This series of editorials is examining the application of salvation to the elect children of God. The essence of this salvation is union with Christ. In that union the elect receive all their salvation as a single whole. Thus all the various benefits of salvation received in this union are simply the riches of Christ that come to the elect as part of that union.

 

Faith in the Conscience

Among the treasures given to the elect in Christ is faith. In essence faith has been described already in this series. Faith is the spiritual bond between the elect sinner and Jesus Christ. By means of this spiritual union, the elect become one plant and one body with Christ. Their union with Christ by faith is simply the manifestation of the union that the elect always have had with Christ from eternity in election. Scripture frequently refers to faith when it describes the relationship of the elect with Christ as being “in Christ.” So we read in 1 Corinthians 1:30: “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” We also read that Paul said that he was “found in [Christ], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9). Here the apostle describes union with Christ as faith.

Though we call this union faith, we must never forget that the secret and mysterious power and strength of that bond is the Spirit of Christ. We do well to remember the lovely line in the Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper:

By his death He hath taken away the cause of our eternal death and misery, namely, sin, and obtained for us the quickening Spirit, that we by the same (who dwelleth in Christ as in the head, and in us as His members) might have true communion with Him, and be made partakers of all His blessings, of life eternal, righteousness, and glory. (Confessions and Church Order, 271)

If we compare the connection of the elect with Christ to the mysterious connection that some member of the body—for instance, a finger—has with the body, then the connection is faith, and the Spirit is the life who flows through that connection; maintains the connection; and produces all the life, energy, and activity that flows through that connection as directed by the head.

Faith as a bond comes to expression in the soul of the believer. An infant has faith as really as the adult. So too does the old or sick person on a bed of affliction who has ceased fundamentally all conscious activity. Faith remains. Yet, what is the expression, the conscious expression, of faith in the soul of the believer? What is faith at the level of the consciousness? When we say that we believe, what do we mean by that? We are saved by faith. So what is this faith? Scripture gives no clearer description than the faith of Abraham, the father of all those who believe. And to explain faith we turn to that description:

16. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

17. (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

18. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.

19. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:

20. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;

21. And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. (Rom. 4:16–21)

This text is a description of the faith of Abraham. It is a description of his faith as it is an expression of the whole soul. If a man is an unbeliever, he is that with his whole soul. If a man is a believer, he is that with his whole soul. His whole soul-life—his thoughts, desires, will, aspirations, and the like—is affected by faith. For this reason the apostle describes faith in Romans 4:12 as walking in faith: “The father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.” The apostle is not saying that faith is our walk of life. Rather, he is saying that faith affects the whole life, so that faith may be said to characterize our walk. We walk in faith, or we walk in unbelief.

The apostle has established that faith is imputed for righteousness. He has established that in the case of Abraham and showed that this was also true of Abraham’s seed, of David too. Because faith is imputed for righteousness, those who are of the law are not heirs of the promise. If they were heirs, then faith would be made void, and the promise would be made of none effect. The law brings wrath because the law makes sin exceedingly sinful. If promise and blessing would come to those who are of the law, one could not speak about promise and faith because those of the law have no promise and thus do not need faith. They need only their works. And if they would be perfect in their works, they also would be righteous before God and heirs of the promise by works.

However, whenever we talk about promise and faith, let us not hear from the law. Promise does not have respect to man’s works. Promise concerns what God will do. No works are needed. Faith is counted for righteousness. And because faith is counted for righteousness, righteousness comes to the righteous by grace and not works. And thus exactly because the promise excludes the law, the promise that Abraham would be heir of the world is sure to all the seed. And so Abraham is the father of all who believe.

As Abraham’s faith was imputed to him for righteousness, so our faith is imputed to us for righteousness. Faith is imputed for righteousness whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, whether one is a physical descendent of Abraham or a sinner of the Gentiles. Faith counts for righteousness. The characteristic that made Abraham unique was that he believed God, not his circumcision, obedience, or repentance. That faith is imputed for righteousness. That is the thought of the apostle thus far in Romans 4.

 

An Important Question

What is faith? That is a very important question. That is an important question for all personally, for if Abraham is your father, your faith and his faith must be the same.

