Chapter 132—Accepted by Faith
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians
3:26
.
To talk of religion in a casual way, to pray without soul hunger and living
faith, avails nothing. A nominal faith in Christ, which accepts Him merely as
the Saviour of the world, can never bring healing to the soul. The faith that
is unto salvation is not a mere intellectual assent to the truth. He who waits
for entire knowledge before he will exercise faith cannot receive blessing
from God. It is not enough to believe about Christ; we must believe in Him.
The only faith that will benefit us is that which embraces Him as a personal
Saviour; which appropriates His merits to ourselves. Many hold faith as an
opinion. Saving faith is a transaction by which those who receive Christ join
themselves in covenant relation with God. Genuine faith is life. A living
faith means an increase of vigor, a confiding trust, by which the soul becomes
a conquering power.
True faith is that which receives Christ as a personal Saviour. God gave
His only-begotten Son, that I, by believing in Him, “should not perish, but
have everlasting life” (
John 3:16
). When I come to Christ, according to His
word, I am to believe that I receive His saving grace. The life that I now live,
I am to “live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself
for me” (
Galatians 2:20
).
The apostle Paul clearly presents the relation between faith and the law
under the new covenant. He says: “Being justified by faith, we have peace
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Do we then make void the law
through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” “For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh”—it could not justify man,
because in his sinful nature he could not keep the law—“God sending his
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (
Romans 5:1
;
3:31
;
8:3, 4
).
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