What Is This Faith concerning which it is said, “By grace are ye saved, through faith?”
What is faith?
A measure of knowledge is essential to faith; hence the importance of getting knowledge.
Search the Scriptures and learn what the Holy Spirit teaches concerning Christ and His salvation.
Endeavor to know more and more of Christ Jesus. Endeavor especially to know the doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ; for the point upon which saving faith mainly fixes itself is this–”God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”
Faith begins with knowledge.
The soul believes that God is, and that He hears the cries of sincere hearts; that the gospel is from God; that justification by faith is the grand truth which God hath revealed in these last days by His Spirit more clearly than before. Then the heart believes that Jesus is verily and in truth our God and Saviour, the Redeemer of men, the Prophet, Priest, and King of His people.
Get firmly to believe that “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanses us from all sin”; that His sacrifice is complete and fully accepted of God on man’s behalf, so that he that believeth on Jesus is not condemned.
“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.”
Trust is the lifeblood of faith; there is no saving faith without it. The Puritans were accustomed to explain faith by the word “recumbency.”
Lean with all your weight upon Christ.
Cast yourself upon Jesus; rest in Him; commit yourself to Him. That done, you have exercised saving faith. Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge.
It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation. That is one way of describing what faith is.
. The Scriptures speak of Jesus Christ as being God, God is human flesh; as being perfect in His character; as being made of a sin-offering on our behalf; as bearing our sins in His own body on the tree.
Trust, and be at rest.
Never mind distinctions and definitions.
Oh dear reader, receive the Lord Jesus into your soul, and you shall live forever! “He that believe in him has everlasting life.”
By grace are ye saved, through faith” (Ephesians 2:8 ).
By grace are ye saved.” Because God is gracious, therefore sinful men are forgiven, converted, purified, and saved.
What an abyss is the grace of God!
God is full of love, for “God is love.” God is full of goodness; the very name “God” is short for “good
Faith is the work of God’s grace in us
.” So that faith, which is coming to Christ, is the result of divine drawing. Grace is the first and last moving cause of salvation; and faith, essential as it is, is only an important part of the machinery which grace employs. We are saved “through faith,” but salvation is “by grace.”
Faith occupies the position of a channel or conduit pipe. Grace is the fountain and the stream; faith is the aqueduct along which the flood of mercy flows down to refresh the thirsty sons of men
By faith all things become possible to us; yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God upon whom faith relies. Grace is the powerful engine, and faith is the chain by which the carriage of the soul is attached to the great motive power. The righteousness of faith is not the moral excellence of faith, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ which faith grasps and appropriates.
The power lies in the grace of God, and not in our faith
I could believe that Jesus would forgive sin,” says one, “but then my trouble is that I sin again”
Remember that the Lord Jesus came to take away sin in three ways; He came to remove the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and, at last, the presence of sin.
At once you may reach to the second part–the power of sin may immediately be broken; and so you will be on the road to the third, namely, the removal of the presence of sin. “We know that he was manifested to take away our sins.”
That which was said at our Lord’s birth was also declared in His death; for when the soldier pierced His side forthwith came there out blood and water, to set forth the double cure by which we are delivered from the guilt and the defilement of sin.
If, however, you are troubled about the power of sin, and about the tendencies of your nature, as you well may be, here is a promise for you. Have faith in it, for it stands in that covenant of grace which is ordered in all things and sure.
God, who cannot lie, has said in Ezekiel 36:26:A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
The Lord knows right well that you cannot change your own heart, and cannot cleanse your own nature; but He also knows that He can do both.
Nothing but the power of God could achieve that marvel; but that would be more than a fit parallel to what would take place if the course of your nature were altogether reversed. All things are possible with God.
A new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give an heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 11:19)
Let us lay hold of it; accept it as true, and appropriate it to ourselves. Then shall it be fulfilled in us, and we shall have, in after days and years, to sing of that wondrous change which the sovereign grace of God has wrought in us.
“The gifts and calling of God are without repentance”; that is, without repentance on His part; He does not take away what He once has given. Let Him renew you and you will be renewed
If you yield yourself up to His divine working, the Lord will alter your nature; He will subdue the old nature, and breathe new life into you. Put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and He will give you a heart of flesh.
