Enjoy this article written by Matt Spinks, Gan TV host of Jubilee with Matt SpinksÂ
One of the most detrimental lies in the modern western church is that faith is something that we have to muster up. You may hear it said in many places that “faith is a muscle,” or that “all we have to do is believe.” Many churches do still teach it this way. But, faith is not the one little part that we still must do.
John Crowder [John Crowder Ministries]calls this “making faith the surcharge to Grace.” It’s as if salvation is free but there’s a hidden fee in the fine print. And, ultimately this “throws us back upon ourselves for salvation” as T. F. Torrance would say.
The apostle Paul said it this way, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) This passage is the bedrock of the Reformation, but many of us still don’t comprehend it.
Luther said this, “God creates faith in the human heart the same way that He created the world. He found nothing and created something.”
Meditate on that for a while! Sounds like it was all God’s doing!
The Vicarious Faith of Christ
But, this confuses us… if it’s all God’s doing then why does God give faith to some and not to others? Well, who says our blessed Trinity doesn’t give faith to all? Did He not give Jesus to everyone? Maybe we all just wake up to Jesus’ faith on our behalf at different times?
Watch Faith Is Not a Work – Thesis #10 by clicking -> HERE
Paul in Galatians makes it clear that we live by Jesus’ faith, not our own. “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 of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 KJV)
Now, I get it, most theologians do not yet understand that Jesus is our vicarious representative, and therefore we have been taught that we have our own separate faith, our own separate repentance, our own separate life, and that these are what save us.
But, have you ever contemplated why Jesus was baptized? Jesus was baptized because we needed to repent, we needed new life, He didnt. But what He did, he did AS US! This is the vicarious humanity of Jesus in a nutshell. Jesus repented, believed, and was baptized for us. This is what gives our individual baptisms substance. His is the one true baptism!
In the same way there is only one true believer, one true faith. This is the objective truth that never changes. And, we may participate in His faith, or have none at all. There is no in between. Hence the mustard seed analogy that Jesus uses in the Gospels. We, of ourselves, have not even the tiniest ability to believe the incomprehensible goodness of God! We need Jesus, even to believe in Jesus!
How many of us have ever been crushed by our own inability to believe for a miracle? Or do you know someone who was ever told by a minister that they just didn’t “have enough faith?” As if their sickness couldn’t be healed by God because they were lacking? Has anyone ever told you that your faith just isn’t strong enough? That God can’t help you because you don’t believe in Him enough?
This has destroyed the heart and soul of so many beautiful children of God. It’s left families in shambles, and made people hate God. And, it’s the anti-thesis of the Gospel.
As Francois says, “The Gospel doesn’t demand faith, it supplies it!” Jesus didn’t find faith on the earth… that’s why He came, to supply us with faith! The Good News is that God came into our darkness, into our hatred, into our unbelief and gave us good things anyways!!!
We absolutely need to stop preaching a mixed messaged that makes faith the only Law left for us to fulfill. It puts us right back under the Law, screwed once again and stuck in our failure. Faith is “not of ourselves!”
Jesus stands before us as the Son of Man who believes God for us, and gives us His faith!
Now obviously all people still need to confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead in order to be saved. (Romans 10:9) But, this is simply the subjective response that is empowered by the objective truth. Jesus already saved us, therefore now we can participate in this salvation. We aren’t forced to live in Jesus’ faith, but it is supplied to us, and it is truly ours.
When we understand objective reality and subjective reality we won’t be confused by this. An example is if you had become a billionaire overnight by some inheritance. You are a billionaire whether you are aware of it or not. But, until it dawns on you, you won’t spend the money. In the same way, we are given Christ’s faith! It’s already ours. But, it doesn’t benefit us until it dawns on us subjectively. The objective truth is what Christ has done as fully God and fully man, on our behalf. Our subjective experience is saved when we begin to participate freely in His faith and confession, not trying to muster up our own!
T. F. Torrance said it this way:
“Throughout His Life and Death Jesus stood in our place as our Substitute and Representative who appropriated the divine Act of saving Righteousness for us. He responded to it, yielded to it, accepted it and actively made it His own, for what He was and did in His human nature was not for His own sake but for our sakes. That is true of all that He did. He was the Word of God brought to bear upon man, but He was also man hearing that Word, answering it, trusting it, living by it—by faith.
He was the great Believer—vicariously believing in our place and in our name. He was not only the Will of God enacted in our flesh, but He was the will of man united to that divine Will. In becoming one with us He laid hold upon our wayward human will, made it His very own, and bent it back into obedience to, and in oneness with, the holy Will of God.”
This is such Good News, friends! Grace is for the weak. It’s not for those who have strong muscles of faith, but for those who are poor in spirit and need Jesus really bad.
John Paton, a Scottish missionary from the 1800s said it like this, “It’s good to rest my whole weight on God.”
The Gospel is all about those who are weary and heavy laden being enabled to rest their whole weight on God… even the soul-crushing weight of trying to believe right, or trying to appropriate, or trying muster up a mustard seed. Jesus, our vicarious representative, has done it all! The faith of Christ has already been given to us, once and for all!
