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How Does Someone Receive the Gift of Faith That Saves? (Part Four)
The Gift of Saving Faith
Salvation is by faith, not by works. Faith is not a work. In Romans 4:16, Paul writes: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace.” Grace and works are mutually exclusive, and since salvation is by grace alone, faith and works are also mutually exclusive. Paul then writes in Romans 11:6:
And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.
If it is works, it isn’t grace. If it is faith, then it is grace. In Philippians 1:29 Paul writes:
For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.
There you see “it is given . . . to believe on him.” In the very first verse of 2 Peter, Peter writes:
Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Justification By Faith Because It Is Not a Work
Peter says that people obtain like precious faith. In other words, it is given to them. This is saving faith. Galatians 2:16 communicates this same truth in a different way:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
This is explicit. We believed that we might be justified by faith and not by works. Faith can’t be a work, so it must be a gift. Since it is a gift, how do men receive that gift? The way God explains it through scripture is that the reception of the gift of saving faith starts with general revelation for everyone. Since general revelation is enough to vindicate God in his wrath against men (Romans 1:18-20), receiving general revelation will facilitate the provision of God’s Word, special revelation, to the one receiving His general revelation.
The Power of the Word of God and the Work of the Holy Spirit
Saving faith comes by hearing the Word of God. This specific Word of God that saves is scripture that proclaims the gospel. The Holy Spirit works through the Word of God toward the provision of saving faith (Ephesians 6:17). He uses the Word of God to reprove or convict the world of sin, or righteousness, and of judgment (John 16:7-11). A man is born again through the Word of God and by the Spirit of God (John 3:5-8, Acts 10:44, 1 Thessalonians 1:5, James 1:18, 1 Peter 1:21-25).
Is everyone saved upon the work of the Spirit of God through the Word of God toward salvation? No. In his sermon in Acts 7, Stephen says,
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
People can and do resist the work of the Spirit through the Word of God. This is again akin to hard heartedness and a worldly heart in line with the parable of the soils (Matthew 13). This is where a mystery lies. Faith comes from God, but not everyone receives it. Some resist this precious gift
Spiritual Warfare
The New Testament gives other descriptions to this work towards saving faith. The Apostle Paul to the Corinthians calls it spiritual warfare in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5:
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Strongholds (verse 3) like imaginations (verse 5) are in people’s minds. The preacher or evangelist does not war after the flesh, so he uses spiritual weaponry. The strongholds are arguments that bring confusion and doubt against saving faith and salvation of the soul. These deterrents to salvation are cast down with the proper use of the sword. That is how imaginations are cast down. Then comes alignment with the knowledge of God and the obedience of Christ.
Not in the Wisdom of Men, But the Power of God
The evangelist does evangelistic work using the Word of God. He must diagnose the particular perverse imagination or false doctrine that impedes saving faith. He uses scripture incisively to remove the barrier to saving faith. Scripture is spiritual, so powerful at doing this, like Hebrews 4:12 says:
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
When one peruses all the evangelism examples in scripture, different approaches are taken to varied people and their situation. It’s all the gospel, but it customizes its dealing for each unique stronghold. Every time the evangelist uses scripture. Saving faith does not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:5).
How Does Someone Receive the Gift of Faith That Saves? (part three)
Saving Grace Appearing to All Men
Paul writes to Titus in a letter, an epistle, a Gentile man converted through evangelism in the Gentile region of Crete, a pagan island in the Mediterranean Sea, in Titus 2:11:
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.
What was this grace of God that appeared to all men? What appears to all men? Does the message of Jesus Christ appear to all men?
We know from scripture what appears to all men. It is general revelation. How does general revelation though bring salvation? Only the gospel, a message of special revelation, will save someone. General revelation falls short of being a gospel message.
Paul in Romans
Chapter 2
God intends to do more than condemn through general revelation. It is a vehicle toward special revelation by which God will save men. The Apostle Paul in Romans 2 in dealing with pagan Gentiles, who never heard of God’s law, which was a schoolmaster toward faith, says in verses 14-15:
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: 15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
The law of God in their hearts in accompaniment with their consciences bear witness to Gentiles. These uncircumcised pagans can and do become circumcised inwardly by faith. It is a circumcision (verse 29) of “the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” God receives praise for this work of grace in the hearts of Gentiles, even as no human explanation for this working exists.
