The Gospel & Salvation: Saving Faith

Faith

Romans 4:18-25 and Selected Scriptures

 If you are here week to week you know what we are doing. We are doing a series of messages on the gospel and the work of salvation. In the beginning of this series our focus was on the problem. The problem of humanity is sin. One of the ways I know the Bible is true is because I can see that everything the Bible says about man is true. The Bible provides the only logical explanation for the problems facing mankind. These problems are the consequences of sin.

But what I have sought to help us understand is that sin isn’t just mankind’s problem, it is my problem. I am a sinner corrupted by sin. My sin separates me from a holy God. I agree with the Law of God in my members. I stand with Paul asking the question, “Who will set me free from the body of this death?” I also praise God for Paul’s answer to that question found in Romans 7. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” 

After laying the groundwork for the gospel by explaining the problem of sin, we also looked briefly at the solution to our sin problem. Jesus Christ is the sinless substitute who died for us to pay the penalty of God’s just wrath toward sin and sinners. We saw from Isaiah 53 the good news of the gospel. He was crushed for our iniquities. He was bruised for our transgressions. He bore our sins in His body. Then, we saw that He was raised again from the dead and this proved that God was satisfied. The penalty had been paid. God accepted the death of His own sinless Son, an innocent substitute who died in our place. His payment was sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God reserved for sinners.

So then, in the last few weeks we have turned our focus on the next important aspect of the gospel we must understand. We have been answering the question as to how the sinner becomes the beneficiary of the work of salvation. In Acts, when sinners were confronted with the truth of their sin and they were told of the solution, their question was, “What must I do?” The consistent answer from the Bible is “repent and believe.” When Jesus began preaching the gospel, He preached a message consistent with the prophets of the Old Testament, and John the Baptist. Mark 1:15 records these words of Jesus. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Repent and believe in the gospel. These two responses stand together, or they fall together. A sinner will not repent unless he or she believes. Those who truly believe in the gospel will repent. One thing I have stressed throughout this series is that Satan loves to distort the message of the gospel in order to deceive people regarding the work of salvation. There are some who want to eliminate repentance from the necessary response of the sinner. There are some who teach that repentance is optional, that it is not necessary to add repentance to belief, because this adds an element of works to salvation and makes it a corruption of the doctrine of grace. Those who preach this watered down version of the gospel teach that belief in Christ is enough, and that repentance and serving Christ as Lord of your life is optional.

This does not square with the teaching of the New Testament. James 2:19 tells us that even the demons believe and shudder. James points out that a faith that is void of anything other than a shallow profession is useless. John 2:23-24 tells us of the response of Jesus to a large crowd of believers. There were large crowds who believed in His name because of the signs He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them because He knew what was in their hearts. In John 6, Jesus fed 5,000.  In verse 14 we read, “Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.” This statement indicates that they believed Jesus to be the Messiah, which He was. But because Jesus knew they were only interested in Him for selfish reasons, He withdrew from them. When He came back to them He doubled down with His message and preached them all away. The only ones who stuck around were those who were His true disciples. In John 8:31 we read these words, “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine.”

So today we are going to look at what it means to believe in the gospel. Believing which results in the genuine work of salvation is referred to in Scriptures as faith. Faith is more than an intellectual acceptance of the historical story of Jesus. There are multitudes of people who have heard of Jesus and believe the historical facts, yet they do not possess a genuine saving faith. Believing in the gospel involves a faith that truly saves. Those truly saved will, as John the Baptist preached, bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.

If you have a good study Bible with an index of key Bible doctrines, look at the doctrine of faith. You will find an extensive list of verses that teach so much about faith. It should be fairly obvious that faith is more, so much more than just the intellectual acknowledgement of the historical facts about Jesus. A proper understanding of faith is essential because faith is essential if the sinner is to become the beneficiary of salvation. We must all be sure our faith is a true saving faith, and not some variation of faith that comes from some corrupt religious system.

To show the close connection between the relationship of believing and faith, all we need to do is see the close relationship of the Greek words most often translated “believe” and “faith” in the New Testament. The Greek word translated “believe” in John 3:16, “For God so loved…” and Romans 4:3, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” is the Greek verb “pisteuo.” 

The word translated “faith” in the New Testament, in places like Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith…” and Hebrews 11:1, which we read this morning, is the Greek noun “pistis.” “Pistis” is the noun and it is translated generally into the word “faith” and “pisteuo” is the verb translated “believe.” These words have the exact same etymological root. The only thing that changes in the Greek is the ending of the spelling. These words do not have really any significant variation of meaning in the definitions of the words.

