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.—Galatians 2:16

Faith, in its essence, must be and must always be passive.

There are three main scriptural points of evidence that prove that faith is passive.

The first point of evidence is, simply, that faith is trust. God’s word describes faith as leaning upon or resting upon. Faith is putting confidence in another, another who has what is necessary. Trusting God and believing on Jesus mean self-abandonment, or abandonment on self-reliance. Trusting God and believing on Jesus mean looking to God and Jesus Christ for what one himself does not have and cannot provide. Faith is the denial of self as any object of trust. Faith does not allow trust in self, recognizing both the frailty of the creature and the total depravity of the human nature. Faith insists on no trust in self, for the sake of trusting only and always in the living God through Jesus Christ. Faith is trust in the only proper object of trust: the only solid foundation of Christ and his works.

The second point of evidence is that faith is opposed to works. Works signify activity and endeavor. Works represent strenuous endeavor to accomplish certain goals. In those endeavors the worker says, “I am doing,” or, “I am going to get it done; I am going to finish the work.” The worker looks to the time when he is finished and can expect a reward for his efforts. Faith is the opposite. “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). Faith says, “I cannot work because my savior has done all the work for me.” Faith hears and honors the word of Christ from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30).

The Bible declares the sharp and simple antithesis between faith and works. The antithesis is between faith and works simply as works. The antithesis is not between faith and meritorious works, obtaining works, works of the law, or works as qualified in any way. The antithesis is merely between faith and works. To state it simply, one must either believe or work (do or act). He cannot do both.

The third point of evidence concerns the only and proper object of faith, the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the end and aim of faith. He is the fullness of faith. He is the one upon whom faith relies exclusively and extensively.

This third point of evidence is the weightiest. The truth about faith must be complementary to the truth about Christ. Because Christ is a complete savior, faith must rest in Christ, and it must rest only in Christ. The blessed tidings of the gospel are that Christ is the only and the complete savior. Faith cannot rest in anything else. Faith cannot rest even in itself. It must rest only in Christ. It must seek and must find salvation, peace, and all assurance and comfort in Christ.

The weightiness of this third point of evidence is made clear in scripture with all the ways that scripture draws the relationship between faith and its object, Jesus Christ. Most powerful is the testimony of Galatians 2. In verse 16, addressing the truth of justification, the phrase “by the faith of Christ” is used twice. “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.” The phrase is also used in verse 20 to describe the source of the life of the child of God. “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.” This expression does not refer to Christ’s trust in God, but it states the glorious truth that faith cannot be separated from its object. It makes clear that the fullness of Christ is received by faith alone. And it makes clear that faith, possessing Christ, possesses full and complete salvation. There is nothing missing, nothing left for the believer to pursue independently of Christ.

Prominent for its emphasis on faith as living, organic fellowship is Jesus’ teaching in John 15:1–16, with its emphasis on bearing fruit. That fruit is the love of the true disciples of Christ for one another. The fruit can come only from abiding in Christ. That abiding in Christ is the gift of faith is clear from two verses in the passage. The first is verse 3, the declaration of Christ concerning the cleansing of the disciples: “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” The second is verse 5, with its absolute statement at the end: “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

Christ is the vine. Believers are the branches. Without abiding in the vine—that is, faith—they are dead and cannot bear fruit. Bearing any kind of fruit is impossible. Only in the vine is life, life to be fruitful in good works. Faith is abiding in Christ, remaining engrafted, and clinging to him, for the sake of a fruitful life of good works to the glory of the husbandman and the vine. As stated in Galatians 2:20, the life of believers is the life they live by the faith of the Son of God.

For faith to be truly receptive in nature, it cannot be active but must be passive in itself.

Were faith to be active, it must be a rival to the work of Christ. Were faith active, it must have some significance of itself. It must then be somewhat centered on itself or, worse, centered on the believer. Were faith active, it must propose two objects: Christ and faith itself. Both must be placed in the same realm and given the same character. Christ does his part, but it is up to the believer himself to do his part and to keep his part.

Instructive on this point is article 29 of the Belgic Confession.

