If you would please turn with me in your Bibles, we’re actually going to start in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verses 1 and 2. The author writes, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.’
From the letter to the Hebrews, we turn back to Romans, chapter 4, and we’re going to read the first through the twelfth verse. I’m shortening it down a little bit from what is printed in your bulletin, talking about one of those who from old received their commendation by faith.
‘What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’ Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you have given us your word for so many reasons and so many purposes and uses, but especially one that we sometimes forget is that it is meant to be an encouragement to us as we remember those who came before as examples and exemplars of their faith in you, to show us, to teach us, and remind us how we are called to live for and before you. We ask that you be with us now, that you open our hearts and open our minds to your word and to your will. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
So last week we emphasized the eighth and ninth verses of Ephesians, chapter two: ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.’ Those are two very commonly quoted verses because they contain two terms of such great theological importance that they have become enshrined within the simplified Reformation formula as sola gratia and sola fide: grace alone and faith alone, describing just how a Christian is saved.
The entire formula is that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, all for the glory of God alone. This formula shows not only how we are saved solely according to God’s sovereign grace and election and how our salvation is ultimately for God’s glory, and also not merely for our benefit, but it also emphasizes how intrinsically linked both grace and faith are.
We are saved by God’s grace alone through our faith alone. Salvific grace is the unmerited favor which God gives to his people, and salvific faith is the means by which God applies his grace to us. Grace is the thing or state of being the object of salvation, while faith is the means or operative action by which we receive salvation. Grace is the good stuff; faith is just how we get it.
Faith, like grace, is also the sovereign gift of God. It’s like the wrapping paper which helps us to understand that something is a gift. Faith is the word which is applied today to many different things in life, many of which have no correlation at all to the Christian religion. Faith is often used to express confidence or trust in someone or something, as in, ‘I have faith that so and so is going to do the right thing,’ or ‘I have faith in the American electoral system,’ which are true type statements as the word is generally understood.
But regarding the Christian faith—our faith—we need to consider what the Bible teaches faith is and what faith is not. Faith is not a work; faith is not something that we do; faith is not something that saves or merits us salvation.
My faith that the Tampa Bay Rays will win the American League pennant this year or beat the Red Sox this afternoon has absolutely no impact on the team’s performance, for it does not necessitate my involvement in any regard. It doesn’t even mean I have to watch the game. That kind of secular faith is passive and inconsequential; it doesn’t matter.
But biblical salvific faith is given to us by God. It is both the ability and desire to believe and trust him and his promises above and against all of our worldly senses or wisdom. Biblical faith is active and consequential. Salvific faith becomes the activity whereby God’s grace is made manifest, is shown throughout the world through us—salvific grace. Faith is the display of God’s glory coming from within us. Biblical faith is not passive; it demands consequence and evidence of its presence.
People will often say that they believe in God, implying the God of the Bible, but do they really live or act as if they do? Are they living our same faith? Surely they’re living out whatever their faith is. But now you might be thinking to yourself, the author of Hebrews said, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.’ There doesn’t seem to be very much in this verse here to support any kind of evidentiary standard for the existence or presence of faith, with it being hope in something that’s invisible, intangible, and imperceptible—being the conviction that something which we cannot prove to be true or real.
The conviction that something is—it’s like the problem of Schrödinger’s cat. One day, you know, a German physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, was out solving the world’s problems with Albert Einstein, and they were discussing some of the greater spiritual implications of quantum mechanics, because who doesn’t do that, right?
Picture it: Schrödinger says to Einstein, ‘Hey Al, so if I take that cat over there and put it into that box over there and close the lid, then tell me, is the cat alive or dead?’
Einstein replies, ‘I don’t know; I would think that since you just put the cat into the box and I didn’t see you do anything to harm the cat, then I would have to believe that the cat was still alive, right?’
But now, that’s the trick. Don’t you see? You believe the cat is alive, but you do not know the cat could be alive or the cat could be dead. Common sense would suggest that it must be either one or the other, but likely alive. Logically, since the cat is both potentially alive and potentially dead by the laws of probability and mathematics, the cat, therefore, is both alive and dead to the extent of your current knowledge.