My favorite Greek scholar defines “pisteuo” or “believe” like this. “To believe, to have faith in, and trust. To believe is to be firmly persuaded as to something. His definition of “pistis” or “faith” is “Faith, subjectively meaning firm persuasion, conviction, belief in the truth, veracity.” Both words convey the idea of believing something as true, and to be persuaded of the truth to such a degree that one trusts or places his or her confidence in it.

What is the relationship between repentance and faith? Both are realities in the lives of those who are truly saved. If there is belief without repentance, there is no salvation.

Case in point; Satan believes the truth of the Bible. He knows it is the word of God. He believes in the historical truths about Jesus. He is absolutely convinced that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. He believes in the virgin birth, the sinless life, and the death of Jesus as a sinless substitute. He believes in the resurrection of Jesus. So do the demons. But they are not saved. Redemption is out of reach for them even though they believe. Redemption is out of reach because they cannot repent.

There can also be a faulty faith because it is faith in something other than faith in Christ. I know people who firmly believe in solid biblical doctrine and are convinced of their salvation because they believe certain things, even though their lives are an abomination to the Lord. Here is one example I have shared in the past. The doctrine of the eternal security of the believer is a solid and true biblical doctrine. We will look at this doctrine as part of this study of salvation at some point in the future. The Bible teaches that the person who is regenerated in the work of salvation, and truly saved, can never lose their salvation. True believers are eternally secure in the salvation received. This is a biblical truth.

There are some, who having made a confession of faith in Christ and prayed a particular prayer and asked Jesus into their hearts, and having done that, have become convinced of the work of salvation. Because they are convinced they are saved, and because the doctrine of the eternal security of the believer is true, they now believe that it doesn’t matter how they live. They don’t have to worry about living righteously because their sins have been forgiven and they are eternally secure in the salvation God promised.  Listen, faith in Christ saves. Faith in a doctrine, even a solid biblical doctrine does not save. 

There is another common problem with faith in the modern church. I call it faith in faith. It is very common in charismatic circles. It teaches that faith is a creative force. If you believe with enough faith, you can be healed of any disease, create immeasurable amounts of wealth and prosperity, and remove all the troubles and trials and sorrow from your life. I know this is faith in faith, not faith in God, because God never promises these things. It is faith in faith because when these things fail to materialize, the false teacher who lied to the people about what God promises, always blames the weakness of the faith of the one who asked God to provide. They will tell the disappointed person that they didn’t get what they asked of God because they didn’t have enough faith. This is not faith in Christ. This is faith in faith.

I share those examples with you because we need to be able to discern defective faith, or in these cases, deceptive faith. Satan is the angel of light and a very subtle and effective deceiver. He is a skilled liar. If he can lead the sinner to believe in something other than the true gospel, and make that person believe that he possesses saving faith when he does not, he has the sinner firmly entrenched in a deceptive trap from which is hard to escape.

Let’s seek an accurate and biblical understanding of faith and let’s start in the Old Testament. Genesis 15:6 is a key verse in the Old Testament. It is important because it bears witness to the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith. This verse is a clear signal of the true religion of divine accomplishment. The verse says, “Then he (Abram) believed in the Lord; and He (God) reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Now let me give a little background and context for this verse.

Abram’s faith was accounted, or credited, or reckoned to him as righteousness before he was circumcised and more than 400 years before the Law was given through Moses. Therefore, neither circumcision nor the Law had anything to do with Abram’s righteousness. The Jews of Jesus’ day trusted in both circumcision and law keeping as the basis for their right standing before God.

The Hebrew verb translated “believed” in Genesis 15:6 is the word “aman.” (haman) The verb means to be firm, to build up, to support, to nurture, or to establish. Metaphorically, the word conveys the notion of faithfulness and trustworthiness such that one could fully depend on something. The word signifies certitude or assurance and belief, in the sense of receiving something as true and sure. The word has the same basic meaning as the Greek words for believe and faith.

Abram firmly accepted God’s promise as something one could fully depend upon. Abram was assured of, and believed he would receive what God had promised. He perceived God’s promise as true. He was persuaded of this promise to such a degree that he placed his full confidence in it. What did he believe? He believed God’s promise to give him a son. He believed in God’s promise to give him the land of Canaan.