“I cannot make this change,” says one. Who said you could? The Scripture which we have quoted speaks not of what man will do, but of what God will do. It is God’s promise, and it is for Him to fulfill His own engagements. Trust in Him to fulfill His Word to you, and it will be done.
I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. The sin I had committed must be punished.
It came to me as a new revelation, as fresh as if I had never read in Scripture that Jesus was declared to be the propitiation for sins that God might be just. I believe it will have to come as a revelation to every newborn child of God whenever he sees it; I mean that glorious doctrine of the substitution of the Lord Jesus.
When I was anxious about the possibility of a just God pardoning me, I understood and saw by faith that He who is the Son of God became man, and in His own blessed person bore my sin in His own body on the tree.
It was because the Son of God, supremely glorious in His matchless person, undertook to vindicate the law by bearing the sentence due to me, that therefore God is able to pass by my sin.
Jesus has borne the death penalty on our behalf.
It was a miracle of miracles that the Lord Jesus Christ should stand in our stead and Bear that we might never bear
God will spare the sinner because He did not spare His Son. God can pass by your transgressions because He laid those transgressions upon His only begotten Son nearly two thousand years ago.
If the believing soul could be condemned, then why a sacrifice? If Jesus died in my stead, why should I die also?
It is Christ that died. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies.”
If we had never broken the laws of God we should not have needed it, for we should have been just in ourselves.
Now, if you justify yourself, you will simply be a self-deceiver.
Bible says, “It is God that justifies,” and this is a deal more to the point
In the first place, nobody else but God would ever have thought of justifying those who are guilty. How can they be forgiven and justified?
Look at Saul of Tarsus, who foamed at the mouth, against God’s servants. Like a hungry wolf, he worried the lambs and the sheep right and left; and yet God struck him down on the road to Damascus, and changed his heart, and so fully justified him that ere long, this man became the greatest preacher of justification by faith that ever lived
the Lord God is glorious in grace.
But, even if anybody had thought of justifying the ungodly, none but God could have done it.
If we have sinned against God, it is in God’s power to forgive; for the sin is against Himself.
None but the great God, against whom we have committed the sin, can blot out that sin; let us, therefore, see that we go to Him and seek mercy at His hands.Do not let us be led aside by those who would have us confess to them; they have no warrant in the Word of God for their pretensions. But even if they were ordained to pronounce absolution in God’s name, it must still be better to go ourselves to the great Lord through Jesus Christ, the Mediator, and seek and find pardon at His hand; since we are sure that this is the right way. Proxy religion involves too great a risk: you had better see to your soul’s matters yourself, and leave them in no man’s hands.
Blessed be His name, He has not dealt with us after our sins; but now He treats with us on terms of free grace and infinite compassion, and He says, “I will receive you graciously, and love you freely.”
Believe it, for it is certainly true that the great God is able to treat the guilty with abundant mercy; yea, He is able to treat the ungodly as if they had been always godly.
Oh my brother, however guilty you may be, if you will only come back to your God and Father, He will treat you as if you had never done wrong!
It is God that justifies.” If God has justified a man it is well done, it is rightly done, it is justly done, it is everlastingly done.
The justification which comes from God himself must be beyond question. If the Judge acquits me, who can condemn me? If the highest court in the universe has pronounced me just, who shall lay anything to my charge? Justification from God is a sufficient answer to an awakened conscience.
I was myself stricken down with a horrible sense of guilt, which made my life a misery to me; but when I heard the command, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else”–I looked, and in a moment the Lord justified me. Jesus Christ, made sin for me, was what I saw, and that sight gave me rest. When those who were bitten by the fiery serpents in the wilderness looked to the serpent of brass they were healed at once; and so was I when I looked to the crucified Savior. The Holy Spirit, who enabled me to believe, gave me peace through believing. I felt as sure that I was forgiven, as before I felt sure of condemnation. I had been certain of my condemnation because the Word of God declared it, and my conscience bore witness to it; but when the Lord justified me I was made equally certain by the same witnesses.
I venture to say that a sinner justified by God stands on even a surer footing than a righteous man justified by his works, if such there be.
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