Einstein continues on, agreeing, ‘That’s true, as far as I know, to the extent of my present discernible capability, and by mathematical probability, as you say, your statement would be correct.’
‘But I believe that the cat is alive, and he probably wants to be let out of the box,’ Schrödinger answers him.
But that’s the essence of faith versus knowledge. You may believe something is true, but you cannot possibly know it’s true until you personally observe and experience it for yourself, until you have the contents of the box revealed to you, at which point you now have knowledge without doubt, and there is no longer a need for faith.
Einstein gets the last word saying, ‘But Erwin, even though I know something to be true, that also does not remove my ability to believe that it is true. Knowledge and faith can coexist.’
Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’
See, this is very much how our faith works. We believe and we also know. We hope that what we’ve been told is in the box—all of the promises of God—is true, and we’re also convicted and confident that it is true because of the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit within us.
We believe, and the Holy Spirit helps us to know. Faith and knowledge both together, and the proverbial box that’s been gifted to us is the evidence that God is. We believe that what is inside the box—God’s grace given to us by Christ—is what justifies sinners like us before a holy sovereign God like Him. So we must tightly hold onto that box by faith. God has told us very clearly and simply exactly what is inside the box. The question is, do you believe him?
Now, as I said, faith is the means by which God’s grace is applied to us, but what is this grace that is applied? What is grace? It’s our justification and the declaration of our being righteous. For Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
Our faith is not and cannot be a work which saves us, because whatever anyone receives on account of their work is their due; it’s not a gift. But salvific faith—our belief and trust in Jesus—is counted to us as righteousness. We are counted as possessing the righteousness of Jesus Christ because of our faith, which God has given to us as grace.
This is sometimes called the divine transaction—our being justified as righteous people before God by our faith and trust in Jesus. That’s what sola fide really means: by faith alone, that we are justified by our faith and trust in Jesus alone, and not by anything that we have ever said or done ourselves, that we are justified because Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, that his credit and merit is put onto our account.
The understanding of justification by faith alone is so important to the Christian that it is truly the root issue which sparked the entire Reformation. A proverb attributed to Martin Luther is that justification is the article by which the church stands and falls. John Calvin said regarding justification by faith that this is the main hinge upon which all religion turns. And the modern contemporary R.C. Sproul said, ‘Without sola fide, there is no gospel.’
Without the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, there is no sola fide justification. It’s not a word we use every day in this day and age, but it’s a legal and technical expression. To be justified is to be declared such by another and greater authority. The verb used here carries the sense of one being vindicated or being acquitted of a crime.
Being justified is a status which is applied to a person, for we are declared justified or vindicated, yet it is a status which we cannot claim for ourselves. We can only provide evidence for us to be justified. As people who fail at so many things in life, we often offer excuses as a way to justify ourselves, but they only work if the one to whom we’re trying to justify ourselves accepts our excuses or arguments, and I know mine never worked to justify me before my mother.
In Christ Jesus is our hope and confidence that his argument on our behalf and his evidence before the Father is good enough that he accepts it. So when we trust in Jesus by faith for our justification before God, we believe that the Lord has a great accountant who follows generally accepted accounting principles to the letter and clearly understands the first rule or principle of accounting: for every credit, there must be a debit.
This is what the divine transaction means for us in application. Because of our faith declaring us righteous before God in Jesus, God commanded ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’ Thus, when we became sinful people because of Adam and we personally sinned against God and his law, sinfulness was credited to our account, incurring a debt of righteousness to God.
Jesus himself, being righteous by divine nature and righteous by perfect obedience before the law, debited the sinfulness from our account and credited to himself, and so suffered the penalty we deserved. Debiting the sin from himself and crediting that to the cross, he cancelled out our debt of righteousness.
Then, proven by his resurrection, he debited his own righteousness by obedience and credited it to our account. So now, before God our Father, the ultimate judge of righteousness, we stand before him with only Christ’s righteous obedience on our account and nothing of our own sinfulness or sinful works. We stand before God declared to be justified by faith and saved from our deserved condemnation by God’s grace.
