Word of Salvation – Vol.32 No.25 – July 1987
I Believe
Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 7
Reading: Romans 4:13-5:5
Singing: PsH.77:1; PsH.77:2,3; BoW.6; PsH.378; PsH.47:1,2,7; BoW:150
Some years ago a young chap began attending my catechism classes because his friend, a baptised member of the church had invited him. He attended for quite a while and learned the doctrines of the Christian faith, just like the others did. But somehow he never came to trust Jesus Christ for his salvation during the time I taught him the a,b,c of the Christian faith. He knew many things with his mind but it remained mere theory and fact. Christ remained to him a person from the past, not the living Lord He is to those who believe in Him. Now that young man was at first unfamiliar with the things Christians believe. But many people are of course familiar with what the Christian faith teaches because they grew up with it. Their parents are Christian and they regularly go to church. Yet, even among those whose names are on the membership roll of a church, it is possible for some to have a knowledge of Christian teachings but without these doing anything for them. It is possible to know about Jesus Christ but not deriving any comfort from Him.
John Calvin said that the Roman Catholic church taught him that Christ is God, that God is a triune Being, that salvation is in Christ, but it did not teach him how to have Christ as His very own Saviour. John Wesley, travelling to America in the 18th Century to do missionary work there, found himself quite afraid when in the midst of a bad storm at sea. On the same ship were a group of men who prayed and sang hymns, and were obviously quite calm and cheerful. When Wesley asked why they were not afraid, they spoke of their trust in Christ and that they would be with Him always even if the ship sank and they perished. As yet Wesley did not have that faith and sadly said to himself, “I came to convert the heathen, but who shall convert me?”
Like many before us, we too have been instructed about the doctrines of the Christian faith. The previous Lord’s Days of our Catechism have shown that Scripture teaches us that there is a wonderful comfort in belonging to Christ. In order to enjoy that comfort we need to know the a,b,c of the Christian religion. We then began by looking at the doctrine of sin. God hates sin like we hate cancer. Sin and disobedience separate us from God who is holy and just. Unless we are saved by someone we will remain in our guilt and be forever cut off from God. So we need to know how we can be saved from God’s judgment. That someone who can save us from the judgment of God is the God-Man Jesus Christ. And salvation in Christ is really the central message of the Bible. But now the question is: how can you and I benefit from that salvation which God has worked out in Christ? How do we possess it? How can we appropriate it? How can we make it our own? That is what needed to happen to that young fellow in my catechism class. It’s what John Calvin wanted to know, as well as John Wesley. It’s what everyone needs to know. Well, the answer is faith! And Lord’s Day 7 deals with faith.
Our theme is “I Believe“.
And firstly we see that faith is a gift from God;
secondly we see that faith rests on the Word of God;
and thirdly faith is a matter of trusting God.
- In the first place, then, we see that faith is a gift from God.
Remember, the question is: how can you and I benefit from the salvation that God has worked out in Christ? Think first of this salvation. It’s not something that is real only when you feel it. Joy or pain, for example, are only real when you see them in people’s feelings, even more real when you experience them yourself. They are subjective realities. But the salvation that Christ has worked out is not just an emotional thing – it’s not just a feeling. Salvation in Christ is an objective reality. It is there outside of us as a real fact; a truth that exists even if you or I were never to experience it. But salvation in Christ becomes a real thing for you and me personally when God, through the Holy Spirit, grants faith to us. When the Spirit of God works faith in me, I begin to really believe that all that Christ has done in His work of salvation is true and true for me personally. When I have faith then I believe that the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection have reached me and have done something for me. So there stands Christ and all that He has done as Saviour, and here stand I, in need of that salvation. Now for me to have that salvation, to share in it, I need to have faith. Faith is the connecting link, the bridge, if you like.
It is a little bit like sitting in a rather cold room in your house whilst outside the sun is shining and it’s pleasantly warm. Being inside you can see the sun shining outside through the window, you have to believe it for it is fact. It would remain a fact even if you had no window to look through and you could not see it. But the warmth of the sun is only experienced when you actually step outside into the sunshine.
By the way, I trust that you don’t mind me making excessive use of personal pronouns like “you”, “I”, “we” and “us”. You see when we talk about Christ and about faith, it has to be made personal. When you leave this building later on you must know whether or not Christ means something to you personally. And faith will make all the difference.
For the person and work of Christ to really benefit me I have to step into all those benefits of Christ with a believing heart. It’s like stepping from a cold room into the warm sun. When I have faith in Christ, it is then that I experience the comfort of knowing that all my sins have been forgiven. When I have faith in Christ I know that I am right with God and have been granted salvation. Faith in Christ results in my experiencing the warmth, the strength, the assurance, the security of being a child of God.
It is the Spirit of God who works that faith in me. It’s a gift from God to me. I don’t have that faith in myself. It’s not buried somewhere deep inside me and that I can bring it to the surface by a conscious act of my will. No, the faith that unites me to Christ and to all His benefits is to come from God’s Spirit.