Turn to Romans 4. We need to look closely at Paul’s commentary on this verse. This is not a commentary written by a man alone. This is a commentary inspired by the Holy Spirit of God because it is contained in the Scriptures. Let’s read this in Romans 4:18-25. Since you have been sitting for a little while, let me invite you to stand with me in honor of God’s word as we read these verses. Read the verses. Please be seated.

Let’s again establish some context for what we are looking at in Romans 4. First, Romans is the most exhaustive explanation of salvation found in the New Testament. Paul does in this letter what we are attempting to do in this series. He explains the gospel and the work of salvation thoroughly. To do this Paul starts where we started. Obviously, I copied off of Paul’s paper. I started where Paul started. We started this series by looking at the sin problem and we did that because this is where Paul started. In the first three chapters of Romans Paul discusses the sin problem.

In chapter 4 Paul is explaining how the solution to the sin problem is secured. In verses 1-8 Paul explains that salvation is not by the works of the Law, but by faith. In verses 9-17 Paul explains that salvation is by grace, not Law. In this section, verses 18-25 Paul is explaining that salvation is by faith in divine power, not by human effort. The whole chapter is an exposition that answers the question, “How is a person saved?” Paul is illustrating the work of salvation in the life of Abraham. Here we have a New Testament explanation of an Old Testament picture of saving faith.

This is Paul’s commentary on the faith of Abraham. His original name was Abram. His original name meant, “father of many.” He was the father of none. His name didn’t fit his circumstances. Later, God changed his name to Abraham, which means “father of multitudes.” At the time of the name change Abraham was the father to only one, and that was Ishmael, whom he fathered through Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian maid.

This is important background information because Ishmael represented what is done to fulfill God’s promises through human effort. Abram and Sarah conceived their own plan by which God’s promise might be fulfilled. This is another manifestation of the religion of human achievement. The son of promise was to be Isaac. He is the son born by the power of divine accomplishment. Your homework assignment today is to go home and read Galatians 4:21-31 to read the explanation of the difference between Ishmael and Isaac.

A little more background on Abram. At about age 60 God called Abram to leave his idolatrous land of Ur and to go to a land God would show him. His life of faith began when he responded to this call of God on his life. God sovereignly called this one man to go and he obeyed. I don’t want to be too dogmatic about this but I see repentance here in the life of Abram. He was an Old Testament example of one who was saved, and his salvation involved his turning from idols to God to serve the true and living God. He certainly wasn’t perfect in his life of faith. It is marred by unbelief, doubts, and failures, but it is a life of faith in the promises of God.

The fulfillment of God’s promises depended on an heir that was to be born to Abraham and Sarah. Ishmael, the son produced by human accomplishment, was born to Abram when Abram was 86 years old. God waited another 13 years until Abram was 99 to appear again and promise again to multiply him exceedingly. God then changed his name to Abraham. He went from being called “father of many” which he was not, to “father of multitudes” which he would become.

This is where we pick up in Romans 4:18. “In hope against hope he believed…” This means that in the face of hopeless realities, when faced with nothing but impossibilities from a human standpoint, Abraham believed God. What did he believe? Look at the rest of verse 18, “so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, ‘so shall your descendants be.’” 

God had told Abraham that he would be exceedingly fruitful and that He would make of Abraham nations and kings would come from him. God told Abraham that his descendants would be like the sands of the sea. God told Abraham to look at the stars and to count them if he could. God said, “So shall your descendants be.” What God promised, Abraham believed.

It was after looking into the heavens at the innumerable stars and hearing the promise from God that Genesis 15:6 tells us, “Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The moment of Abraham’s salvation was when he believed something unbelievable. He embraced something by faith he could not see. He trusted fully in God to accomplish something to which he could make no contribution. It would be 25 years from this point until the birth of Isaac, and his faith was not perfect, but the promise of God was certain. While he would stumble in his faith, and fail in some things, his faith would not fail.

Paul tells us in our passage in Romans 4:19-20, that “without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb, yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.” His faith in the promise of God did not waver or vacillate. It never diminished or died. He kept believing even though the physical reality was that he was a hundred years old, as good as dead from the standpoint of producing a child, and Sarah’s womb was not only beyond the years of bearing a child, it had never worked for that purpose. She had never given birth to a child.

Even though the promise of God required a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman to produce a child, with respect to the promise of God, he never wavered in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and verse 21 says, “and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.”

