03 What Is Saving Faith? (Most People Get This Wrong)

Krisan Marotta: Good morning and welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta. Thanks so much for downloading. Today we're looking at the question: What is saving faith? This is the third talk in our series on what is the gospel. We are not looking at a specific passage, although everything from this series comes from the Book of Romans, particularly chapters one through eight. If you'd like to follow along with lecture notes, you'll find those on the website as usual. That's at wednesdayintheword.com slash gospel three. Thanks so much for listening. Well, today we're answering the question, what is saving faith? And let me just review where we've been in this series. I encourage you to go back and listen to the previous talks. In our first talk, we defined life and death, and we talked about how death in the New Testament usage is not just the end of existence. It refers to this phenomenon of existence where everything physical and spiritual breaks down. All the decay, futility, corruption, tragedy and bitterness, all of that is death, and it is a direct result of sin. Life, particularly as in the phrase eternal life, is the opposite of that. It would be a tendency toward good in all of human existence, and life automatically and inevitably flows from holiness, just like death automatically and inevitably flows from sin. God is the sole source of life because He alone can give holiness, and the promise of eternal life is that one day we will live in the kingdom of God completely free from the power, the presence, and the penalty of death. And then in the second week we looked at the question of justification and we talked about how when we rebelled, we cut ourselves off from the source of life, God, and then we were stuck with dead, our prisoners of sin and death. The first consequence of our rebellion is that we now experience death as we've defined it, but there is a second consequence, and that is that the rebellion itself is wrong and deserves punishment. And until God's justice is satisfied, he will not again grant us life. So justification is the forgiveness of our debt to justice, which then qualifies us to receive life. So to be justified is to be in a position where God's justice has been satisfied, we are no longer under his wrath. Justification is a gift from God. It is made possible by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, and it is granted to those who have faith. Which leads us to the question we're going to talk about today. What is saving faith? And we're talking about a very specific kind of faith, the kind of faith you must have to be saved, the kind of faith you must have to be justified. So it's the faith that qualifies you for justification. As we defined last week, justification is the gift of God that puts you in a position where your debt to justice has been paid, and justification is granted to those who have faith. So what is saving faith? The word the Greek word just means to believe or to trust. It can be used as both a noun or a verb. I don't think believe in English is as strong a word as trust. I think the Greek word is closer to what we think of trust. It's counting on someone to do something specific. So justification is granted to those who trust God. And before we define it, let's talk about what it is not. Saving faith is not obedience. It is not the same thing as loyalty. It's not a quality of being dedicated and loyal and committed to God. Christians may be dedicated and may take their beliefs very seriously, but that's not necessarily having saving faith. It's a good thing to have, but it's not the basis of our justification. We are not justified based on how loyal or committed or dedicated we are to God. So saving faith is not obedience, neither is it intellectual assent. Saving faith is not believing the right doctrines. So it's not enough to believe in God to be a theist. A lot of people believe in God, but they don't have saving faith. It's not what you give assent to in your belief system or believing the right doctrinal statements or being able to pass a theology quiz. It is true that we ought to believe truth and not falsehood, and we ought to believe sound doctrine rather than false doctrine, but our doctrine is not what saves us. I mean we can have impeccable doctrine and not have justification. So saving faith is not obedience, it is not intellectual assent or believing the right doctrines, neither is it believing without reason. There is no value in believing something that is irrational, illogical, or without foundation. If I want to believe something I have no reason to believe, faith is not the thing that gets me there. And this is often a message we see in the media that the less reason I have to believe something, the more faith I have. But believing without reason is not the basis for our justification. Believing something without any reason to believe it is foolishness and it can be dangerous. If you don't know why you believe what you believe, you're just not going to be able to meet the challenges to Christianity will face in this life. Christianity is logical, rational, and intellectually satisfying. The God of Christianity created the universe, he created logic, he created reason and rationality and intellectualism, and we can face those hard, difficult questions with confidence because ultimately Christianity is logical, reasonable, and rational. Alright, so saving faith is not obedience, it's not giving intellectual assent to the right doctrines or having perfect theology, neither is it believing without reason. So what is saving faith? Saving faith is the permanent, ongoing trust in God that one day He will free me completely from all the consequences and effects of sin because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it is trusting a specific person for a specific thing. The who we're trusting is God. So we're not trusting in ourselves, we're not trusting in doctrine, we're not trusting in notions or concepts or philosophies or anything vague or undefined. We are trusting in the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who sent his son Jesus Christ into the world. And the thing we're trusting him for is righteousness, as we defined it last