Chapters 3 and 4
Pagan Gentiles without the special revelation of God are proven under sin before God (3:9) by means of the law in their hearts and their consciences. This law in their hearts stops their mouths that they might be guilty before God (3:19). He is not the God merely of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles and He justifies not just the circumcision but also the uncircumcision by faith. God operates in the hearts of those not through physical tables of the law but through inward tables in their hearts, also working toward justification by faith.
Like with the pagan Gentiles, God imputed righteousness to Abraham by faith in his uncircumcision (4:10). Abraham became the Father of them who believe, who are not of the circumcision (4:12). This is how Abraham is a Father of many nations (4:18).
Paul as Missionary in Crete and in Athens
The work toward Gentile salvation came without the written law and yet with the law in their hearts. That was the grace of God appearing to all men, that brings salvation. Salvation does require conviction of sin through God’s gracious means. This occurs with everybody. When God saves Gentiles in remote regions where a missionary brings the gospel for the first time, God already started working in those persons’ hearts. Paul under the inspiration of God reveals that in the first three chapters of Romans. This is what Paul wrote to Titus for such a people as those on the isle of Crete.
When God condemns a Gentile, he rightly condemns one for rejecting Jesus Christ, even if he never heard of Jesus. Every person possesses the possibility of receiving Christ, which is why Paul says he is without excuse. When the Apostle Paul went to Athens, he preached to them Jesus. Paul said that they ignorantly worshiped Jesus, when they worshiped “the unknown God” (Acts 17:22). It was not true worship, because it lacked sufficient truth, but Paul says that some kind of revelation occurred with them, albeit ignorant. Paul sprang off that foundation, that was already there, to preach to them.
Then Paul revealed the true identity of the unknown God, showing them that man God ordained, whom He raised from the dead, would judge them in righteousness. God had a basis to judge them even though they did not perfectly know Him. They knew Him enough because of the grace of God that appeared to them. That same grace brings salvation. Some of the Athenians mocked Paul, but others said, “We will hear thee again in this matter” (17:32). Certain men clave unto him and believed, and others with them (17:34).
The Story of Receiving the Gift of Faith that Saves
Do the stories of the Cretians on Crete and the Athenians in Athens reveal the work of God toward receiving the gift of faith? Yes. In the way toward saving faith comes someone with enough reception of the unknown God for the Apostle Paul to piggy back off of it to preach Jesus Christ. Missionaries going to godless pagans take this as an optimistic example and a model for how to do the work there.
My major purpose of writing this series is explaining how someone receives saving faith. At least some of the time, if not most of the time, someone will not receive saving faith until he receives a lesser faith based on general revelation. As a stronger position, I believe that everyone that receives special revelation first receives general revelation. This leads to large numbers of heathen conversions. Scripture and then history shows these examples.
Born Again of Special Revelation
The Apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:21 and 23-25:
21 Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. . . . . 23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. 24 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: 25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
When you look at those verses, you see something to what Paul wrote in Romans 10:17 and what James wrote in James 1:18:
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
Someone must hear the word of God for salvation. This is akin to Paul in Romans 1:16:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ:: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
Is the gospel the word of God? It is, but it is not the word of God in general. It is part of the word of God that deals with true salvation. These verses themselves explain that in the original language.
Word and Word
Peter uses two different Greek words for “word” in 1 Peter 1:23 and 25. The “word of God” in verse 23 is logos, the word of God in general. However, in verse 25 Peter uses the word, rhema, twice. This speaks of a specific passage or passages with the gospel in it. There is special revelation and then there is the special message within the special revelation. Someone must receive that. That is “the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” “Word of God” in Romans 10:17 is also rhema. Logos is in James 1:18.
When God begets, meaning someone is born again unto salvation, through the Word of God (logos), someone preaches a particular word of God (rhema) with the gospel in it. People use scripture to preach a false gospel, so it isn’t the Word of God in general that saves. It is the true message of the Word of God, the rightly divided Word of truth that saves.
More to Come
How Does Someone Receive the Gift of Faith That Saves?
Faith Is A Gift
Two ideas seem to contradict. They don’t though. One, faith is a gift. Faith is not a work. Man is not saved by works. God gives man the faith that saves him. He doesn’t work for it.
Two, even though faith is a gift, most people do not get it. God gives the gift in a particular fashion and people then receive it in a God ordained way. Everyone needs to know this.
Seeming Contradiction
The seeming contradiction between the two thoughts are first how someone will get saving faith and others will not, even though it’s a gift. Scripture though deals with that. God gives a suitable explanation. We should accept the sufficiency of what God says. It’s enough to know and understand.