Besides, the importance of that question cannot be overstated because the answer determines your interpretation of scripture at every level and in every passage, for scripture frequently points out the necessity of faith. “Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb. 11:6). Jesus frequently said to those whom he healed that their faith had made them whole. “Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole” (Mark 10:52). “He said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace” (Luke 8:48). The gospel itself comes with the command to believe and warns the unbeliever that he stands exposed to the wrath of God and everlasting perdition. The Heidelberg Catechism in answer 84 teaches that the kingdom of heaven is opened

when according to the command of Christ it is declared and publicly testified to all and every believer, that, whenever they receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them of God, for the sake of Christ’s merits. (Confessions and Church Order, 118)

What is faith?

How you answer this question also determines your doctrine of salvation. That too cannot be overstated. The antithesis between the doctrine of true faith and the doctrine of false faith is easily stated. Faith is either man’s act or God’s gift wholly and completely. The Arminian, in whatever stripe he appears in history, always has taught faith as man’s act—that is, faith is an activity of the soul of man manufactured out of himself in which he decides to trust God and believe his promise. And that definition of faith as man’s act has served the purpose of the doctrine that God offers salvation to all and that man distinguishes himself from others by his act of faith. The Arminian frequently covers his doctrine by appeals to grace. So he says that man performs this by grace, but the essential doctrine remains: Faith is an act of man that brings into his possession the offer of God.

The Protestant Reformed Churches have this doctrine of faith. Faith is man’s act and not God’s act. So also the ministers and professors speak of active faith. By that they do not mean faith as an activity of the whole soul. Rather, they mean what man manufactures in himself in response to the gospel. Faith really is man’s response to the gospel. Faith is what man produces by the grace of God; by that active faith, as they say, man brings into his possession all the promises of God that are offered in the gospel. It is an Arminian conception of faith. The result of this doctrine of faith, as pointed out by the Canons of Dordt, is a new and wicked doctrine of justification that is as much a doctrine of justification by works as Rome’s doctrine:

The Synod rejects the errors of those…who teach that the new covenant of grace, which God the Father, through the mediation of the death of Christ, made with man, does not herein consist that we by faith, inasmuch as it accepts the merits of Christ, are justified before God and saved, but in the fact that God, having revoked the demand of perfect obedience of the law, regards faith itself and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, as the perfect obedience of the law, and does esteem it worthy of the reward of eternal life through grace.

Rejection: For these contradict the Scriptures: Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:24, 25). And these proclaim, as did the wicked Socinus, a new and strange justification of man before God, against the consensus of the whole church. (Canons of Dordt 2, error and rejection 4, in Confessions and Church Order, 165)

And it is all fine and good to damn that conception of faith as false and the gospel that teaches it as a false gospel, but we must describe faith as scripture does in Romans 4 concerning Abraham’s faith.

 

Abraham’s Faith

Romans 4:16–17 are one sentence. The thought is that Abraham is the father of us all before God whom he believed. “Before him [God]” means in the sight of God. Abraham is the father of us all in the sight of God whom Abraham believed. There is between the main portion of each verse a parenthetical clause in which the apostle quotes from the Old Testament promise in Genesis 17:4–5: “I have made thee a father of many nations.” According to that promise, in the sight of God, Abraham is the father of all who believe.

First, that Abraham is their father in the sight of God means that according to the determinate counsel of God, Abraham is the father of all who believe. In the counsel of God, God determined and beheld Abraham as the father of all believers. That is what the name Abraham means: father of many nations. Abraham really was and is in the counsel of God the father of believers. Abraham is the father of believers because out of all nations God appointed many to faith and salvation. Abraham believed in the counsel of God as determinative in the salvation of himself and his seed. He believed that among the human race God had made a distinction between those who were his seed and those who were not his seed. Before God, in the counsel of God, Abraham was the father of believers.

Second, that Abraham was before God the father of all believers means that Abraham was that in his own consciousness and experience. This explains everything about Abraham and his whole history. He left Ur of the Chaldees; he dwelt in Canaan as a pilgrim and a stranger; he strove for that promise; and he willingly offered up his son Isaac in that conviction of his heart and mind that he was before God the father of a spiritual corporation of believers drawn from all nations. Faith was a certain conviction in Abraham.

That conviction went against everything that Abraham could see and every human calculation that he could make. What was Abraham’s situation? God had given to him a promise: Your seed shall be as the stars of heaven; you will be a father of many nations; and you will be heir of the world. All these are essentially the same promise. But when Abraham contemplated himself and his situation as that promise of God came to him, all that seemed impossible. He was dead as regards bringing forth a child and certainly as regards bringing forth many children; and Sarah, the mother of the promise, was likewise dead.

