are they the same?
If ‘true faith and love of God and our neighbour’ are what’s necessary both to preach God’s word and to understand God’s word, what then is faith? This is such an important question for pastors to understand. What is faith? I’ve preached Romans and Hebrews. I get the Reformation and post-Reformation conflicts over this question. I know and love the Westminster Shorter Catechism definition: ‘faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.’
But what is faith? It’s not a thing. It’s not just an attitude. What is it?
Hebrews 11.1…helps, somewhat. ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ So faith is assurance and confidence? I cling to Christ and his mercy for salvation. I have no hope of heaven apart from the grace of Christ. My doctrine is solid. But assurance? Confidence? Those feel distant, elusive, a prize for Christians who are either presumptuous or too shallow to understand the distance between God and man.
for an excellent talk on Bullinger and the Decades see https://www.westminsterconference.co.uk/bullingers-decades/
Bullinger describes faith as ‘an undoubted belief, most firmly grounded in the mind,’ or, ‘a settled and undoubted persuasion of belief leaning upon God and his word.’ He quotes Calvin, ‘faith is a steadfast assurance of the conscience, which embraces Christ in the same way he is offered to us by the gospel.’
Undoubted, settled, steadfast. Faith is immovable. Faith requires conviction. Faith produces assurance.
But back to Hebrews 11, the examples the biblical author used didn’t seem all that solid in their conviction. Their lives seemed anything but settled or steadfast. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Gideon-Barak-Sampson-Jephthat-David…need I go on? That’sfaith?
Bullinger, having explained the faith it takes to believe God in his word, to believe that what scripture says is really and actually true, defines faith this way: ‘faith is a gift of God, poured into man from heaven, whereby he is taught with an undoubted persuasion wholly to lean on God and his word.’
So faith is a gift. Faith is something God pours into us. It’s not our confidence, it’s not our conviction, it’s not our settledness, it’s God’s grace accomplishing something in us. It’s God turning our minds to him and causing us to trust in his word.
The popular use of Hebrews 11.1 throws us off track. Well, it throws me off track at any rate. Confidence and conviction hardly define my regular attitude towards God. I’m not claiming that’s a strength. But my soul is so easily rattled by this life, by my sin. I’m rarely confident about anything except my own failure. I know God’s word is true, but that hardly means my heart is placid. But the problem here is I’m looking at faith in terms of me, in terms of how I feel because of faith. That’s getting faith all wrong. Faith isn’t what I, faith is what God produces by his grace in me.
Bullinger emphasises that God uses the ordinary means of his grace to produce this faith in his people. ‘He could have used his absolute power or miracles to inspire faith in his people,’ he writes. But instead God uses the preaching of his word and his people hearing the foolishness of preaching. We have to ask God to produce faith in us, even as we listen to sermons, but that’s how God creates faith in us. He uses the preaching of the word. Incidentally, that means that neglecting God through avoiding his people and the preaching of his word, while often the first step when believers begin to struggle is also the most deadly. We’re avoiding the very medicine by which God would cure our souls.
He spends quite a while in this sermon emphasising the undoubted nature of faith. He uses the example of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 to demonstrate true faith. I understand what Bullinger is saying, and maybe this is my hangups rather than a problem with Bullinger, but most of the examples of true faith in the gospels seem less examples of confidence and more examples of the last step before despair. The Centurion whose servant Jesus heals aside, so many of those who truly trusted in Jesus did so out of sheer desperation. The man with the demon possessed son in Mark 9, Thomas in John 20, the woman in Luke 8, the blind beggar in Luke 18…they seem almost reckless in a last ditch effort to get help. They come to Jesus because there is literally no one else who can save them. That hardly seems like confidence to me. ‘Undoubted faith’ isn’t exactly how they would have looked to those around them. Yet they still come to Jesus. And maybe that’s the point; that’s what faith is.
‘True faith therefore believes that life and every good thing freely comes to it through God in Christ.’ And maybe that’s the point, faith isn’t the substance of confidence, it’s the object of confidence. It’s not the solidity of our conviction that determines our faith, it’s the one in whom our faith is placed. Faith isn’t the confidence by which we cling to God, it’s the simple clinging to God alone. Faith is a disposition of the soul by which we depend solely upon Christ for our redemption and all that follows.
This explains, at least in part, why Bullinger spends so little time on the place of doubt in the believer’s life. He’s not dealing with our experience of faith, he’s pointing us to the object of our faith and calling us to the life of obedience that follows on from that faith. Want to know where our faith can be sure? Look to Christ. Want to believe? Listen to the word of Christ.
And what do we do with doubt in our own lives? Thomas Watson writes in The Doctrine of Repentance, ‘A woman may as well expect to have a child without pangs as one can have repentance without sorrow. Someone who can believe without doubting, should suspect his faith.’ Doubts, ie a lack of confidence, are to be expected in and among a genuine faith which takes the reality of life in this sin-cursed world seriously. Doubts are a feature in the believer’s life more than a bug. But how do we deal with doubt? Look to Christ and listen to his word. The answer to doubt is the same as the requirement of faith in the first place: Christ and his word.
So what is faith? Faith is looking to Christ, believing that he can and will save all who come to him. How do we get that strength of belief, that confidence? Because even the ability to come to Christ in faith is something God pours into those whom he is drawing to himself. Faith is God’s gift that enables his children to look to Christ. Faith isn’t my confidence or assurance, faith is God’s kindness by which he points me again and again back to his Son.
Now that’s something that settles my doubts.
Next, the power of faith
