Jones Faith. Hope. Love.

The Christ-Centered Way to Grow in Grace
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5569-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

'So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.' 1 Corinthians 13:13 Faith, hope, and love-we hear a lot about each on their own, but how are they related? Why is this triad mentioned so often in the New Testament? Written in the form of fifty-eight questions and answers, this book reveals how these three theological virtues-also referred to as 'three divine sisters'-together serve as the foundation for our whole Christian life. Deeply scriptural, steeped in key theological texts, and modeled after the classic catechisms of church history, this book will instruct our minds, stir our hearts, and motivate us to faith-filled obedience.

Mark Jones (PhD, Leiden Universiteit) serves as the pastor of Faith Vancouver Presbyterian Church (PCA) in British Columbia, Canada. He has authored many books, including Living for God and God Is, and speaks all over the world on Christology and the Christian life. Mark and his wife, Barbara, have four children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jones, Mark

Leseproben

Question 2

What is saving faith?

Saving faith is the Spirit-enabled embrace of and resting on our faithful God in Christ for the redemption offered by him through the promise of the gospel.

A question so vitally important seems almost impossible to answer in one respect. When we try to define faith, we are left feeling as though more needs to be said. Indeed, given the supernatural character of faith (Eph. 2:8) and its importance in the Christian life (Heb. 11:6), we can be grateful for this seemingly incomplete definition. Can we, who live by this principle (Rom. 1:17), ever fully understand in this life what it means to have faith? If we could, we would have not faith but sight. Living by faith means moving into a realm whereby we are uncertain of ourselves but more certain of God and his faithfulness. Faith relinquishes self-dependence for dependence on one whom we can never fully grasp or understand. Who would ever dare to do this?

Those in the Bible who exhibit faith are secure and confident in God. As the psalmist says, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” (Ps. 27:13). Believers must be firm in their faith:

If you are not firm in faith,

you will not be firm at all. (Isa. 7:9)

Long before the author of Hebrews described faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1), the Old Testament writers conveyed this same understanding of faith. As Job says,

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

yet in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see for myself,

and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27)

And,

I smiled on them when they had no confidence,

and the light of my face they did not cast down. (Job 29:24)

How else can Job say these words if he does not have “assurance of things hoped for” and “conviction of things not seen”? But what he hopes for and what he is convicted of are realities that require something supernatural working in Job. His faith is something special: it is a gift from above, which causes him to hope in the one who will come from above.

The person who lives with assurance and possesses godly conviction because of his faith in God is contrasted with the proud person who is self-assured and trusts in himself: “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4). Self-sufficiency and faith are enemies of each other.

Faith, then, is not simply (or merely) assent to the truth God has revealed (cf. James 2:19). Rather, it denotes the radical principle by which man thinks and acts in relation to God and man. God looks for this kind of faith: a firm and unwavering confidence based on an ingrained attitude of trust in him (cf. Num. 14:11, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?”). Faith and trust go hand in hand (Ps. 78:22).

The New Testament presents a multifaceted concept of faith. Personal faith may be placed in doctrines, in words spoken, or in persons. With the arrival of Christ on the scene of redemptive history, faith leading to salvation becomes a dominant focus on the pages of the New Testament.

Believing assent emerges as a clearly prominent theme in the New Testament witness. For example, when Jesus heals the ill son of an official, he says, “Go; your son will live”; in response, “the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way” (John 4:50). The official went beyond assenting to Christ’s promissory exhortation by immediately trusting (taking) him at his word, even before he could get home to lay eyes on his miraculously healed son.

In the case of the Roman centurion, we have an example of such remarkable faith in Christ’s ability and power to heal that even Jesus marveled when the centurion affirmed that just a word would heal his paralyzed servant who was not with him (Matt. 8:5–13). Like Abraham, the centurion had faith in what God was able to do.

Sometimes the New Testament highlights an explicitly soteriological element in connection with faith. For example, Paul informs the Thessalonians that they were beloved by the Lord because the Father chose them to salvation “through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thess. 2:13). This same faith trusts in the “powerful working of God” (Col. 2:12).

While we are to believe the truth, the predominant New Testament focus is believing on a person—namely, Christ Jesus—and his work. Thomas Watson exclaims, “The promise is but the cabinet, Christ is the jewel in it which faith embraces.”1

Jesus is the one “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:25). We are to place our faith in Christ, who satisfies the wrath of God hanging over our heads. This point is exemplified in John 3:18: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Christ himself is the ground of our faith: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Gal. 3:26). Elsewhere Paul speaks to the Ephesians of their “faith in the Lord Jesus” (Eph. 1:15; cf. Col. 1:4; 1 Tim. 1:14; 2 Tim. 1:13).

When we believe on Christ, we also trust in God as the object of our faith. As Christ says in the Upper Room Discourse, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1). Elsewhere Christ declares, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). Since God works through Christ by his Spirit, believing in Jesus takes us to God, and trusting in him means believing in the one he sent to save us from our peril and damnation. Christ’s authority and power are gifts given to him from above, which means we trust in what God is able to do through his Son. Denying Christ means rejecting the Father and vice versa (John 10:22–30).

Regrettably, many today think of faith merely as that which procures from God and Christ what they want, namely, salvation. While that is true—gloriously true—we must remember that faith is not just the way a Christian begins his life but also the way he lives his life. The regulative principle of the Christian life is faith in God and Christ, for “the righteous shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). (Let the reader note that throughout this book, by saying God and Christ, I am making use of the common manner of speaking in the New Testament where God often refers to the Father and is distinguished from the God-man; see 1 Cor. 8:6; 15:15, 27; 2 Cor. 13:14.)

Because of what Christ has done, nothing less than utter commitment to him will suffice for a Christian. There are no 50 percent (or even 99 percent) Christians. We are wholly (100 percent) committed to Christ. Please do not get me wrong. I am not saying that our faith or our obedience flowing from it is 100 percent pure and without any unbelief. I am saying that even the weakest, sin-tainted faith receives and rests totally on Christ alone. We either believe with and from our whole heart, or we do not believe at all. And yet we can all say that though we believe, we also pray that God would help our unbelief (Mark 9:24).

Hebrews 11:1–12:2 is to the New Testament what Genesis 22 is to the Old. At the beginning, we are given the definition of faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Knowledge is essential to faith, for we must believe that God exists (v. 6). Faith looks to God’s promises (v. 6, “he rewards those who seek him”). Faith also leads to obedience (v. 8). It is, as I have said above, the radical principle of our obedience. But it does not consist in obedience. Rather, the heart looks to the invisible God (v. 27), knowing that he is faithful (v. 11). Faith goes against the wisdom of the world because God’s ways are always better than what the world can offer (vv. 24–26). Faith has value because we trust not in ourselves but in God. Those with faith, whether strong or weak, were still saved by the Passover Lamb because the object remained the same for both the “strong” believer and the “weak” believer (v. 28).

The virtue of faith in the New Testament, then, consists in clinging to and resting on the faithful God. He shows his faithfulness through his Son, whom we must look to because he is the “founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). By the Spirit,...