So, on the one side there is Christ and the work of redemption He accomplished, and on the other side stand I. Now faith is the link between Christ and me. Through faith Christ’s benefits flow on to me. These benefits are the forgiveness of all my sins, the lifting of my guilt, no longer having to face God’s just punishment, and therefore having peace with God. Furthermore, by being united with Christ, His likeness will be found in me more and more. I am made a co-worker with Christ in His kingdom. I don’t belong to my sinful self anymore, but I belong to my faithful Saviour and Lord who will guide me, protect me, watch over me, comfort me, and bless me. I may glorify God through Christ and everything in life takes on a new meaning as I am persuaded to willingly submit to the Lordship of Christ.
Yes, all that and more are the benefits that flow from Christ to me when the Holy Spirit gives me faith. One is reminded here of John 15 where Jesus speaks of the vine and the branches. From the vine the sap flows into the branches and these begin to sprout new leaves and eventually produce the grapes. A similar thing happens to the sinner when he is connected to Christ by faith.
Earlier on we referred to Calvin and Wesley as men who at one time in their lives wished that the blessings of Christ were more real to them. In time it came to them but it is of Martin Luther that history provides us with more detail. Luther also knew the truths the Bible taught. He even taught these truths to his students. Yet, Luther often complained that he himself was standing outside the warmth of God’s redemption in Christ. He was, as it were, still sitting in a cold room, talking about the comfort of Christ, but not being able to enjoy its warmth. He could see it, for Scripture showed it to him, yet he did not experience it. And what happened to Luther shows precisely how faith is a gift from God’s Spirit. Luther tried hard to get to that point where Christ’s salvation was real to him, where he could enjoy its comfort. So he tried to reach that point by flogging himself with a whip that did some nasty things to his back. He worked himself into the ground. All with the aim of somehow achieving righteousness and then hoping to experience the peace of God in his heart. He knew all about Christ, yet it was as cold to him as a room away from the sun’s warmth. Then one day, as he was reading the letter to the Romans, he came upon the statement, “the righteous will live by faith.” Yes, he wanted to be a righteous man and he knew that Christ played an important part in that somehow. He had tried so hard to live righteously, yet he still had no peace with God because his failures and shortcomings always stood in the way. But now as he pondered about that statement, “the righteous will live by faith” he was made to look more closely at the words “by faith”. It dawned on him that he was trying all the time to be right with God by his own efforts, as though it depended on him. But it’s by faith, he realised. By faith in whom? Luther now saw that he had faith in his own works. He had trusted in himself in order to be right with God but it came to no good because he failed every time. It must be faith in Christ then! For Christ had not failed. Christ had done everything that had to be done in order to satisfy God’ justice. Now Luther saw that one can live by trusting Christ. To try to live by believing that you yourself had to make it up to God ended up in misery all the time because you couldn’t do it perfectly. But Christ did it and believing that He did it for you enables you to live in peace with God. Yes, the righteous will live by faith. When Luther made this discovery, it was like stepping away from the cold room into the warm sunshine of God’s salvation in Christ. It was faith in Christ’s person and work that did it. But this faith was not Luther’s doing, it was given to him by God.
But if faith is a gift from God then it follows that it is God’s right as to whom He gives it. We might like to give faith to this person and to that person. But faith is not ours to give. We have to leave it to the sovereign good pleasure of God. All men need to have faith in Christ for without it they will not be saved. All men are lost through Adam but salvation will only come to those who believe in Christ. And these will believe when God gives faith to them.
But now the fact that it is God’s sovereign good pleasure as to whom faith is given, does this not make the saving of sinners a very uncertain business? Why should we bother at all with evangelism and with Christian upbringing?
- Well, when we say, as we did in our first point, that faith is a gift – as indeed we believe the Bible to be teaching – then in the second place let us see that faith rests on the Word of God.
The scriptural doctrine of election tells us that God knows whom He will save. All whom God has chosen to eternal life, will receive faith. It is not our business to guess who these might be. We may leave that with God. But it is our business to preach and teach the riches of Christ. We may be, and must be, witnesses to Christ in word, deed, yes, with our whole life. Faith never pops up just by itself. It always rests on the Word of God. Therefore it is that Word of God that must reach the unbeliever through evangelism and our own children through Christian nurture.
The covenant of grace that God has established between believers and their children is of great significance here. To them God has specifically said, “I will be God to you and to your children”. This means that all those in the covenant community have the promise of God that He will give faith. Baptism is a sign and seal of that promise. But it still means that children of believers must hear the Word. They must be instructed in it. Where the Word of God is not present, there faith will not be found either.
The proclamation of the Word of God is of the greatest importance. It’s not good enough to tell nice stories and to present exciting testimonies and to sing nice songs. These all have their place but never at the expense of proclaiming God’s word in preaching and teaching. It is in the Scriptures that God’s work of salvation in Christ is set forth. There we have it first-hand and it must never be squeezed out or relegated to a place of lesser importance. Faith can only rest on the Word of God, it cannot rest on the word of man. What God’s Word says is truth, it is dependable, it is reliable. We cannot say that about man’s work.