A bit of background is helpful. It is certainly true that the main thrust of the Belgic Confession with this article is the doctrine of the church, namely, the three marks of the true church of Jesus Christ. In harmony with that identification of the true church, importance is also given to the marks of the false church. But we must not forget that there is an identification in the article besides that of the true and false churches. The Confession also addresses itself to the mark of a Christian, a spiritual identification rather than an observable one. In this same respect we must remember that the true church is about true Christians. The true church does have hypocrites in it, which is why it cannot be measured by everyone in it being true believers. But true Christians are true Christians. For this reason article 29 finds it necessary to follow the confession of the three marks of the true church with the one mark of the true believer.

In article 29 of the Belgic Confession, Christians have only one essential mark: faith.

That faith is also identified, strictly speaking, as passive. Its entire nature is about receiving Christ, the only savior. He is the only savior: the glorious, only begotten Son of God. He is the complete savior: his merits the ground of the church’s salvation, his resurrection the life of all his own. Therefore faith must seek, find, and rest in Christ alone. To attribute any power to faith apart from Christ is to make Christ half a savior and is truly to deny him. Both Lord’s Day 11 of the Heidelberg Catechism and Belgic Confession 22 make the argument of the Protestant Reformation against Rome, that faith in any other than Christ alone is itself a denial of Christ. He cannot be a partial savior or half a savior.

Speaking of faith itself as active with respect to Christ points in the direction of Rome. When the Council of Trent dealt with the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the council directed several anathemas against the Protestant Reformation. The council pronounced its anathema against all those who taught justification by faith alone, excluding meritorious good works. It pronounced its anathema against all those who taught justification by faith alone “to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them.”¹ It pronounced its anathema against those who taught “that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake.”² Trent also pronounced the following anathema:

If any one saith, that man’s free-will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise cooperates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it can not refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive: let him be anathema.³

The Council of Trent did not misunderstand the Protestant confession. The council directed its anathemas against what the churches of the Protestant Reformation were preaching and teaching. The council directed the anathemas against what Reformed believers were believing.

The above issues, which Rome raised against Protestantism’s doctrine about faith, are reflected in Prof. David Engelsma’s letter to Rev. Ken Koole concerning what the latter had published in the Standard Bearer about faith as “doing.”

To contend that, because faith always “does,” that is, works, salvation is by faith and faith’s “doing,” or that salvation is by faith as a “doing” is ominously similar to Rome’s argument that, because faith loves, salvation is by faith and love. Faith does indeed love, but justification is by faith alone, without its loving (on our part). So also, faith always works (does), but salvation is by faith alone, without its works and working (by us).⁴

Earlier in the same letter, Professor Engelsma stated that the above “salvation” must include every part and aspect of salvation. He quoted from an earlier writing of his:

It is of the essence of faith to renounce every work, and all working of the sinner himself, including repenting and believing, as earning, contributing to, conditioning, or making effectual the saving work of God in Christ, whether the saving work of God in Christ is viewed as justification, membership in the covenant, or the blessings of the covenant.⁵

Later, the Arminians would take up the same Romish criticism of passivity and use it in the conflict that led to the Synod of Dordt. Such is the testimony of the conclusion of the Canons, which contains the following words by which the Arminians slandered the Reformed faith:

That the doctrine of the Reformed churches concerning predestination, and the points annexed to it, by its own genius and necessary tendency, leads off the minds of men from all piety and religion; that it is an opiate administered by the flesh and the devil, and the stronghold of Satan, where he lies in wait for all, and from which he wounds multitudes and mortally strikes through many with the darts both of despair and security; that it makes God the author of sin, unjust, tyrannical, hypocritical;…that it renders men carnally secure, since they are persuaded by it that nothing can hinder the salvation of the elect, let them live as they please; and, therefore, that they may safely perpetrate every species of the most atrocious crimes. (Confessions and Church Order, 179)

Let the Reformed believer understand: faith must be passive for the sake of the active Christ.

Let the Reformed believer understand: faith must be passive for the sake of the active Christ, so that everything that follows from faith is Christ in him, and him by Christ and in Christ.

Why?

So Christ can be all in all (Eph. 1:23).