week, or holiness. We're trusting him for moral perfection, for life, for a life that is free from all the consequences of sin and death. Often we get the message coming over the media that we should trust Jesus for our health and for our wealth, for power, for success, for happiness, for fulfillment. It is okay to trust God for all those things. That's a worthy thing to do, but that is not the basis of our justification. Lots of people would like to have all the blessings and goodies of this life and could care less about receiving holiness or being freed from sin and death. And that is not saving faith. And I think modern America is losing sight of this. We've been talked into thinking that it's okay to ignore holiness or not take holiness seriously or to think somehow it's boring or no big deal. But what saving faith is all about is recognizing I'm trapped in sin and death. I need life and holiness, and it's turning to God to find it. Saving faith itself is a gift from God. We don't manufacture it, we don't earn it, we don't deserve it. It's not like we come up with faith and we muster it up on our own with our own re resources, and then God is obligated to justify us. That's not what the Bible teaches. Rather, God in his mercy decided he would provide a way to satisfy his wrath, to meet the requirements of justice, provide a way for us to escape death. And that way is through the cross of Jesus Christ. And what saving faith is, is trusting him to do that. So there are four aspects of saving faith. So we've defined it as trusting God to free us from sin and death because of the blood of Jesus Christ, and that requires four things. The first is a genuine desire for holiness in and of itself. This is what Jesus means by hungering and thirsting after righteousness. So saving faith goes beyond being weary of the results of sin to hating sin itself, to wanting to be free from sin itself. Now a lot of us can dislike the consequences of sin, and yet we still want the sin. And there's this myth floating around that being good is boring and being evil is exciting. It's the exact opposite. If evil always results in sin and death, and goodness always results in life and holiness. And if you believe that being good and being holy is boring, then you haven't yet realized what sin is all about or grown weary of it and learned to love the taste of holiness. So we don't say, okay, great, God is going to grant me life, so in the meantime, I'm going to pursue all the sin I can get. Why would I want to do that? Because the very thing I want God to free me from is sin, so I don't want to pursue it. So part of saving faith is wanting to be holy and wanting to be freed from sin and death. That's the first aspect. The second aspect is understanding that left to myself, I am not capable of obtaining holiness. So I am trusting God to grant it to me, to grant me holiness precisely because I don't yet have it. I can't muster it up, I can't earn it on my own. If I could do that, I wouldn't need to trust God for it. And again, my understanding has to be more than an intellectual theory. It's not how I would vote in a theological debate. It's the working principle of my life. I need to see with my own eyes that I am indeed morally bankrupt and do not have the resources to make myself holy or righteous. So it should be the working principle of my life, not just how I'd vote in a theological debate. So the first aspect is a genuine desire for holiness in and of itself. A second is knowing that left to myself I am not capable of making myself holy. The third aspect is a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing, and I am not worthy of any gift from God. So this is the difference in the attitude we see in the Pharisee and the tax gatherer in the parable Jesus told in Luke eighteen. I'll just read that. This is Luke eighteen, verses nine through fourteen. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus, God I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax gatherer. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. Then Jesus finishes, I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. So it's that attitude we see in the tax gatherer that I deserve nothing from God. He doesn't owe me anything, I haven't done anything that requires him to bless me. I've done nothing to deserve salvation, in fact I I still deserve judgment and condemnation, and I have no standing before God whatsoever apart from his grace and the blood of Jesus Christ. Again, it's easy to affirm that as a doctrinal statement, but it's another matter to really see myself this way and let it influence my day-to-day life and decisions. So it's this attitude of I'm not making any presumption upon God, I expect nothing from Him because I realize I am unworthy. So the first three are a genuine desire for holiness, a genuine understanding that I'm not capable of making myself holy. The third aspect is a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing and I deserve nothing from Him. And then the fourth aspect is a firm trust that God both intends to and will in fact bring me into holiness because of the blood of Jesus Christ. So I'm trusting that God both intends to and will make me holy, not because of anything I've done, but because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In short, I'm trusting God to grant me life and holiness. Ultimately, he will free me completely from the sin, futility, corruption, tragedy, and failure that I hate, and grant me the holiness and goodness I long for. God is capable of giving us this kind of life. He has promised to give it to us in the age to come, and he is faithful to fulfill that promise. So that leaves us with the question of how do we handle death now that we're justified? Assume we have saving faith as we've justified it, and we have to live with sin, death, tragedy, and corruption. Because justification has only removed one of the consequences of our rebellion. Justification removed the judicial penalty and satisfied God's justice and removed his wrath. But when we sin, it still leads to death. God has promised us life and holiness, he's given us a taste of it now, but we don't yet have the full installment because we ourselves are not yet completely holy and we live in a world that is