However, Abraham staggered not in unbelief, for he was fully persuaded that what God had promised, he was able to perform. Faith is full persuasion of the fulfillment of God’s promise.

Some say that the faith of Abraham simply was that he believed what was impossible; thus he believed what flew in the face of all human observations and calculations. But this is not true. It is not the sheer fact that what is believed is improbable or impossible that constitutes faith. I can say that I believe that purple unicorns exist. This flies in the face of all human observations, but this is not faith.

Rather, Abraham had a promise from God, and Abraham stood before the God who had made that promise. Abraham was before that God by faith, and by faith Abraham saw God and lived before him. Only in light of God and the promise that God makes can we speak of faith. Abraham had the word of God that something was true; that God had determined and beheld that promise in his counsel; and that when he spoke to Abraham of his promise, God had revealed to Abraham what was true in God’s counsel. Faith is to hold for true God’s promise when all human calculations, observations, and evidences say that the promise is impossible!

The apostle explains this in verse 18: “Who against hope believed in hope.” “Hope” is the expectation that God will fulfill his promise and do what he says that he will do. “Against hope” means that in the face of all human calculations and observations, hope was utter vanity. Abraham hoped when there was no hope. When he looked around, there was no way the promise could be fulfilled. In that hopeless situation he had an undying and unshakeable hope. That is the mark of faith. All else is unbelief.

Only when there is no hope and in that situation there is unshakeable hope, do we have faith. Where a man can manage by his own strength, intellect, reason, and resources, there is no faith. Faith is the very opposite of working for the promise and relying upon one’s own resources to fulfill that promise. In that sense faith is doing nothing for the promise. Faith is resting in the God of that promise and a casting off of all trust in self.

So the apostle describes Abraham’s “against hope” believing “in hope.” He did not believe in hope in the sense that hope was his object. Rather, in hope he believed. In the face of what appeared hopeless, he had hope and believed. He believed before God that he was the father of many nations.

The apostle continues to describe faith in verse 19: “Being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb.”

There is something of a question about the word “not” in the phrase “he considered not.” Some say that the word “not” does not belong there. It does not matter to me whether “not” is there, for the meaning is the same. Abraham did not allow the deadness of his body and the deadness of Sarah’s womb to be that upon which his mind fixed as the ground of his hope! That is the meaning. One can say that two ways: Abraham did not consider his own body then dead, which would mean that he did not rest on that thing as a reason for hopelessness. Or one can say that Abraham considered his body and Sarah’s body and understood that they were dead, but he did not see that as a hindrance to the promise. Both have the same basic meaning: The external situation and the impossibility of the promise in light of that situation did not cause Abraham to lose hope, but in hope he believed God.

Does this mean that faith refuses to look at the visible and tangible things that one can see, touch, taste, hear, and feel? Does faith turn away from the present facts and situation? No. Abraham fully faced the facts of his and Sarah’s situation. Those facts had been staring him in the face for nearly twenty-five years. In unbelief he had tried to overcome those facts. But in faith he did not consider that those things were an obstacle to what God had said that he would do. Abraham saw the situation with his eyes as it really was and did not sugarcoat it, but that did not weaken his faith.

One would be tempted to say that faith would weaken and shrink in the face of mounting difficulties, as facts pile up against the promise and the situation appears hopeless, as Abraham’s situation did. But in the face of the mounting impossibility of the promise, Abraham was strengthened in his faith. Exactly because there was no hope in himself or in Sarah for the fulfillment of the promise and because he was faced with the impossibility of the promise and did not lose hope, his faith showed itself.

Faith does nothing for the promise. Faith gives glory to God that he performs the promise. In Romans 1 the apostle had described man under the wrath of God as not giving glory to God as God but changing his glory into an image and a lie and making a god after the imaginations of man’s heart. Faith gives glory to God by believing that what he promised, he will certainly perform. Faith lets God be God. Faith becomes nothing in the face of the promise and gives glory to God as the one who will perform that which is impossible for man.

