1. While faith underlies all life it finds its most characteristic exercise in spiritual things. Spiritual things are in a peculiar sense unseen and eternal. Other things pass, as it were, from earth out of sight, out of time; but these come to us from that loftier, sightless, timeless order to which they properly belong. None the less they belong also to us. As we were made to live in relation to the visible, we were made to live also in relation to the invisible. We are made to seek Gad, made to seek the One, made to seek unity in the many parts of our own personal nature, unity in our relations to the great world in which we are placed, unity in our relations to Him in whom we are. Religion is the striving, however imperfectly, partially, even unconsciously, after this unity; and it is by faith that we are enabled to make the effort to gain it. In this aspect, to borrow the image of the patriarch’s dream, faith is as the ladder joining earth and heaven on which the angels of God find footing as they fulfil their ministries of love.
2. Faith in its religious sense, is of the same kind as faith in common life. It is distinguishable only by its special object and its moral intensity. Take first its object. The special object of faith is God, Christ, or the Gospel.
(1) GOD.—There is faith in oneself, and such faith is by no means unaccompanied with power. No one can read the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his obscure early days in Corsica to the brilliant days when he strode across Europe like a Colossus, without being impressed with the amazing energy which attached to an audacious self-confidence. He fought for no principle, he had no ideals, he was allured by no constant and noble ambition. His confidence was not in a cause, but in himself, and his confidence generated a marvellous strength. But there is a faith and confidence higher than this, and endowed with a corresponding larger dynamic and resource. There is a. faith in principles, in causes, in the tenacity of truth, in the indestructibility of virtue, in the invincibility of the righteous order of the world. Such faith is uninfluenced by bribes, undismayed by majorities, untroubled by threats and frowns: it tightly holds to the truth, and confidently waits its day. But still higher is the plane to which we can rise in the ascending gradient of faith. There is a faith in the living God, a faith in His love and goodwill, a confidence in His blessed presence and companionship, an assurance that we are one with Him in the sacred inheritance, and that in Him we are partakers of all the mighty ministries of grace. That is the sublimest of all faiths, and it carries with it the most tremendous of all energies, for it has behind it the omnipotence of God.
Up to the time of Moses, all the worthies named as having true faith, as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, had none of our Scriptures to originate and strengthen their confidence. They had the ever-living God, and they trusted Him with simple confidence. No Jesus had revealed to them, as to us, the very heart and face of God, as suffering in and for men, yet Almighty to effect the objects of love. At best, clouds and darkness were to them the habitation of His throne. Yet their faith in God, if simple and elementary, was firm; and if, in the darkness, they regarded Him as partial, such limitation of faith is not commended: only that confidence in His power and goodness on which, spite of all appearance to the contrary, they relied for themselves and for their posterity. “Abraham,” said our Lord, “rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.” What was the vision of the day of the Lord which gladdened the heart of the patriarch? Just this promise: “In thee, and in thy seed, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The faith of Abraham, as the faith of Paul and of Jesus, had respect to others rather than to himself; and to himself in others as a natural and spiritual posterity. He had what our Lord urges all disciples to have—“the faith of God.” That substantial certainty, which is eternal and unchangeable in Him—that He will, can and must, in the perfect freedom of consent of the creature, bring all to His home and heart. [Note: J. W. Farquhar, The Gospel of Divine Humanity, 83.]
(2) CHRIST.—“The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
The apostle refers to Jesus who is the true object of Christian faith. But it is to Jesus not as a mere man, not even like the loveliest of the lovely, or the grandest of the grand among men, or the holiest of the holy, like the apostle himself, for instance, or like the apostle of love, the apostle John. Oh no. It is Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus as of one essential nature with the great Father; not merely as one in moral character, but as one in ideal nature, so that He is Divine, and thus able, for instance, to rise again from the dead and to ascend into glory, and able also to save to the uttermost even the chief of sinners who listen to His voice as He says, “Come unto me,” and so put their trust in Him. It is Jesus as that Son of God in whom we see the express image of the Father.
Our faith passes through these stages which Christian thought has delighted to mark. Credit Christum; it believes that He is what He reveals Himself to be—true Son of Man and Son of God above all created being. Credit Christo; it believes the promises of Christ, as Abraham against all apparent possibility believed the word of God, and by these promises it marks and lights the way from this world to the next. Credit in Christum; it throws the whole soul on His salvation, resting on His atonement for remission of sin and on His grace for redemption from bondage of evil, and there finds the unity with God which is the life eternal. In each and all of its stages it has access through Him to the bosom of our Father in heaven, and so the spiritual life is “hid with Christ in God.”