It’s important to stress this for it has become popular to present faith as some kind of magic formula with which you can handle every kind of crisis in life. Do you worry about not being able to pay the bills? Well, have faith, it will help you. Did you lose your job? Well, don’t worry about that either, faith will help you through. Did you lose a loved one? Well, don’t let it upset you too much, with faith you can carry on. It’s true, of course, that we to have faith in all kinds of situations. But it isn’t true that just having faith will give you a smooth ride through life. Rather, faith is learning from God all that He has revealed in the Bible and how Christ’s benefits flow over into our lives whatever the situation.
Faith is not just some magic formula. Faith is knowing what God has done, what He is doing still, and what He will do in the future. Hebrews 11, especially, the last part of that chapter, shows that faith is not just a success story. It speaks of terrible persecution and suffering from which there was no deliverance. But the faith that God gave to His children enabled them to keep on seeing Christ whatever their plight and sorrow. Knowing what God’s promises were for the future and what they could expect in the present as Christians in a secular world, enabled them to remain steadfast.
Having faith, therefore, is not stepping into a vacuum but it is stepping into a kingdom where you know Christ is King over all things. Having faith is to rest on what God has said in His Word and being equally clear on what He has not said. But this means that you need to know your Bible. You need to understand its overall message. It’s possible to know a great many texts off by heart and yet lack an overall view of what God’s revelation in Christ is all about. It’s best, of course, to have both. How do you get this overall view of what the Bible is all about? The catechism points us here to the articles of our Christian faith and then proceeds, in the following Lord’s Days, with an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed.
Our creeds and confessions are not so popular these days. Some have the uncomfortable feeling that they are put on equal par with Scripture. But this is not true now nor has been in the past. They are no more than human, and therefore imperfect, formulations and summaries of what the Bible teaches. They present God’s truth in a systematic way. But faith needs that. Creeds are necessary because God’s truth is challenged and undermined by all kinds of errors and heresies. If there was only truth, if there was only God and perfection, then creeds would not be needed. But the presence of sin in all its different forms makes creeds necessary.
So God has guided His church through many centuries of spiritual conflict and heresies. Through years of struggle God’s Spirit has led His people to make definitions and statements as to what the Bible is saying in the face of challenges and error. Our faith will be the poorer if it had to start right from scratch working out what it means to live by faith in Christ over against all kinds of false teachings that are a danger to the faith today. For do not suppose that when you do away with the work of the church of the past that you also will no longer be troubled by the false teachings of the past. Often the false beliefs of the past are still with us, except that they are dressed up in different clothes. We still need our creeds and confessions in so far as they truly set forth the teaching of Scripture, for faith must rest on knowing the Word of God as it seeks to identify truth from error.
- Then finally faith is not only knowledge, it is also a matter of trusting God.
Faith in God’s salvation in Christ includes having a personal conviction that I am saved. When you have a true faith then you trust that what God has worked out in Christ holds true for you personally.
Sometimes it happens that people in the church are hesitant to confess that they are the saved children of God. If such lack of assurance is due to such people not knowing what God has done in Christ, then they must not be persuaded that they are Christian believers if in fact they are not. They need further instruction in the Word of God and the church must pray for their salvation that God will give faith also to them, through the Word. But what if people have professed faith in Christ and are yet uncertain about their salvation? Indeed, can we, who profess to believe in Christ, always say at every moment and in any situation that we are sure of our salvation? We find that to be especially difficult when we are faced with challenges of a false science or when we are acutely aware of our sins and sinful inclinations. Or when we are gripped by doubt. I have known Christians of many years to be caught in a terrible time of uncertainty. But assurance of salvation in Christ does not rest on how well I served Christ. Nor does it rest on my being always convinced in my own mind about the truth of it. If we take an honest look at ourselves, at our imperfect faith, our lack of sincerity, our times of hypocrisy, our failures and shortcomings, yes, then we will never be sure. But does God ask us to trust ourselves or did He ask us to trust His work in Christ? He did the latter of course. Christ is always the basis of our hope.
Come, look at Christ. See how the Bible speaks of Him, about what He said and what He did. See that He is God. You can believe Christ, can’t you? He really came into the world, He really died and rose again. His cross and resurrection and ascension are true historical facts. If you cannot trust God and what He did in Christ, well, yes, then there is really nothing to offer you. Then it’s of no use to speak to you of salvation, of forgiveness of sin, of being right with God, of pardon, of comfort, of eternal life. All that would be of no meaning, of no consequence, if it is true that Christ is not the Saviour, not God come in the flesh. But then I do not know what you are going to make of all the miracles He did. Either Christ is God or He is some kind of madman or worse.
But if you do not deny that Christ is God, if you do believe that He came to save people from their sins, then why not trust Him for saving you! Go on, you may do that, trust Him for saving also you, for surely Christ was not lying when He said: “God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Amen.