 

Faith in God

Faith does not lose hope in the face of the impossibility of the promise, but faith is a firm conviction and full persuasion that God will do what he said, because faith knows God. Faith has as its object God, the living God. Faith does not have as its object so much the promise itself but the God of the promise. The promise is the word and holy oath of God about what he will do. And faith receives that promise and understands that promise. Yet the object of faith is the living God. So scripture in Romans 4 repeatedly emphasizes about Abraham’s faith that he believed God.

The knowledge of God that faith has is not a general and indistinct knowledge that God exists, that he is, and that he must be worshiped. The knowledge of God that faith has is that God calls the things that are not as though they were and that he raises the dead.

In summary form faith knows God as God alone. Faith knows God as God and as God has revealed himself. God must tell us who he is and what he is like. We cannot conceive of God truly in our minds, for that conception is always a lie. Such is man’s sin when he beholds the eternal power and Godhead of God. Man holds the truth of God in unrighteousness and fashions for himself and worships an idol of his own vain imaginations. But God dwells in a light unto which no man can approach. God is infinitely exalted above the creature and all the creation. He alone is what he is, and he is the i am that i am. He is not, contrary to all speculative philosophy, the first cause or the cause of all causes. If God were a cause, man could come to God through his thinking and logic and conceive of God in his mind as he does all other causes. God is not in any sense the ultimate one. He is not simply ultimate, but he is infinite and infinitely exalted in his being and in all his thoughts and ways. He is infinite in his glory and in all his perfections. He is infinitely holy, righteous, good, and true. He is infinitely sovereign, powerful, gracious, and merciful. He is the exalted one who must stoop to enter heaven itself and to make the earth his footstool. And because God revealed himself, Abraham knew him as God.

Abraham knew two things about God.

First, God is the one who calls the things that are not as though they were. He is then the one who is and possesses his being eternally. He has no beginning but is eternal. By him all things consist. Thus too he conceives of all things. They are eternally in his thoughts and are perfect before him. He gives existence to those things by calling them. He speaks, and it is done. He speaks, and all things receive their being from him. What is eternally in his conception and what is eternally before him, he creates. When the apostle says that God calls the things that are not as though they were, this, of course, refers to creation. There was nothing but God; and out of himself he called all things, and they were. He said, “Let light be; let the seas and the dry land appear; let all the seas bring forth fish and birds; let the land bring forth the plants and animals,” and they all were. But understand that the thought of Romans 4:17 is that this is who God is, and this is how God operates. He calls the things that be not as though they had being. If we call something, it already must have its being. But God operates by his mighty power to give existence to what does not have being. God is not the God of evolution. Evolution is sheer unbelief and atheism and the denial that God is and that he calls the things that are not as though they were.

Second, Abraham knew that God is the God who quickens the dead. God gives life to the dead, or he makes the dead to live. This is, as it were, the highest form of calling the things that are not as though they were. In his work of recreation, God raises the dead. Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians 1:27–28:

27. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.

Paul is speaking of our salvation. In the matter of our salvation, we “are not” because in Adam all died. God raises the dead. That is what Abraham believed. He believed in the total depravity of man and that God raises the dead to spiritual life.

We must understand what death is. Death is damnation. Death is God’s sentence that he executed upon the whole race of mankind. The dead are thus legally and rightly dead. God pronounced a sentence upon them and carried that sentence out, so that all men are bound in the power of death and are worthy of eternal condemnation. Then that God gives life to some of them means that he gives righteousness to the unrighteous. He justifies the ungodly. In their justification he gives to them the right to eternal life. And having justified them, he gives to them eternal life. To raise the dead is not merely to bring them back to this life or to the life that they had previously in Adam, but God gives eternal life to them. He gives to them life with himself and in his covenant and in the heavenly and eternal city of light. He is that God. He does this. He is not merely willing to do this, but he also does this. It is in God to call the things that are not as though they were and to give life to the dead.

That God Abraham believed in; thus he hoped against hope. He staggered not in unbelief when God said that Abraham would be the father of many nations. Abraham gave glory to God that what God said, he was able to perform.

Abraham’s faith is our faith. Our faith rests on that God. We believe him in all his words and promises to us because he is the God who calls the things that are not as though they were and because he is the God who raises the dead.

 

Giving Glory to God

And what did Abraham believe that God would do? Abraham believed that God would perform his promise! The promise is simply what God says that he will do. The promise absolutely excludes what man must do. The promise is what God will do out of his own will and counsel as that counsel comes to and is revealed to man in God’s word. The promise always has reference to the action of the living God.

