Saving Faith

This was the magazine editorial in our parish magazine for March 2008.


"Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1, NIV)

One of the most basic truths of the Christian gospel is that we are saved by grace through faith. We read this in the well-known words of Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have saved, through faith—and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not of works, so that no-one can boast."

It is important to realise that when we talk about being saved by faith, what the Bible means is not that it is our faith—faith in something, no matter what—that saves us, but that it is Jesus Christ who saves those put their faith in him as their Saviour and Lord.

The Bible also calls having faith in Christ "believing in Christ". In Acts 16:31, Paul’s answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?" is: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." At other times, this faith or belief is termed "trust"—"Trust in God, trust also in me" says Christ in John 14:1.

So, we are saved through faith, and we also know that the Bible is clear that the opposite also holds true, that "whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." (John 3:18).

Obviously in light of both of these teachings it is of some importance to understand what this "faith" – that is so important – actually is and what it isn’t! The classic definition of faith in Protestant theology, summing up what the Bible teaches, has been well stated by the German Reformer, Philip Melanchthon:

"Saving faith involves three things: knowledge, intelligent assent, and trust."

Each of these elements matters: knowledge, intelligent assent and trust. It is hard to overstate how revolutionary this rediscovery of the biblical view of faith was, as opposed to the view of medieval Catholicism.

There is an element of knowledge in faith, according to Protestantism. We do not have a blind faith in whatever the Church believes, even if we haven’t a clue what that is. (This is what the Catholic Church mistakenly believed.) We can only have faith where we know what we believe. The American preacher A W Tozer said: "Faith is the gaze of the soul upon a saving God." Far from being "blind faith", true faith starts with gazing upon God and seeing him as he really is. We don’t need to know everything but we do need to know at least some things. At the very least it would be hard to see how anyone can have faith in Christ who does not understand what Paul summarises as "the gospel" about what Christ did for us:

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

The second element in faith is what Melanchthon called "intellectual assent". This just means that as well as knowledge what the Bible about Christ, we actually agree that what it says is true. There are many academics who know all there is to know about the biblical languages and what the biblical writers meant in the books of Scripture that they wrote, but they don’t actually believe that what the Bible says is true. They have knowledge without intellectual assent, and therefore cannot be said to have faith. This intellectual assent is the element of faith Christ
emphasised when he said to Martha: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die," (John 11:25-26) and then asked her "Do you believe this?" In other words: "Do you accept this is true, what I’ve just told you?"

But important though knowledge and intellectual assent are, by themselves they are not what the Bible means by faith. According to the Bible, real faith, saving faith, is not just in the mind, it must also be in the heart. This is where the third element of faith comes in, the element of personal trust in Jesus Christ.

You see, there is a kind of faith that has the appearance of faith, but there’s something missing. It has no heart; it has no affection, no emotion to it. According to the Letter of James, even the demons can have this kind of false faith: "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." (James 2:19). The demons know and in their minds accept that there is a God—they "believe in God" in that sense—but they do not have faith in him!

To have real faith in Christ is to trust Christ with your salvation, your eternity, your whole life. Trust is to depend on him, to rely on him, to be committed to him and to be happy and contented to be so.

A patient who has been told that John Smith is a doctor and actually believes that he is a doctor, but who won’t take the medicine Dr Smith prescribes, doesn’t really have faith in Dr Smith because there is no trust or reliance.

The story is told of the 19th century acrobat, Blondin, whose death-defying feats on the tightrope made him very famous. Blondin used to put a tightrope up right across Niagara Falls. To fall from it would mean certain death. Huge crowds would gather and watch Blondin go out onto the rope and walk from one side of the Falls to the other. And then Blondin would offer anyone who wanted it, the chance to go on his back, piggy-back, and be carried across the falls.

No one ever took up the offer, except one man, Blondin’s manager, Harry Colcord. He made the trip on Blondin’s back many times. The crowd knew that Blondin was supposed to be able to do this, and they could see with their own eyes that it was true, but only Colcord had the faith to actually put his life in Blondin’s hands and be carried over safely. Having true faith in Christ means we are willing to put our lives in his hands and let him carry us through life safely and over to eternity in heaven.