Introduction
Is faith a feeling? A level of sincerity? Something you can measure by how fervent or emotional you are? In this episode, Pastors Jim Butler and Cam Porter work through what saving faith actually is – its object, its source, and the common distortions that rob believers of assurance and heap obligations on them that God never intended.
Got a question on Christianity, Gospel, Scripture, Theology? Submit your own questions here.
Transcript
Summary Keywords: Faith, Christian faith, gospel truths, act of believing, grace of faith, regeneration, redemptive benefits, justification, sanctification, evangelical obedience, sentimentalizing faith, faithfulness, feelings and faith, simplicity of gospel, Christ-centered faith.
Speakers: Wim Kerkhoff, Pastor Jim Butler, Pastor Cam Porter
Two Types of Faith
Wim Kerkhoff [0:08]
Cam, what is faith?
Pastor Cam Porter [0:11]
That’s a very good question – simple but good to open up. I think the first thing to say is that there are two types of faith in the Scriptures.
For example, when we talk about our conference, “Confessing the Faith” – what is “the faith” in that context? In Jude 3, for example, it speaks about contending for “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” Elsewhere, the apostle Paul uses the language of “the faith of the gospel.” That is speaking to the objective content of the Christian faith: the propositions to be believed, the articles of the Christian religion – the Triune God, the deity and humanity of Christ, the truths regarding the Incarnation, regarding salvation, justification by faith alone. So “the faith” in that context refers to the truths of the gospel, what is to be believed.
Then the other understanding of “faith” is the act of believing. So if we ask the question “What is faith?” according to that understanding, we could simply say that it’s believing. When the apostles in the book of Acts are preaching the gospel to unbelievers, and the Philippian jailer asks, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” – the answer is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” That belief on the Lord Jesus Christ is faith.
Our confession defines faith something like this: the grace of faith is that whereby sinners are enabled to believe unto the saving of their souls, and that it is a work of grace wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God, by which we receive and rest upon the Lord Jesus Christ as declared in the gospel.
I think it’s important to observe that faith can be a term stripped of its objective content – as if someone who has sincere faith in something is commendable regardless of what the object of that faith is. But the Christian act of believing has a precious and glorious object: Christ Jesus, the Savior of men. Our act of believing rests upon the one who is very God of very God, true God from true God, begotten not made, who came into this world by the assumption of our humanity, taking upon himself all the properties of humanity and all the common infirmities yet without sin – in order to live a perfect life, die a perfect death, and rise again, that he might bring many sons and daughters to glory.
That act of believing rests upon that precious one, the Lord Jesus Christ. As the apostle Peter says of those who have this faith: to those who believe, Christ is precious. He is the object of our faith. He is the one who sovereignly gifts us with the faith by which we believe unto the saving of our souls.
I think another important thing to emphasize is that faith is not natural to man. It is not something that the sinner has in and of himself. It is a grace given by the Holy Spirit working upon the heart – a gift given in regeneration. Regeneration precedes faith; faith doesn’t precede regeneration. God does that glorious work upon the heart where he takes out the stony heart and replaces it with a heart of believing flesh that lays hold of the Savior and lays hold of the promises of God.
Faith as the Instrument
Pastor Jim Butler [4:36]
Amen. It’s the instrument through which we receive the redemptive benefits of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not salvation on account of our faith. As Cam points out, it’s not that we bring faith to the table and God rewards us with salvation. No – he gives us the faith. Ephesians 2:8-10, Philippians 1:29. Faith is the instrument, the empty hand by which we receive the benefits secured by our Lord Jesus Christ.
I love what our confession says in 14.2. It says that by this faith a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word of God. In other words, everything Scripture says, we believe – we believe the dimensions of the tabernacle and the temple, we believe that David was the king of Israel, we believe Solomon was a king and that there was a division in his kingdom after his death. But the end of it says: “but the principal acts of saving faith have immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, and resting upon him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of the covenant of grace.”
So we believe everything the Bible says, but the principal acts of saving faith are not the dimensions of the temple or that David was the king of Israel. It’s that Jesus is the one who is Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made – the one who took our humanity, lived, died, and rose again. The principal acts of saving faith are directed to Jesus as their object.
How Faith Gets Distorted
Wim Kerkhoff [6:22]
In what ways have you seen faith – or the understanding of what faith and believing is – get distorted?
Pastor Cam Porter [6:30]
A lot of ways. One has already been mentioned: the assertion that the natural man can exercise faith outside of amazing and victorious grace. It’s not that God acts by a kind of “prevenient grace,” partially assisting man who then cooperates with him. The Bible describes man – and God finds man – as dead in trespasses and sins, without hope, without strength, following after the allurements of the world, the temptations of the devil, a slave to his own flesh. So God comes in amazing and victorious grace and brings that sinner forth from the deadness and darkness of sin to life and light in Jesus Christ, and gives him that gift of faith whereby he is enabled to believe unto the saving of his soul.
Another distortion is smuggling faithfulness into faith, so that justification becomes by our faith and our faithfulness – so that what has been called “evangelical obedience” becomes the ground of our justification. This steals away from the reality that faith is that instrument, that empty hand, that lays hold of the redemptive benefits of the Lord Jesus Christ. It isn’t our faith that saves us. We’re saved through faith – that faith resting on Christ and receiving Christ and all the benefits of his glorious redemptive work.