The promise is also always essentially the same in both the Old Testament and in the New Testament. The promise clothes itself in different forms and expresses itself in different words, for the promise is very rich and glorious. But the essence of the promise is always the same. The essence of the promise is always of a seed, and that seed is Christ. The essence of the promise is Christ and the salvation that is in Christ.

God first gave the promise to Adam and Eve when they stood trembling in the garden. God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15). God extended the horizon of that promise in Noah when God encompassed the whole creation with the rainbow and promised that the seed would be heir of the whole world. And God said to Abraham that his seed would be as the stars of heaven and as the sand by the seashore innumerable, and God told Abraham that his seed would inherit the land of Canaan.

The apostle interprets that promise of the seed and of Canaan to mean that Abraham would be the heir of the world: “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Rom. 4:13). For the fulfillment of the promise, it is not important what happened to that earthly land. There was an important typical fulfillment of that promise in David and Solomon, but even that fulfillment was short-lived and incomplete and looked forward to a different day. The issue never was what would happen to the earthly land of Canaan. The land of Canaan stood for the world that Abraham would inherit. Not a strip of land but the world was his inheritance, not the world as we now see it but that world as the whole world will be raised from the dead and recreated by the power of God through the righteousness of God and as that will usher in a new and an everlasting age. In that age the world will be inhabited by all those who are the spiritual children of Abraham.

And if Abraham was to be heir of the world, then he had to have a seed. The promise always came to Abraham as a promise to him and his seed. Thus that promise always referred to Christ, the seed in whom all the nations of the world would be blessed.

All external things testified that Abraham would never have a seed, for he and Sarah were dead. And Abraham believed God that what God had promised, he would do. Abraham believed God that he had a seed. Abraham believed first that from him Christ would come. That is the first reference of the seed. Abraham believed that Christ would come and that through Christ the righteousness of God would be established.

Thus Abraham believed also that through that righteousness he would be the father of many nations, whom God would also raise up from the dead through the righteousness of Christ. So in the face of all testimonies to the contrary, Abraham said, “I am the father of many. I am the father of many whom God in his counsel ordained in Christ to righteousness and eternal life in Jesus Christ, God’s Son.”

Therefore Abraham also believed that God would raise Christ from the dead, for there was no way to establish righteousness and eternal life apart from the death and the resurrection of Christ. Abraham believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in whom Abraham himself and his seed would be justified. And thus he said, “I am the father of many.” He did not know how God would accomplish that, but he believed God and gave glory to God that what he had said he would fulfill because he is the God who calls the things that are not as though they were and who raises the dead.

And Abraham’s faith is our faith.

He is the father of many, and we are in Christ the many. If we are Christ’s, then are we Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. We say in the sight of God that we are righteous and we have eternal life and we are heirs of the world.

Yet everything testifies to the opposite. The testimony of our consciences in the face of the law is that we daily increase our debts with God and that we are damned. The testimony of our lives is that we are dead and dying. Every creak of the bone and every ailment of the body testify to that fact. We are cast out of the world and made sinners and criminals. We are in the valley of the shadow of death, and there is no way out in our power.

And the faith that God has put in our hearts turns away from that testimony of the external and rests on God alone, the God who does raise the dead in Christ. Abraham could only see Christ’s day afar off, and Abraham rejoiced in that day because it was his salvation. He had but a fleeting and dim word from God concerning his heir.

We have the full and complete revelation of God in Christ. Abraham looked forward in hope to that day, and we live out of the hope of that day and look forward to the day when God will bring to pass the complete resurrection and renewal of all things in the new heaven and new earth where righteousness will dwell. This is the God of our salvation. On him alone the Christian’s hope rests. In him alone the Christian believes. The Christian’s conviction that God’s word is true; his assurance that what God promises, God will perform; and his full persuasion that everlasting righteousness and eternal life are his for Christ’s sake is faith.

That faith is not a religious feeling that is manufactured by the Christian in his own soul. That faith is wholly the gift of God to him in Jesus Christ and by the power of the Spirit so that God gives to him that conviction, assurance, and full persuasion, and he rests in the living God.

Faith is not man’s doing or activity or a condition for the reception of the promise, but faith is a doing nothing for the promise.

By that faith—faith alone—we are justified. To justification we turn next time.