SAVING FAITH | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 25, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 39.

SAVING FAITH.

BETWEEN Faith and Works have been waged interminable war. One party has said, “Only ‘believe,’ and truly it is all that is necessary. Another party has said, “If ye will enter into life, ‘keep the commandments.’” And this also is a true saying of Jesus.

Yet oftentimes when men are told that it is necessary to obey God, straightway the preacher of obedience is told that “doing is deadly; it makes ‘faith of none effect.’” It is also noticeable that this cry is raised when the obedience involves the doing of some unpopular thing—the bearing of a real cross.

In God’s plan of salvation there is no antagonism between the right kind of faith and works. It is true, it has always been true, that no man could save himself by his works. The law requires infinite perfection. “All have sinned, and come short of the ‘glory of God.’” Even if unaided mortal man could do in the present what is required of him—all of his heart, mind, soul, and strength—he could not pay the debt of the past; he could not undo the sins committed. He stands hopeless as regards his past sins; he is equally hopeless in the present, bound by the cords of his sins. “Therefore by the deeds of the ‘law shall no flesh be justified.”

But one power can save man,—Christ Jesus; and Christ saves through faith. “Only believe,” He said to the ruler. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘and thou shalt be saved,’ was the message to the Philippian jailer. The Lord requires only that which every soul of understanding and accountability can render.

“But,” says one, “that will foster sin. Sin and ‘repent and believe; sinning, repenting, and believing will be the motto and experience of such.’ Not so. Such belief is not Bible belief. This is true belief: “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” All other belief is spurious. The belief that stops short of righteousness stops just so much short of the life and power to enable him to retain his righteousness, to live above sin.

The belief that stops short of righteousness is based upon a repentance that does not give up all sin; upon a sorrow that mourns the consequences of sin and not its character. The belief unto righteousness yields absolutely all of self and sin, and accepts all of Christ and righteousness. The believer yields his own life of sin and accepts the life of Jesus Christ, not as a theory, but as a fact, and that life, born from above, will bear the same fruit of obedience which it bore in the life of Jesus. The believer can then say: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet ‘not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’” Gal. 2: 20.

True faith, then, is living, operative, fruit-bearing; it is a “faith which worketh by love.” Gal. 5: 6. It is a love which keeps the commandments of God, and finds them “not grievous.” 1 John 5: 3. It asks not, “Lord, what may I get rid of doing and ‘be saved?’” but, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to ‘do?’” It counts it joy to obey all God’s commandments, and walk in the footsteps of Jesus. A faith short of this will prove spurious. A faith like this bears “the obedience of faith,” and through the Spirit of God, all its blessed fruits. Reader, do you believe?