THE FAITH OF JESUS by W. S. Sadler

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1902

“THE FAITH OF JESUS.”

By W. S. Sadler

“Now FAITH is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Heb. 11:1. Then let us settle it now and for all time, that faith is the only ground we will ever have for hope, and let us ask for nothing more. We should not put our sinful sight in place of sinless faith (the faith of Jesus) as an evidence of the thing we hope for. To just the extent we take for evidence things that are unreliable, the thing we hope for becomes insecure.

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” By faith, the Lord says, we know these things, and in trying to find them out in any other way, we are sure to make a blunder. If you try to search these things out by sight and reason, you will turn out like many of the scientists of the day, semi-infidels. They try to learn by sight what God says we can only learn by faith. What we need is a faith that will believe, a faith that is faithful; a faith that will believe God even in the face of the testimony of our senses to the contrary

Look at any of the natural phenomena with sight, and you become skeptical; but look at them with the eye of faith, and you become transformed. The thing that is looked upon by the eye of sight can only have a deteriorating influence upon the eye that beholds it. Take the sights of sin in the great and wicked cities of to-day, which we can not avoid seeing, and unless we can look on these poor, unfortunate men and women who are selling everything, from their clothes to their virtue,—unless we can look upon them with the eye of faith, we are likely to be demoralized by every view. In other words, unless by faith we can see in sinning men or women even yet the semblance of the divine, the physical eye will reveal things that will be to our moral deterioration. The only way in which we can save ourselves from such an event, is to view such scenes with the eye of faith, with the eye of Jesus Christ.

“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” The sacrifice that is not offered by faith is a sacrifice that God can not receive, for “without faith it is impossible to please Him.” The only thing that we can offer to God that is absolutely sinless and has no taint of selfishness, is the faith of Jesus. Offer to Him whatever you will, but offer it in the faith of Jesus. The faith of Jesus is the one thing the enemy of your soul can not take away from you; he would not know what to do with it if he had it, he once sought to overthrow it and utterly failed. When you are shorn of everything else that would encourage and cheer you, remember there always remains that one comfort,—the faith of Jesus. When you can not see victory, but in its place only seeming defeat hovering over you; when you seem to be entering into the very jaws of destruction, just calmly hold on to your faith in God as the evidence of the thing you hope for, but do not see. Do you hope for eternal life? Do you hope for a perfect character? Then what is the only evidence that we have in this world? Faith is the evidence of things not seen, but hoped for. Then keep on reckoning. The reckoning of death to sin, and of life to God, is simply the exercise of faith in Jesus. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6:11.

“By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death.” The man who is learning the lesson of living by faith will pass through experiences which may seem bitter to his fellow-workers, but to him they have a divine flavor just in proportion as he has learned the lesson of walking by faith. To the man who will walk by the “faith of Jesus,” every temptation of the adversary of our souls becomes a furnace of trial in which he will become better and stronger instead of weaker. All temptations come from Satan, but all trials come from God. It is in Satan’s power to take God’s trials and pervert them into temptations, but God also can turn the temptations of Satan into trials in which the dross of our characters will be burned out. Satan is wise enough to know that he can work to better advantage to accomplish his purpose when we are passing through trial. The best time for the enemy to pervert our character and accomplish his purpose is to get hold of us when we are in the furnace of affliction. So the very time we are taken out of the divine furnace of trial is the very time when the enemy can most easily mould us in the wrong direction. The soul who will walk by faith will be able to turn every season of temptation into one of victory, and every time the enemy attacks him it will be to him a moral gymnasium for the development of spiritual resistance. We know what physical resistance against physical disease is. There is a certain level which it is normal and natural for us to maintain. As soon as we fall below this level, we become more or less liable to the inroads of disease. The spiritual parallel of this represents the plane of faith. Faith is that moral stimulus to our spiritual powers that enables us to rise above the insinuations and temptations of the enemy. So we see that even Satan’s temptations, to him who loves God supremely, to the soul who walks by faith, can not help working together for good.

W. S. SADLER.