And the best part is, all of this has already happened and occurred behind the scenes on behalf of every Christian believer who ever has and whoever will believe. Jesus has already done this for us in love and applied it to all eternity. You did not need to ask for it. That’s what we take on faith.
This is what we cannot see and what we hope for, which the Holy Spirit assures us of. Yet faith is not simply believing. For our faith to be salvific, faith—there’s always evidence of it, as James writes, ‘So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’ Works are the necessary evidence of our faith, of what any person believes.
Good works done in, by, for, or because of our faith are the things which God has prepared for us beforehand to affirm and confirm our faith, for us to help build up confidence in our salvation. Salvific faith prompts, causes, and demands our action in response to God’s grace.
Our actions—our works—are the evidence of our faith and not the cause of our salvation. Our works are evidence that we have received grace; they become evidence in addition to the righteousness of Christ’s obedience and are wholly unnecessary and unhelpful to our salvation, being still imperfect and corrupted by sin. But they exist and are being done only for God’s glory.
We often speak about living out our faith, referring to the creation of this evidence—our living and doing works which have consequence because doing them because we believe. If no consequences occur because of your faith, can you really say that you have faith or that your faith matters?
That’s what James means when he says, ‘Faith without works is dead.’ Paul continued his argument concerning Abraham, talking about circumcision—explaining how the covenant of promise was given after Abraham was declared righteous by God, but before he was circumcised. Circumcision became a work or evidence of Abraham’s faith.
Later concerning Isaac, Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his only begotten son, his only legitimate heir, because of his faith in God and God’s promises, because he considered that God was able to even to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back. So all of Abraham’s works were the resultant consequence of his faith—they were his response to being declared righteous.
Have you ever acted out of your faith? Have you ever suffered or experienced consequences, either good or bad, because of your faith? How can we or how do we act because of our faith?
We can choose to not participate in events like soccer tournaments or school sports practices when they happen on a Sunday morning—or better still, when they happen on Sundays at all—because of the Christian conviction that Sunday is the Lord’s Day and is intended to be kept as a Sabbath for Him.
So we can sacrifice participating in certain social or fun activities which the world and the culture around us considers to be perfectly acceptable at that time. Or we may choose to not take a vaccine or other medical treatment that is potentially life-saving or which might be beneficial when we specifically know that it’s derived from the use of aborted fetal tissue because we have the Christian conviction that all life is sacred, and abortion is murder, and believe that nothing good can come from an evil source, for no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its fruit.
Thus, we could potentially suffer from a disease or other medical issue that might have been otherwise prevented or alleviated. Or we can choose to forgive and reconcile with someone who has personally harmed us or others in our family by sharing the love of Jesus with them, helping them to feel His forgiveness, perhaps by writing letters to them or visiting them if they’re incarcerated.
Or we can choose to help someone like a total stranger by taking them to lunch or filling their tank with gas when they might only be asking for spare change or a few dollars, and show them the love, the care, and respect that they’re due for being made in the image of God just by talking with them and listening to their story for a few minutes.
Those are all just some simple examples of things which most any of us can do as living expressions of our faith. The things we do are the evidence we show the world concerning what we believe, and the truth of who we believe in: Jesus Christ is the truth and the way and the life, and I believe this with my whole heart, mind, and soul.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be standing up here telling you all about him and sharing the good news of what he has already done for us. This is a consequence of my faith. My faith is why I try to live this out and live by what I believe, even if I’m not always successful. I’m not perfect, and the Lord knows that neither are you. He knows you won’t be in this life, which is why Christ’s perfection—his righteousness—is accounted to us.
We Christians have been saved from hell, damnation, and the eternal consequences we deserve for our sins by our faith alone, because by that faith, the righteousness of Christ is counted as our own. Our filthy rags—our sinful rags—have been exchanged for royal robes, robes of righteousness, because we believe that Jesus has already justified us. You and me—like Abraham—it is our faith alone, not our works, that is counted as our righteousness in Christ according to God’s grace.
So go do good works and live out your faith. Amen.