Faith is more than important, it is necessary. It is necessary both in temporal things and in the things of the Spirit.
1. Its necessity in temporal matters.—The more man advances in culture, the more true will it be, and the more evident, that faith is essential to his perfection and his success.
(1) Faith widens and quickens and regulates man’s intellectual activity. Faith, as an intellectual conviction, assents to the truth. Faith, therefore, cannot exist without some activity of the intellect. This does not mean that faith involves a high degree of intellectual activity or discipline, least of all that it is in any sense a substitute for the training of the scholar or the discipline of experience. But it does mean that it invariably excites to thought, and that its natural tendency is to quicken the intellectual life. Multitudes have found in the beginning of the life of faith the beginnings of intellectual activity.
(2) Faith includes a very large element of feeling. Faith in the Christian sense is pre-eminently emotional, for the reason that it is fixed directly upon a Person who is at once the most perfect and the most unpretending, the loftiest and the lowliest, the mildest and the sternest, the most forgiving and the most uncompromising, the most ideal and the most real, the most divine and the most human. Abstractions and ideals may rouse and satisfy the intellect, but the heart demands a Person. Every Christian household can furnish some living example of an inmate who has been transformed to sweeter love and mellowed self-control by faith in the personal Christ, such as otherwise could never have been attained. Christian burial-places scattered by thousands all over the earth are watched by the loving eye of God, in which reposes the dust of myriads of meek and loving souls who would never have been formed to the loving tempers and governed appetites and conquered pride for which their memory is blessed, except by faith in this personal Christ. More than that, personal faith in Christ trains and stimulates to the finest and most perfect culture, whether in manners, literature, or art. There can be no question that the best achievements in art and literature have been the offspring of such a faith.
I had two delightful hours this afternoon alone with Michael Angelo and Raphael, in the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican. I left the place fully persuaded that the two men were superhuman, unrivalled, and for ever unapproachable. The study of their works ends in the conviction that the painters implicitly believed in the divine truth of the themes they illustrated—nothing else, notwithstanding their God-gifted genius, could have inspired them; and difficult as it is to believe that Raphael really took it for granted that saints, armed with long swords, appeared in the sky at a moment when fortune was going against one of the popes in battle, and so turned the tables on his enemies, I think the assumption must be allowed. [Note: W. P. Frith, My Autobiography and Reminiscences, 315.]
(3) It is by faith that man stands strongly and wisely in duty. Here the old question returns, If a man has faith in duty, what need is there also of faith in a person, who can only exemplify and enforce duty? Because a person who exemplifies duty is more attractive and powerful than any abstract law of duty; because duty is not a cold, unsocial, loveless impulse, but is personal, sympathetic, and social; because love is not the love of goodness in the abstract, but the love of goodness as impersonated; because duty looks up to whatever is higher than itself, and prompts to reverence and worship—the goodness which is grander and greater than itself—and in its own nature delights in faith and loyalty. Duty, therefore, is, by the necessity of its nature, inspired by examples of goodness, and delights in the law of the perfect and reigning God. Duty is not duty if it does not blossom into faith. No man can be loyal to conscience who is not also loyal to the loving and living Jesus.
(4) Faith is necessary to men’s happiness. Without faith in God men are miserable. Some men are not conscious of the cause of this misery: this, however, does not prevent the fact of their being miserable. For the most part they conceal the fact as well as possible from themselves, by occupying their minds with society, sport, frivolity of all kinds, or, if intellectually disposed, with science, art, literature, business.
It has been my lot to know not a few of the famous men of our generation, and I have always observed that there is no lasting happiness without faith. All “moral” satisfactions soon pall by custom, and as soon as one end of distinction is reached, another is pined for. There is no finality to rest in, while disease and death are always standing in the background. Custom may even blind men to their own misery, so far as not to make them realize what is wanting; yet the want is there.
La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de haine . . .
Et puis—bon jour
La vie est breve:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de reve . . .
Et puis—bon soir!
The above is a terse and true criticism of this life without hope of a future one. Is it satisfactory? But Christian faith, as a matter of fact, changes it entirely.
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of a whole world dies
With the setting sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
Love is known to be all this. How great, then, is Christianity, as being the religion of love, and causing men to believe both in the cause of love’s supremacy and the infinity of God’s love to man. [Note: G. J. Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 163.]
2. Its necessity in the things of the Spirit.—The great gifts of salvation are ascribed to faith.
For instance, the forgiveness of sins: — “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past” (Rom_3:25).
The presence of the Spirit: — “That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal_3:14).
Sanctification: — “Purifying their hearts by faith” (Act_15:9).
Perseverance: — “Who are kept by the power of God through faith” (Joh_11:25).
The resurrection of the body: — “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
Eternal life: — “That whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have eternal life” (Joh_3:16).
The Body and Blood of Christ: — “I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (Joh_6:35).
Or, as all God’s ineffable gifts may be compendiously stated in one word, justification: — “That he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom_3:26).
