Faith or Saving Faith...

Faith?... or SAVING faith?

James 2:14 says, “¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”  James implies that there is a kind of faith that does not save—a faith that is absent any works that confirm that God has done a saving work in your heart.  Saving faith is a gift from God and it results in a changed heart that leads to a transformed life that includes good works.  The works do not produce the changed heart—they come in response to a heart that God has changed through the gospel.  We must distinguish between faith— and saving faith that produces far more than being afraid at the prospect of hell and making the decision to make Jesus your fire insurance. ^[1]
Just because someone is willing to hear the message and even feel fear in response to the prospect of judgment, that is no sure sign God is at work in their heart.  The great evangelist C.H. Spurgeon goes even further and said something that will be scarcely understood today. Listen carefully. “I have heard it often asserted that if you believe that Jesus Christ died for you, you will be saved.  My dear hearer, do not be deluded by such an idea... Do not get that into your head or it will ruin you …Do not say, “I believe that Jesus Christ died for me,” and because of that feel that you are saved.  You may believe that Jesus Christ died for you….That is not saving faith… … I pray you to remember that the genuine faith that saves the soul has for its main element—trust—absolute rest of the whole soul—on the Lord Jesus Christ to save me and relying, as I am, wholly and alone on him, I am saved…”

The fact that Spurgeon here doesn’t make sense to many evangelicals is testimony to how far our collective understanding of the gospel has eroded.  Spurgeon is simply saying that just because a person has an intellectual belief that Jesus Christ died for them--that does not save them.  There’s a huge gulf separating between having a belief about Christ and believing in Christ. The message of the Word is not that if you believe Jesus died for you, you are saved but that “…everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  There is a world of difference between on the one hand, believing that Jesus’ death is for you and on the other, in your desperate condition as a sinner, looking in faith to Christ alone to save you.  To state that you have a belief that Jesus died for you is simply to make a spiritual assertion.  That is not the same thing as a person to whom God has revealed both their sin and his anger at their sin and in response to that work of God; he/she cries out in faith to Jesus as his/her only hope of rescue from certain judgment.  Think of it this way--if you fall into an icy lake and as you are about to go down for the third time you see a fishing boat 20 feet away;  it’s one thing to assert the belief, “You know, God put that boat here for my benefit—they are here for me.”  Will that belief get you rescued?  No, it’s as you see your life pass before your eyes and with your last ounce of energy you cry out to them as your only hope, “Help, save me!” that you will be rescued from certain death.  In the first instance, you are simply mentally connecting that you have a need and those in the boat can do something about it.  In the second instance, in an act of faith rooted in the awareness of your desperate need, you cry out for them to rescue you from certain death.  

There are far too many in the church today who can assert, “I believe Jesus died for me” and far too few who have seen their grievous need of forgiveness before a holy, sin-hating God and by God’s grace actively reached out in faith to Christ as their only hope for salvation.  In the first case, the result is a person who displays little if any real gratitude to God because in the end, their relationship with God is rooted in a spiritual belief wherein they connect their often vague sense of need with God’s ability to meet it. They have no experience of God’s rescue from sin.  In the second case, the Holy Spirit has made the believer alive to his/her tremendous need of forgiveness and has given him/her the faith to cry out to Jesus as the only hope of salvation.  The first scenario produces what is perhaps a very nice person who knows some theology and may go to church and even serve in some capacity and when they die—they go to hell because their belief that Jesus died for them is really what the Bible would call “unbelief”—faith that does  not save.  The second scenario produces a person who has been miraculously, savingly touched by God and as a result is a worshipper who lives in awe of his saving love.  They have a personal relationship with the God who in his great mercy, reached down and pulled them from the pit.  When they were absolutely circling the drain, Jesus brought them out of death to life. 

Where are you?  Are you a person who simply has a belief that Jesus died for you?  If so, that would explain your consistent lukewarmness—even indifference to God.  That’s not a faith that will save you; neither will it make you a worshipper of God.  Or, by God’s saving grace has God revealed your sin to you and from that grave understanding of yourself as a sinner standing before a holy God who hates your sin—have your cried out to him in faith?  That is saving faith which produces works that come from a heart of worship of Jesus as your personal Savior. 

[1] C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) Sermons, vol. 58, 583-4 as quoted in Ian Murray’s The Invitation System, Banner of Truth Trust, 1967, p. 34.

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