fallen with other fallen people who are not yet holy. So in this age, we're still gonna sin, and when we sin, we will still experience death. So what does that mean? How do we handle that? Well, I think we have to recognize a few things. The first is that a mature faith has to be nurtured. Faith is not a simple, easily acquired feeling or a state. It's learning to trust God for holiness despite my circumstances, despite my feelings sometimes, and despite maybe what the world is telling me. A permanent and mature faith has to be nurtured and grown, and God is busy doing exactly that in our lives. He is building us into people whose faith can withstand tragedy and adversity and the daily wear and tear of modern life. That means that faith is more immediately important to us than avoiding sin. Since justification is granted to those who have saving faith, not to those who are perfectly obedient, not to those who have irreproachable lifestyles or impeccable doctrine, our most urgent need in this present age is to acquire mature, strong, saving faith. Because with faith we have everything worth having. Without faith we have nothing. We have no justification, and without justification we have no inheritance, no promises of the gospel, and no way to escape our sin. So we need to recognize that our faith has to be nurtured, and when we recognize that, life begins to make a little more sense. God may choose to allow sin to continue in our lives so that through that struggle he can strengthen our faith. And if our faith grows into a mature, strong, solid faith, then we have everything worth having. So struggling with sin and death matures our faith. This is taught so many places in the New Testament, most notably in the book of James. First Peter teaches the same thing. We continue to struggle with sin because the greater goal is to become people of faith. And during this age, God's highest priority is not to give us holiness, but to give us faith. But right now, his goal is to make us people of faith who trust him. So that means that much of what God allows to happen in our lives is aimed at nurturing our faith. And that nurturing may involve letting us struggle with a particular sin, go through a particular trial, or do without something. My inability to deal with life's injustices or to handle my own selfishness is not necessarily a sign of spiritual lapse. It could be exactly the place God wants me to be because it's the next step in the journey he has me on. It is the struggle he wants me to go through to teach me the thing he wants me to learn. Our response to the sin and death in our lives can tell us a lot about the maturity or maybe the lack of maturity of our faith. If we become bitter that God has not yet removed sin from our lives, then I think it shows us a certain lack of humility and longing. We lack longing because we don't desire righteousness for its own sake, we merely want the consequences of sin to be eliminated. So it's a, you know, we'd like our cake and be able to eat it too if only God would grant it. But we need to learn to want righteousness for its own sake, not just hate the consequences of sin. We may also lack humility because we don't understand that God owes us nothing. The need for humility doesn't change once we've come to saving faith. We tend to believe that non-Christians have no right to expect eternal life, but now we Christians, we have the right to expect all kinds of things from God. We prayed, we studied, we went to church, we did all these things, therefore God owes us something. And that's a mistake. Making a claim to faith does not give me a claim on God. I expect to gain life or blessings, not because he now owes it to me because I have faith, but because he has promised to grant it to me and he is gracious and he is faithful. It's a gift, it is not something I've earned. If we resent God for being slow in bringing holiness about or in granting us maturity in this life, then again we may lack humility. We may not have completely understood that we really don't deserve holiness. God is not obligated to grant me life at all, and He's certainly not obligated to grant it to me now. There's nothing wrong with wanting holiness. In many ways I think it is the most basic desire of our hearts, but it's wrong to demand it from God, to shake my fist and say you owe it to me, or you need to move faster. Again, that shows a lack of humility. If holiness and life seems irrelevant to our life, then I think we lack an understanding of and a longing for holiness. We have to get a taste of holiness and realize it's worth waiting for and it's worth going through everything we go through in this life to gain it. I think that was Jesus' point in the parable of the Pearl of Great Price. Holiness and righteousness, the kind of life God has promised us in His kingdom, is so valuable and so worthwhile that nothing in our present experience compares to it. And if we could just get a glimpse of how wonderful and valuable and worthwhile it is, we would be willing to endure anything now to gain it. Now God does give us a taste of holiness now, we get glimpses of it, and that should whet our appetite for the full installment. If we despair because we're still sinful, then I think our faith lacks trust that God will indeed keep his promises. In Romans 8, Paul writes, this is Romans 8, 24 and 25, for in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. In a very real sense, our lot as believers in this present age is to wait patiently for our inheritance. And that brings us to hope, which is the subject we're going to talk about next time. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. If you've been touched by this podcast, I'd love to hear from you. I love hearing all kinds of feedback, both positive and negative. Just email me feedback at wednesdayintheword.com. Also, please subscribe to this podcast. You'll find it on Android, on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or just about anywhere you can get a podcast. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, just go to wednesdayintheword.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast of Heart Health Music and Ministry. I'm Chris Anmorata, and you've been listening to Wednesday in the Word of the United States.