Faith is the necessary condition of, and instrument in, our justification, because it is the one thing without which God can do nothing. God can do everything for man except outrage his free will. To destroy that would be to destroy his very nature as a spiritual being. It is quite impossible to exaggerate this inability of God, this limitation of His Omnipotence. He could destroy man; He could re-create him; He could, if He willed, so alter his nature as to make him a mere machine. He cannot, without a total destruction of him as man, and as a free creature, outrage his free will. If man will not respond to God’s gracious overtures God can do nothing. Hence man’s faith, the response of his whole nature Godward in knowledge, will, and love, is an absolutely necessary pre-requisite for God’s action. It is not of course pretended that faith must be perfect and complete before God can work. A perfect faith would be possible for none but a perfect man. And faith grows, each element in it helping the more perfect growth of the other elements. But a response there must be in man before God can work.
Faith is so essential and characteristic an element of the Christian life that Paul frequently speaks of Christians as believers without specifying the nature or object of their faith—a fact which shows that Christianity, however it may have been conceived and presented at other periods of its history, was for the Apostle a religion based on faith. In like manner the verb to believe means to be a Christian, or, in the aorist, to become a Christian, no less than thirteen times in the letters of Paul. Thus, for example, he writes to the brethren in Rome, “For now is our salvation nearer than when we became Christians.”
Faith is the EYE of the soul, by which we look unto Christ, as the poor stung Israelites did to the brazen serpent, lifted up upon the pole, and thereby receive a cure from him; but, as Paul saith in another case, 1Co_12:14, the body is not one member but many, so faith is not one member but many. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? 1Co_12:17. So if faith were our eye only, and nothing else, what should we do for other instruments of spiritual life and motion? Behold, therefore, how faith besides being our eye, is our FOOT, by which we come to Christ; an expression often used in Scripture, e.g. Mat_11:25. Come unto me, that is, believe in me. Joh_6:37. “Him that cometh unto me,” that is, that believeth in me, “I will in no wise cast out.” By unbelief we depart from the living God, Heb_3:12. By faith we come to him by Christ, Heb_7:23. And without him there is no coming, for he is the way, the true, and living, and only way; all that are out of him are out of the way.
It is our HAND also, by which we receive him, Joh_1:12. “To as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name”; where believing is the same with receiving. In the gospel, God offers him to us, freely and graciously, to be our Prince and Saviour, to be “the Lord our righteousness,” to redeem us from iniquity, and to purify us to himself. When we do heartily, by faith, close with that offer, and accept of him to be ours, he becomes ours: we have union with him, relation to him, and benefit by him. But then, there is another act of faith put forth at the same time by another hand, which is the giving act, whereby we give ourselves to him to be his, to love him, and serve him, and live to him. “O Lord,” saith David, “I am thy servant, truly I am thy servant,” Psa_116:16. “They gave their own selves unto the Lord,” 2Co_8:2. Without this our receiving is not right. There is a faith that is one-handed, receives, but gives not; this will not save. They that come to Christ for rest, and receive Christ, must take his yoke upon them, and learn of him.
It is the MOUTH of the soul, by which we feed upon him, and are nourished by him. Joh_6:53, “Except ye eat his flesh, and drink his blood,” that is, believe in him, as it is there explained, ye cannot be saved. And this of all the rest doth in the most lively manner represent to us what it is to believe. To believe, is when a poor soul, being made sensible of its lost and undone condition by sin, doth earnestly desire, as they do that are hungry, and thirsty, after a Saviour. Oh for a righteousness, wherein to appear before God! Oh for a pardon for what is past! Oh for grace and strength to do so no more! And hearing, by the report of the gospel, and believing that report, that all this, and a great deal more, is to be had in Christ; the next request is—Oh for that Christ! Oh, that that Christ might be mine! Why, he is thine, man, if thou wilt accept of him I Accept of him! Lord, I accept of him. Then feed upon him, “His flesh is meat indeed, his blood is drink indeed.” Oh, taste and see that he is gracious. How sweet are his promises! What inward refreshment doth the soul find by his suffering and dying to redeem, and save! How is it thereby strengthened, as by bread, and made glad, as by wine! We must and do each of us eat for ourselves, and drink for ourselves. My eating will not refresh another, nor strengthen another; neither will my believing. The just shall live by his faith, his own faith. Other creatures die to make food for our bodies, and to maintain natural life; but then we must take them, and eat them, and digest them, and having done so, they turn into nourishment to us, and so become ours, that they and we cannot be parted again. It is so in believing. Christ died to make food for our souls; and not thereby to maintain only, but to give spiritual life, which other food doth not to the body. But then we must take him, and eat him, and digest him, that is, make a particular application of him to ourselves, and, having done so, nothing shall, nothing can, separate us from him. Oh that unto us it might be more and more given, thus to believe! [Note: Matthew Henry, Works, 101.]
I wonder less at God’s respect
For man, a minim jot in time and space,
Than at the soaring faith of His elect,
That gift of gifts, the comfort of His grace. [Note: Robert Bridges, “The Growth of Love.”]