The faith of Abraham is saving faith because it is faith in the concept of divine accomplishment, not human achievement. Through human effort, or human achievement Abram had produced a child, but not the child of God’s promise. Abraham was brought to the place where he saw clearly how hopeless and helpless he was to ever see the promise of God come to pass if it depended on him. If he could do anything to overcome the deficit of his age and Sarah’s dead womb, he would be able to share in the glory. He could not grow stronger in his ability, so he grew stronger in faith and glory went to God, not Abraham.

Therefore his faith was credited to him as righteousness. He received the promises of God and believed the promises of God and faith was credited to him as righteousness. His faith resulted in his redemption from sin. He was credited with a righteousness not of his own doing. He would stand before God as a justified sinner, by faith.

Jesus made an interesting statement about Abraham. In John 8:56 Jesus was speaking to the Jews. The Jews firmly believed they were sons of God by virtue of the fact that they were descendants of Abraham, even though they knew nothing of the faith of Abraham. Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” How was this possible? When did Abraham see the day of Jesus? I am convinced that Abraham saw it in the event recorded in Genesis 22. That is the other part of your homework assignment. Read Genesis 22. God told Abraham to take his son of promise, Isaac, to a mountain in the land of Moriah, and offer him as a burn offering.

You know the story. Abraham believed God to be able to raise the dead. He believed God to be the One who would keep His promise regarding Isaac even if He had to raise Isaac from the dead. When God stopped Abraham from thrusting the knife into Isaac’s chest, and showed him the ram caught in the thicket, I believe Abraham understood what God would do through the sacrifice of His only Son as an innocent substitute in the place of sinners. The provision of the ram caught in the thicket, provided at exactly the right time, an innocent victim to die in the place of Isaac, is a clear picture of substitutionary atonement. I think this is when Abraham saw Jesus’ day.

All who are saved by faith are saved by the same faith which resulted in Abraham’s salvation. This is Paul’s point in verses 23-25 of Romans 4. Read these verses again. What God accomplished for Abraham was not for his sake only. It was for our sakes also. The righteousness which we need to stand guiltless before a holy God is also credited to others. But, to who? To those who believe in God who raised Jesus from the dead. To those who believe that Jesus was delivered over to sinful men to die as an innocent substitute. To those who believe that Jesus was raised again from the dead to prove that God was satisfied, that divine justice had been served.

Abraham was saved by grace alone through faith alone. There is no other way to be saved. Abraham believed in the promises of God. He believed in the promise of a son to be born to him even though he was as good as dead and his wife was far beyond the years of possible birth. His faith saved.

Let’s relate this to us as we close. Abraham believed some remarkable promises from God. These were promises that God was going to do what was humanly impossible. So then, what are the things impossible from a human standpoint that God has promised to do? What must we believe to be saved by faith? What must I believe in order for faith to be credited to me as righteousness?

I have to believe, we have to believe in God’s promises to do for us that which is humanly impossible. We have to believe that God will do for us something that can never be achieved through human effort. We have to believe, by faith, that God will accept us into His gloriously holy presence even though there is absolutely nothing good in us. There is nothing in us except sin, corruption, and vile iniquity of every sort. We must believe that our sins, past, present, and future, and there must be billions of these sins, were all listed on the ledger of offenses against holy God, and they were nailed to the cross where Jesus shed His precious blood to pay the penalty we owed to God. How is that possible?

I love what Jesus said about the work of salvation in Luke 18:27. Jesus said, “The things that are impossible with people are possible with God.” I believe that God has done the impossible for me. I accept, by faith, that my sins, though they are too many to count, and cover me completely in scarlet, He forgives and makes me white as snow. I believe, and accept by faith, that Jesus died in my place to pay the penalty, and to suffer the wrath of God, in my place. And I believe and accept by faith that He was raised from the dead because my justification was complete.

I ask you, if we were to make a list of impossible things, which of these two things would be higher on the list? Which seems more impossible? Abraham and Sarah having a son when he is 100 and she is 90, or my sins being cleansed and my being clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ so that I can stand in the presence of holy God fully pardoned and lovingly accepted as a righteous son? It is probably kind of pointless to figure out which is more impossible. They are both utterly impossible if they are to be achieved by man. Praise be to God that these things that are impossible with people are possible with God.

Have you believed, and accepted by faith alone, the promises of God? Have you embraced what God must do for you through divine accomplishment, or are you still trusting in something you have done for yourself, or are doing for yourself? You cannot do the impossible, but God can. And God will, for those who repent and believe in the gospel.

Let’s pray.