; and yet at the very time this testimony was given to him, his
political faith, if I may use the expression, had broken down, and his
disciples were on their way back to his prison, to reassure him by the record
of the Lord's miracles. And so it was at the last with His most favoured
saints: "We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel," was
their sad tribute to the memory of His name. Their faith had failed, their hope
had died out, leaving only love to cling to Him; but still they were His own.
In common with the multitude around them, they had seen His miracles, and
hailed Him as their coming king. But more than this, they had themselves been
the subjects of a miracle the multitude knew nothing of: they had been born
again by the word of Him whom now they mourned. They had received the gift of
life from God; and though they knew it not, that death which seemed to them the
end of all their hopes secured to them eternal glory.
However," says
Bishop Butler in summing up his argument on this point, "the fact is allowed
that Christianity was professed to be received into the world upon the belief
of miracles," and "that is what its first converts would have alleged as their
reason for embracing it." True it is that no earnest, honest man, with the
Scriptures at hand, could doubt the Messiahship of Jesus, while witnessing the
miracles He wrought; but it is no less true that men cannot reason themselves
into Christianity. How different from Butler's account of it, is the story the
early Christians told of their conversion! What is the testimony of those who
were with Him in the Holy Mount, and witnessed that greatest miracle of all?
"Which were born," writes the beloved disciple, "not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." "Being born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and
abideth for ever," is the kindred witness of the Apostle Peter.
Nor did
Paul, as great a reasoner as Butler, strike a discordant note: "God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts." Such
was his glad but humble testimony. The multitudes followed Him because of the
loaves His power supplied: they cared not for the bread of heaven. But His true
disciples knew and owned Him as the One who had the words of eternal life. This
was the bond that kept them at His side when the many were offended and drew
back. The works of God might convince the ,reason; but it was not thus the dead
got life, the troubled conscience peace. To weigh the evidences and embrace
Christianity, as the true religion, is the part of a fair and prudent man; but
salvation is God's work altogether. The blessing is not for the apt scholar,
but for the outcast and lost. It is not for the clear head, but for the
contrite heart. Not for the clever reasoner, but for .the self-judged and
guilty, not for logicians, but for sinners; not for the wise and prudent, but
for babes.
So it has been in every age. The public revelation of God to
man has varied again and again, but His secret revelation to the soul that
turns to Him has ever been the same. "He brought me up out of a horrible pit,
out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings,
and He hath put a new song in my mouth." Thus sang His saints in the old days
three thousand years ago; so sing they still. " It pleased God to reveal His
Son in me," is the testimony of Paul; and if Peter owned Him as the Son of the
living God, it was not a deduction from His miracles, but a revelation from the
Father in heaven.3 And so with the rest. It was not that they saw His works,
but that they heard His words. We are saved by faith; and faith is the
reception, as true, of what is beyond the range of proof, either by
demonstration or by evidence. It is the substance (or assurance) of things
hoped or trusted for, the conviction of things not seen. Salvation is within
the reach of all, but it is as suppliant sinners they must receive it. Grace
does not place either the Saviour or the Gospel at the bar of human judgment;
that is the arrogance of infidelity. As has been already seen, grace is based
upon the cross, and assumes that man is guilty and lost. It does not place him
in the dock, but it finds him there: it does not brand him as ruined and lost,
but it comes to him as thus branded already. And the very gospel which tells of
life and peace and pardon, is itself the power to make good this testimony. It
is not a question of God's submitting either Himself or His revelation to the
tribunal of the creature's judgment, but of the sinner's waking up from his
death-sleep in sin to hear the voice of God. The hour is come of which it is
written, "The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
shall live."
We are saved through faith, but faith is not our saviour.
If faith had intrinsic virtue and could bring blessing with it, hell would be
impossible; for there are no unbelievers save on earth, and that, too, in the
days of Christ's humiliation and His absence. The day is coming when all shall
believe and confess His name. And if faith and confession bring blessing now,
it is not because of any merit they possess, but because God is saving men in
sovereign grace. . If the blessing were not by grace, it never could be gained
by such as we are. "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace."' As
it is written, "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that (salvation) not
of yourselves, it is the gift of God." Salvation is the gift of God, bestowed
on the principle of grace, and received on the principle of faith..
"The gift of God" here is salvation by grace through faith. Not the faith
itself. "This is precluded," as Alford remarks, "by the manifestly parallel
clauses 'not of yourselves,' and 'not of works,' the latter of which would be
irrelevant as asserted of faith." It is still more definitely precluded, he
might have added, by the character of the passage. It is given to us to believe
on christ, just in the same sense in which it is given to some "also to suffer
for His sake" (Phil. i. 29). But the statement in Ephesians is doctrinal, and
in that sense the assertion that faith is a gift, or indeed that it is a
distinct entity at all, is sheer error. This matter is sometimes represented as
though God gave faith to the sinner first, and then, on the sinner's bringing
Him the faith, went on and gave him salvation! Just as though a baker, refusing
to supply empty-handed applicants, should first dispense to each the price of a
loaf, and then, in return for the money from his own till, serve out the bread.
To answer fully such a vagary as this would be to rewrite the foregoing
chapter. Suffice it, therefore, to point out that to read the text as though
faith were the gift, is to destroy not only the meaning of verse 9, but the
force of the whole passage.
And how does faith come? "Faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." This is the time of which Isaiah
spoke, when God is found of them that seek Him not; the time in which the
gospel is to be carried to the lanes and highways of the world, and men are to
be compelled to come in 'when forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed far and
wide, and all that believe are justified; when there is salvation for the lost,
life for the dead, heaven for the outcast sinner. The cross has been set up,
not half-way on the road to heaven, where man's unbelieving heart would place
it, but right down in the market square of the City of Destruction, that men
may look and live. Such are "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus."
REPENTANCE AND
THE SPIRIT'S WORK.
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