Another diminishing of faith is the sentimentalizing of faith, where sincerity, demonstrativeness, emotion, or feeling becomes what we’re really talking about when we say “faith.” Let’s be clear: we ought to have a blessed and warm Christian response to the truths we are believing. We love the Christ who has brought us from the deadness of sin to life in him. But faith itself is the act of believing, whereby God has enabled us by his Spirit, according to his Word, to rest upon the glorious champion of our salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Another distortion is smuggling love into faith, so that we’re justified not by faith alone but by the amount by which we love the Savior. Are we to love the Savior? Absolutely. Are we to love God? Absolutely – he is the one who has first loved us. But to say that the intensity or amount of love we express toward God has some proportional relationship to how saved we are, or to what makes us a true Christian, is to distort saving faith and to heap obligations upon it that God has never intended and never revealed.
It’s important also to emphasize this: it’s not a strong faith that unites us to Christ. A weak faith also unites us to Christ. That is a glorious reality – we’re not saved by the strength of our faith. We’re saved by the strength of a Savior who gives us that faith by which we’re saved. And perhaps Jim can find that Machen quote, which is wonderful.
The Machen Quote, and Loading Faith with Feelings
Pastor Jim Butler [11:19]
As Cam ran through that list, one of the obvious distortions I’ve seen is attaching feelings to faith. “I believed and nothing happened.” Well – what do you think this is, a fireworks display? There are times – you see it in the Psalms – “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” Ask David at that particular instance: do you have faith? Of course I have faith, but I’m cast down. Faith is not to be loaded up with feelings.
Love is the chief fruit of saving faith, but we need to keep those things distinct. I fear that people judge whether they have faith based on their feelings. If you’re going to live like that, you’re going to be miserable. “I don’t really feel like I’m believing today.” I don’t know that there’s a feeling connected to any other act of believing. I believe the sun is in the sky – does that promote a feeling?
When we stress this, it’s not a negation of feelings in the Christian religion – of course there are feelings. But you can’t load faith up with feeling and suggest that if you don’t have those fiery feelings, you don’t have faith. That does great disservice to the Word of God and to the people of God.
Here’s that Machen quote: “Weak faith will not remove mountains, but there is one thing at least that it will do: it will bring a sinner into peace with God. Our salvation does not depend upon the strength of our faith. Saving faith is a channel, not a force. If you are once really committed to Christ, then despite your subsequent doubts and fears, you are his forever.”
One of the most difficult things to see is someone who, because they’re having a bad day, a bad season, or bad feelings, talks themselves out of participation in the kingdom of God. You may be excluded from the kingdom – but not because you’re having a bad day. Not because your heart is cast down. Not because you don’t have red-hot feelings for the Savior.
Do you believe what the Bible says concerning Jesus? Do you believe that he alone is the one who can bring forgiveness of sins and give you a righteousness by which you can stand before God? Hopefully the feelings catch up – but live in light of the reality of God’s promises, and lay hold of them by faith. Don’t think that unless your faith is loaded up with feelings, something is wrong. That’s horrible doctrine. Would that we could purge it from every pulpit – loading faith with feelings, loading faith with love. Purge from our pulpits faith plus faithfulness. We’re Protestants, not papists. Any confounding of the blessed simplicity of that empty hand – the empty hand that God gives us, by which we receive the benefits secured by our Lord Jesus Christ – is to be resisted, with or without feelings, with or without the fireworks display.
Personal Reflections on Coming to Faith
Wim Kerkhoff [15:11]
I still remember when I was coming to faith, meeting with you, and you grabbed Brakel from your shelf and read – I can’t remember exactly what page or section – something about how some people have a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus experience, and some people don’t know the year or even the decade. But they know they are believing, and they are in Christ.
Pastor Jim Butler [15:35]
And that’s what I always say. I don’t remember the day I was converted. I always say: if you didn’t have a birth certificate, you wouldn’t know – for me, September 16, 1966, a cool autumn day. The fact is, though, I am alive. I may not know the exact day I first believed the gospel, but I know presently I’m believing the gospel.
Pastor Cam Porter [16:01]
And if you think about what was discussed earlier, in the context of baptism – Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch – the question Philip poses isn’t, “Were you knocked off your horse by a blinding vision of the Lord Jesus Christ?” It’s, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?” And believing, then you have life in his name.
The Simplicity of the Gospel
Pastor Jim Butler [16:26]
We have a tendency to overcomplicate everything – church membership, baptism, Bible reading, faith. We always want to make it more difficult. We ought to leave the simplicity of the gospel alone. If we’re going to mess things up with complications, let them be elsewhere – but not on justification by faith, not on what brings peace to a sinner. It is faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Wim Kerkhoff [16:59]
I’m interacting with some people who are reading good Puritan authors – Boston and others. But anyone you go to will have some expression that can give you doubts. You go back to the Word, and it’s not that 100% of what any author has written is beyond question.
Pastor Jim Butler [17:21]
If there weren’t solid examples in Scripture of believers struggling, that would be one thing. But David did bad things. Peter denied his master. Paul expresses the concept of remaining corruption in Romans 7 and Galatians 5. I’d love to only ever have positive, great feelings. I’d love to have more love for the one who is altogether lovely. I need to get better, pray more, read more. But in the final analysis: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die.”
In the final analysis, on the Day of Judgment, it’s all going to be the glory of Christ. It’s all about Christ – his glory, his power, his efficacy in our salvation. And yes, you should have great warm feelings about that. But sometimes you don’t. And that’s okay.
Want more theological Q&A?
Explore the full Ask FGBC archive: https://www.freegrace.ca/ask
Got a question on Christianity, Gospel, Scripture, Theology? Submit your own questions here.