Returning to article 29 of the Belgic Confession, the Confession makes clear why faith must not itself do or work with respect to Christ.

Article 29 does not cease with the believer’s receiving Christ alone by faith alone. There are certain, definite, glad and joyful consequences to receiving Christ by faith.

When they have received Jesus Christ the only Savior, they avoid sin, follow after righteousness, love the true God and their neighbor, neither turn aside to the right or left, and crucify the flesh with the works thereof. (Confessions and Church Order, 63; emphasis added)

Indeed, by faith they become active. They avoid sin. They follow after righteousness. They love the true God and their neighbor. They neither turn aside to the right or left. They crucify the flesh with the works thereof.

How do they do these things? How are they active? By faith. That is, by faith because it has received Christ. Faith is union with Christ, Christ crucified and risen from the dead.

Faith is nothing of itself. But faith becomes everything as it possesses Christ as its only object. It possesses Christ as righteousness and life. It possesses Christ as head and mediator of God’s everlasting covenant of grace. It possesses all the power of sanctification, the power that must bring forth good works in a walk that is pleasing to God because it is the work of God himself through the Son of God by the operation of the Holy Spirit. It is then the faith that truly “worketh by love” (Gal. 5:6) and bears all manner of fruit (vv. 22–23).

Christ is all the fullness of faith.

Christ, received through faith, is all the “must” of good works, according to Lord’s Day 32 of the Heidelberg Catechism. He is all the reason it is impossible that the doctrine of justification by faith alone without works can “make men careless and profane” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 64; Belgic Confession 24). He is the reason for the power within us of the sacrifice and death of Christ on the cross. “By virtue thereof our old man is crucified, dead, and buried with Him; that so the corrupt inclinations of the flesh may no more reign in us; but that we may offer ourselves unto Him a sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Heidelberg Catechism, A 43, in Confessions and Church Order, 100). This power of faith is expressed in the second benefit of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, received by faith: “We are also by His power raised up to a new life” (Heidelberg Catechism, A 45, in Confessions and Church Order, 100; see also Rom. 6).

This is also the grace that is signified and sealed in the sacraments, according to the explanation given in the Heidelberg Catechism. As faith, through holy baptism, receives the certainty of regeneration and renewal in the image of Christ, the believer is admonished and assured that the sacrifice of Christ is of real advantage to him. Not only is that advantage his justification, but it is also his sanctification: “To be renewed by the Holy Ghost, and sanctified to be members of Christ, that so we may more and more die unto sin and lead holy and unblamable lives” (Heidelberg Catechism, A 70, in Confessions and Church Order, 109). In the Lord’s supper the admonition and assurance are driven home that believers “become more and more united to His sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us, so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone; and that we live and are governed forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul” (Heidelberg Catechism, A 76, in Confessions and Church Order, 113).

Faith is truly all about Christ. Faith is not about itself. Faith is not about the believer’s believing. Faith does not speak of what it does. Faith does not speak about what the believer does. Faith must speak of what Christ has done, is doing, and will do. Faith must have Christ be all in all.

This language about faith is the language of the Reformed confessions. Faith is the hand and mouth of the soul, according to Belgic Confession 35. It is the instrument of feeding on Christ, on his flesh and his blood. Without the holy food of his divine flesh and blood, there is no use of the spiritual hand and mouth. The Heidelberg Catechism is careful to emphasize that faith does not at all make the believer worthy of acceptance with God (compare with Heb. 11:6). Instead, it is only the way of receiving and applying the righteousness of Christ. Before true faith is identified in Lord’s Day 7 as “a certain knowledge” and “an assured confidence,” it is taught to be the means by which the elect are “ingrafted into Him” (Confessions and Church Order, 90). The passive mood of the verb is used to describe faith as union with Christ. So with joined. So with united.

Faith as a bond is a work. Faith as union with Christ is a deed. But it is not the work or deed of the believer. It is the work of God (John 6:29). It is a fruit of the cross of Christ (Phil. 1:29). It is the glorious working of the Spirit of Christ himself (2 Cor. 4:13).

Faith is for Christ. Faith is upon Christ. Faith is of Christ. Faith is not of yourselves but is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.