When someone says that faith is a gift, people will also see that as removing human responsibility. As you read this essay, which will report what scripture says, you will see that this biblical view does not eliminate human responsibility. Salvation is by grace. The truth that faith is a gift is crucial to that. But how is faith a gift? Let me explain.
The Path to Saving Faith
Everything that results in saving faith leads back to God. It starts with, one, general revelation. By general, revelation is general in its audience, not in its content. Everyone knows God through conscience, creation, history, and providence. Romans 1:18-32 say that all men know God. How does it say they know Him?
The true things about God to know Him are manifest “in them” (verse 19) — the law of God written in the heart and the conscience (2:15). Then “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (verse 20) — creation. This is “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Providence and history are a little more technical to explain, but you can see enough how all people know God, so that Romans 1 verses 18 and 20 indicate they are without excuse as to God’s judgment upon them.
Explaining the Gift of Faith
Now let me explain this aspect of the gift of faith. Let’s say that saving faith is a 50, like 50 dollars. Someone arrives at saving faith at 50, starting with zero. General revelation does not get someone to 50. However, to get to 50 someone must accept something less than 50.
You want to borrow 50 dollars from me. You need 50. I have only 10, so I offer you 10. You reject the 10. When someone rejects the 10, this is a means of rejecting the gift of saving faith.
First, upon someone rejecting the most rudimentary knowledge of God, that everyone can know, God allows them to take a path of total apostasy. They become proud, professing themselves to be wise, when they’re fools, and it gets worse from there.
Second, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). The gift of saving faith originates from scripture. I’ll speak to this further, but the Word of God is also revelation. It has the power to give rise to saving faith.
Step Toward Saving Faith
A step toward God giving the gift of saving faith is general revelation. Everyone receives this, so everyone has the opportunity to receive saving faith for salvation. Everyone. That’s what Romans 1 says. What I’m explaining isn’t Calvinism.
By the way, just from general revelation someone might believe in God still in a way short of saving faith. However, he believes in a non-saving way. This is not faith enough to save and in that way, it still could be short-termed, point action kind of belief exercised by people who still are never saved.
I like also to view general revelation as bread crumbs that start down the path to salvation. This is a Hansel and Gretel metaphor. Crumbs led Hansel and Gretel to the famous Ginger Bread House in that story. Everyone who receives Jesus Christ unto salvation experiences general revelation toward the beginning of that path. He takes his 10 dollars on his way to 50 dollars.
More to Come
Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief (part four)
Actual Lord Jesus Christ
For faith to be saving faith, the person must place the faith in the actual Lord Jesus Christ. This means He is the Christ, not an impostor. It is not saving faith if it does not direct toward the saving object, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. Accompanying this necessarily, the faith must attune to the Person of Jesus Christ. He is not Christ if the said “belief” does not acquiesce to the reign and lordship of Jesus Christ and relinquish the personal will and way. This is in essence the offering of “self” or one’s soul to God. Scripture explicates all of this paragraph.
Believing that Jesus is the Christ is not something arbitrary. He becomes the Christ to the person who believes in Him. That means the one believing in Jesus Christ abdicates his throne to Jesus Christ. The person who believes in Jesus Christ is not on the throne of his own heart, but Christ is. When the Apostle Paul received Christ, he said immediately, “What wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6)
Count One’s Life as Loss or Deny Self
When the Apostle Paul later testifies about his conversion, he says that he counted everything as loss and dung that he might win Christ (Philippians 3:8). Paul is saying that you do have to count you and the best of you as loss and dung. This is the denying self of Luke 9:23. You can’t believe in Jesus Christ and yourself. Jesus can’t be put on an altar with all someone’s other gods, including himself.
The way of Jesus Christ is in contradiction to the way of you. You’ve got to leave you in order to have Him. You can’t have both. This is the same challenge of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22 (Mark 10:17-22, Luke 18:18-30). You don’t need to give all of your money to the poor to be saved. No, but if you believe in Jesus Christ like he said he did, then you can give up everything for him. If you don’t, then you don’t believe in Him. You can’t serve idols and Jesus both.
People conflate what I’m explaining to “salvation by works,” even “frontloading works.” Works aren’t involved at all. This is just biblical faith. Saving faith is exclusive. It must be in Jesus Christ, so He must be Jesus Christ. If He is Jesus Christ, then He is Christ and He is Lord. Christ and Lord means control and ownership. You are giving yourself up, so that He is the owner. This is the commitment of believing that is the volitional aspect of faith.