We hear statements about Christ—statements made by those we love; statements made by those who speak from their own experience of what He can be and do for the soul; statements which, though they surpass our thoughts, are not inconsistent with—nay, they coincide with—our highest intuitions and ideals. We accept these statements as true. If we take trouble to investigate we find them corroborated by historical records of indisputable accuracy; and specially by the inimitable description given of His character by the four Evangelists.
We form the highest estimate possible of Christ. In our soul’s secret place we enshrine and bow before Him. We recognize Him as Son of God, the Word Incarnate, the Saviour of men, the Lord of Love, the King of the Ages.
We commit to Him the sin and shame of our past for forgiveness and cleansing; the trials and temptations of the present; the keeping of our souls for all the future.
We believe that He is absolutely trustworthy. He promised to take all the burdens that the weary and heavy-laden would east on Him, and when we transfer all our sins, sorrows, anxieties, perplexities, and difficulties to His hands, we are certain that He accepts them and undertakes. He promised that He would forgive all our sins and treat us as though we had never sinned; that He would cleanse us from the love and power of sin; that He would turn our darkest night into day, and we are absolutely sure that He cannot fail. He is Yea and Amen to the Divine promises: Immediately we realize that the whole burden is now on His shoulders, the peace that passes understanding descends to the door of our heart.
The floodgates are opened then, and within our innermost being arises a fountain of eternal love, fed from Himself; we yield ourselves to Him for the execution of His purposes and for strengthening by His power. We abide in Him and He in us; and we can do all things in Him who strengthens us. [Note: F. B. Meyer, The Soul’s Wrestle with Doubt, 6.]
(3) THE GOSPEL.—“Jesus came into. Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel.” What is the gospel which we are called to believe in? It is the gospel, or “good news,” of redemption through Jesus Christ. And by His words at the Last Supper, “This is my blood of the covenant which is shed for many unto remission of sins,” our Lord made His death the culmination of His mission, and marked this event for the future as the object of saving faith.
Paul the apostle declares to us explicitly “the gospel.” He says to the Corinthians, “Brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory (or hold fast) what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain,” and this is impossible, unless it be false that Christ rose from the dead; “for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according our the scriptures.” The gospel, then, is this—“Christ died for our sins, and was buried, and rose again.”
The true knowledge of Christ consists in receiving him as he is offered by the Father, namely, as invested with his Gospel. For, as he is appointed as the end of our faith, so we cannot directly tend towards him except under the guidance of the Gospel. Therein are certainly unfolded to us treasures of grace. Did these continue shut, Christ would profit us little. Hence Paul makes faith the inseparable attendant of doctrine in these words, “Ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him; and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph_4:20-21). [Note: Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2: 100.]
3. But religious faith differs from the faith of man in man or in nature not only in its object, but also in its intensity or assurance. Everything in life is done by faith. Fathers educate their children, young men and maidens marry, tradesmen enter into business, in faith that their objects will be fulfilled. There is, however, this important difference between secular and religious faith, that the former has always an element of uncertainty in it; whereas it is the unspeakable advantage of a true religious faith to be absolute, to-have no shadow whatever of uncertainty about its object. I rise in the morning intending to reach a certain place, and so set out in the reasonable faith that I shall arrive at my destination. But I may miss the train, or, finding it, there may be a fatal accident. I may lend money, or give credit on what seems evidence of good security, but my creditor may fail or abscond. That on which faith rests being temporal, not substance itself, but a symbol of substance, must always have an element of uncertainty. Yet it would be very foolish and unprofitable not to have faith in any one or any thing because we cannot be certain that all will prosper as we believe and hope. While in every temporal affair the pious mind has always a Deo volente expressed or understood, there ought to be no such reservation for true faith. I may not say, “God willing I shall be saved, or my brother shall finally be brought to know and to love God,” for God wills, and can will, nothing less. He is “not willing that any should perish”; He “willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth”; “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” Any doubt in such matters comes from feebleness of faith. If we introduce the time element, as in praying that such an one may be converted this day or year, then the event becomes temporal, and subject to temporal contingency under the Divine will. Faith in relation to eternal ends being based on substance, and thus demonstrably evident, is without the possibility of flaw or failure.
Faith is indeed the energy of our whole nature directed to the highest form of being. Faith gives stability to our view of the universe. As soon as we pass outside ourselves, beyond deductions from the limitations of our own minds, we rest on Faith. By Faith we are convinced that our impressions of things without are not dreams or delusions, but for us true representations of our environment. By Faith we are convinced that the signs of permanence, order, progress, which we observe in nature are true. By Faith we are convinced that fellowship is possible with our fellow-men and with God. [Note: B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith, 176.]
