The promise of the gospel is that whoever believes in Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). The believer is saved through believing. Faith is the instrument by which one receives the atoning benefits and saving righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Moreover, faith is the alone instrument by which the grace given to the world by various means can be efficaciously received for justification. Preaching is a means of grace. So is baptism, prayer, Bible reading, and the Eucharist. Who among us has not received grace through the fellowship of the saints and a brother’s loving encouragement or admonition? Faith is not a means of distributing grace; it is an instrument for receiving grace. And we receive that grace not by earning it, not by qualifying for it through our good works, but by faith alone.
All this is standard fare in Reformed circles, even if it is sometimes forgotten in the midst of polemical pedantry, but so too is the affirmation that we are not saved by faith. Faith cannot save anyone; it can only receive the gift of salvation. Faith is completely powerless by itself. The Belgic Confession states it well: “However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us—for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness” (Article 22). Believers are saved, if they are saved at all, by Christ.
Christians often suffer from a lack of assurance for very misguided and unnecessary reasons. For example, they might wonder, “Do I believe enough? Am I sufficiently sincere?” Reformed Christians are particularly high brow and theological in their doubts: “Perhaps I was not chosen from the foundation of the world. Maybe I am unregenerate. My anguish over my sin, my persistent crying out to God, may only be the self-deception of a hypocrite whose heart remains bound fast in sin!” But if your salvation depends upon the adequacy of your faith, you will be lost. No one has perfect faith or even sufficient faith. After all, faith is a work of God (John 6:29), and your faith is imperfect, just like all of your other works.
A friend of mine likes to illustrate this with the story of a frozen lake in the middle of a forest. Two people journeying through the snowy woods come to the bank. The lake is too large to walk around it. The temperature is plummeting, and the only hope the two men have of completing their journey is to risk walking upon the ice. One of the men is trained in math and science. He pulls out his phone and checks the temperature for the last two weeks, the estimated depth of the lake, and does a few calculations to determine the probable thickness and strength of the ice. The other man looks at the freezing forest, stares at the cold, hard surface, and then announces, “I think it’ll be fine.” How much confidence either man has is irrelevant. So too is how they arrived at their decision. The only question is whether the ice is strong enough to hold them. The first man may walk confidently as he marches across the lake, but if the ice is not strong enough, he will break through and die. The second man may tremble and sweat during every slow and painful step to the other side, but if the ice is thick, he will make it. The strength of their faith is not the issue, only the strength of the ice.
We are not saved by trusting in our faith. We are saved by trusting in Christ. Your faith may be strong or weak, well-informed or misinformed. It is better to have strong and well-informed faith. But we are all like the father in Mark 9 who cries out to Jesus: “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” He was a believer who still struggled with unbelief, and if you don’t think that is you, how else do you explain your sinful worry, fear, and all too frequent disobedience to what you know you ought to do? The Bible calls that unbelief. That father was an unbeliever who wanted to believe, and the only kind of unbeliever like that is one whose heart has been made tender by the Spirit of God.The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith (Luke 17:5-10), but the Lord indicated that was not the problem. They did not need more faith to obey Christ; they needed to understand that he is Lord, and they are not. One does not build stronger muscles so that one day he can go to the gym. He goes to the gym and lifts heavy objects in order to build muscle. In the same way, we are not to cry out to God to give us more faith in order that we might obey his command. Rather, we are to obey his command, to simply trust and obey him, in order that our faith might grow. Jesus did not say that if one has faith like a mountain he can move a grain of mustard seed (Matt. 17:20). It is not the size of the faith that counts, only the size and strength of the One in whom we have faith. Simply trust him, and obey.