More Than Intellectual Assent to Facts
Faith is more than intellectual assent to facts, essentially head knowledge alone. This is like the check in the box. As I explain the above and state that saving faith is not just intellectual or even worse, just emotional, what is different about faith that includes volition? This goes along with two things Jesus said that are parallel or synonymous with saving faith: (1) Follow me, and (2) Lose your life for my sake. Jesus said among other places in Matthew 16:25:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
“Lose it” or “shall lose his life for my sake” is not meaningless. It’s not that we can’t know what Jesus is talking about. We should assume we can know. This is that relinquishing of your will or your way. It dovetails with repentance. You can’t keep going your way and get to heaven. Anyone who comes after him must deny himself (Luke 9:23).
When Jesus talked about the gospel or salvation with the woman at the well in John 4, He told her that God the Father sought such to worship Him and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. What does worship have to do with salvation? The first act of worship is the offering of your soul to God, what Psalm 23:3 and Psalm 19:7 call the restoring of the soul or the converting of the soul. God takes the real you and restores you or converts you, but to do so, He must have you. He wants you. Faith offers the soul to God. This is believing He is Christ and Lord.
More to Come
Right Applications of Matthew 5:17-20 and Wrong Ones (Part Three)
Jesus Is Scriptural
Everything that Jesus said in His sermon from Matthew 5:1 to 5:16 was a scriptural concept. Nothing Jesus taught contradicted God’s Word. Jesus is God. On the other hand, the religious leaders in Israel were “making the word of God of none effect through [their] tradition” (Mark 7:13). If anyone was destroying the belief and practice of the Old Testament, that is, the fulfilling of the Old Testament, it was them, not Jesus.
Believing and practicing the Old Testament was letting light shine before men. Jesus did that and He called upon kingdom citizens of His to do the same. Proof that He didn’t arrive to earth to destroy the scripture He inspired, Jesus promised perfect preservation of every letter of it.
If Jesus would preserve every letter of written scripture, surely He also expected His people to do all of it too. His teachers would also teach men to do everything scripture said. One could say at this point: in other words, you’ve got to be better than the Pharisees. The righteousness of the Pharisees is not saving righteousness. It is their own version of righteousness that comes from human effort. They couldn’t produce the righteousness that would get them into heaven. That righteousness comes from above.
Righteousness and Saving Faith
Righteousness, which is from above and by the grace of the Lord, exceeds the faux righteousness arising only from man’s works. It doesn’t rank scripture into majors and minors, because it can’t keep everything that He said. Like Jesus, it fulfills written scripture. James in his epistle later says the same. True believers are both hearers and doers of what God said.
Saving faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Someone is begotten by the Word of Truth. It would follow that He would also be a keeper of scripture, like Jesus said. That supernatural righteousness of God produces obedience to scripture. You can detect the unrighteous servant of unrighteousness by His diminishing of scripture.
Here is a professing teacher of God. Someone disobeys scripture. He doesn’t want to offend that person by saying something. He lets it go. This is not doing the least of the commandments and teaching men so.
Ranking Doctrines or the Triage Approach
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day ranked doctrines. Their unity revolved around a triage approach. Instead of following the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, they pervert into just the opposite of what He taught. Unity on the least commandments, what they call, non-essentials or minors. These teachings are not a “hill you want to die on.”
Left-Winged Legalism
Professing Christians especially today practice a left-winged legalism more often than the more commonly highlighted right-winged type. The left wing calls its legalism, “grace.” It is turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. Since you can’t keep everything scripture says on your own, reduce its teachings to what you can keep. This is left-winged legalism.
Those practicing left-winged legalism relish pointing out more consistent practice of scripture than theirs as legalism. They do it all the time. How you know they aren’t legalists in their estimation is by their inconsistent practice of scripture. People who try to follow everything like Jesus taught and teach others to do likewise, they aren’t the greatest in the kingdom to left-winged legalists. Instead, they’re “legalists.” Again, it’s in reality just the opposite.
As Jesus moves on in His illustrations in chapter five, you can see how much a truly righteous person strives to love God and His neighbor. It’s not the get-by-ism of the Pharisees and modern evangelicalism, so they can keep their crowds. They’ve dumbed down scripture so that it is unrecognizable as Christianity. This follows the same tack of the Pharisees. There is nothing new under the sun.
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