Faith
in God
It is impossible to have faith in a person without having knowledge of
the person. In the classic treatment of faith in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, there is a verse that goes to the very root of the matter. "He
that cometh to God," the author says, "must believe that he is, and
that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Hebrews 11:6).
Religion is here made to depend absolutely upon doctrine; the one who
comes to God must not only believe in a person, but he must also
believe that something is true; faith is here declared to involve
acceptance of a proposition. It is impossible, according to the Epistle
to the Hebrews, to have faith in a person without accepting with the
mind the facts about the person.
Confidence in a person is more than intellectual assent to a series of
propositions about the person, but it always involves those
propositions, and becomes impossible the moment they are denied. It is
quite impossible to trust a person about whom one assents to
propositions that make the person untrustworthy, or fails to assent to
propositions that make him trustworthy. Assent to certain propositions
is not the whole of faith, but it is an absolutely necessary element in
faith. So assent to certain propositions about God is not all of faith
in God, but it is necessary to faith in God; and Christian faith, in
particular, though it is more than assent to a creed, is absolutely
impossible without assent to a creed. One cannot trust a God whom one
holds with the mind to be either non-existent or untrustworthy.
According to the New Testament, communion with God or faith in God is
dependent upon the doctrine of his existence. But it is dependent upon
other doctrines in addition to that. "He that cometh to God," says the
Epistle to the Hebrews, "must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him." In this latter part of the
sentence, we have, expressed in a concrete way, the great truth of the
personality of God. What we have is a presentation of what the Bible
elsewhere calls the "living" God. God not only exists, but is a free
Person who can act. The same truth appears with even greater clearness
in the third verse of the same great chapter. "Through faith we
understand," says the author, "that the worlds were framed by the word
of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do
appear." Here we have, expressed with a clearness that leaves nothing
to be desired, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, and that
doctrine is said to be received by faith. It is the same doctrine that
appears in the first verse of the Bible, "In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth," and that really is presupposed in the Bible
from beginning to the end.
Certain things, according to the Bible, are known about God, and
without these things there can be no faith. The Bible teaches plainly
that God has given to man a faculty of reason which is capable of
apprehending truth, even truth about God. That does not mean that we
finite creatures can find out God by our own searching; but it does
mean that God has made us capable of receiving the information which He
chooses to give. I cannot evolve an account of China out of my own
inner consciousness, but I am perfectly capable of understanding the
account which comes to me from travelers who have been there
themselves. So our reason is certainly insufficient to tell us about
God unless He reveals Himself; but it is capable (or would be capable
if it were not clouded by sin) of receiving revelation when once it is
given. The knowledge that God has graciously given us of Himself is the
basis of our confidence in Him; the God of the Bible is One whom it is
reasonable to trust.
How then may we attain to this knowledge of God that is so necessary to
faith; how may we become acquainted with Him? God is known through the
Bible. It presents God in loving action, in the course of history, for
the salvation of sinful men. From Genesis to Revelation, from Eden to
Calvary, as the covenant God of Israel and as the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, all through the varied course of Bible story, God
appears in the fulfillment of one loving plan. We see various aspects
of His person; He appears in anger as well as in love. But it is
plainly the same Person throughout: we rise from the Bible — I think we
can say it without irreverence — with a knowledge of the character of
God. There is a real analogy here to our relation with an earthly
friend. How do we come to know one another? Not all at once, but by
years of observation of one another's actions. We have seen a friend in
time of danger, and he has been brave; we have gone to him in
perplexity, and he has been wise; we have had recourse to him in time
of trouble, and he has given us his sympathy. So gradually, with the
years, on the basis of many, many such experiences, we have come to
love him and revere him. So it is, somewhat, with the knowledge of God
that we obtain from the Bible. In the Bible we see God in action; we
see Him in fiery indignation wiping out the foulness of Sodom; we see
Him leading Israel like a flock; we see Him giving His only begotten
Son for the sins of the world. And by what we see we learn to know Him.
Redemption was accomplished, according to the New Testament, by an
event in the external world, at a definite time in the world's history,
when the Lord Jesus died upon the cross and rose again. It is Christ,
therefore, very naturally, who is ordinarily represented as the object
of faith. In the case of our relation to Jesus, we are committing to
Him the most precious thing that we possess — our own immortal souls.
It is a stupendous act of trust. And it can be justified only by an
appeal to facts.
The facts which justify our appeal to Jesus concern not only His
goodness but also His power. We might be convinced of His goodness, and
yet not trust Him with those eternal concerns of the soul. He might
have the will to help and not the power. We might be in the position of
the ship-captain's child in the touching story, who, when all on
shipboard were in terror because of an awful storm, learned that his
father was on the bridge and went peacefully to sleep. The confidence
of the child very probably was misplaced; but it was misplaced not
because the captain was not faithful and good, but because the best of
men has no power to command the wind and the sea that they should obey
him. Is our confidence in Jesus equally misplaced? It is misplaced if
Jesus was the poor, weak enthusiast that He is represented as being by
those who regard Him simply as a Jewish teacher. But very different is
the case if He was the Person presented in the Word of God.
It is one thing to hold that the ethical principles which Jesus
enunciated will solve the problems of society, and quite a different
thing to trust Him as the eternal Son of God, come voluntarily to earth
for our redemption, now risen from the dead and holding communion with
those who commit their lives to Him. A man can admire General
Washington, for example, and accept the principles of his life; yet one
cannot be said to trust him, for the simple reason that he died over a
hundred years ago. His soldiers could trust him: for in their day he
was alive; but we cannot trust him, because now he is dead.
But the words of Jesus that are recorded in the New Testament make it
abundantly plain that the gospel which Jesus proclaimed was, at its
very center, a gospel about Him; it did far more than set forth a way
of approach to God which Jesus Himself followed, for it presented Jesus
as Himself the way. According to the New Testament our Lord presented
Himself not merely as Teacher and Example and Leader but also, and
primarily, as Savior; He offered Himself to sinful men as One who alone
could give them entrance into the Kingdom of God. "The Son of Man," He
said, "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His
life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). He invited men not merely to have
faith in God like the faith which He had in God, but He invited them to
have faith in Him. He clearly regarded Himself as Messiah, not in some
lower meaning of the word, but as the heavenly Son of Man who was to
come with the clouds of heaven and be the instrument in judging the
world.
According to a very widespread way of thinking Jesus was the Founder of
the Christian religion because He was the first to live the Christian
life, in other words because He was Himself the first Christian. But
Jesus stands in a far more fundamental relation to Christianity than
that; He was the Founder of our religion not because He was the first
Christian, but because He made Christianity possible by His redeeming
work. Christianity is a way of getting rid of sin. Our trouble is that
our lives do not seem to be like the life of Jesus. Unlike Jesus, we
are sinners, and hence, unlike Him, we become Christians; we are
sinners, and hence we accept with thankfulness the redeeming love of
the Lord Jesus Christ, who had pity on us and made us right with God,
through no merit of our own, by His atoning death.
The Lord Jesus, then, came into this world not primarily to say
something, not even to be something, but to do something; He came not
merely to lead men through His example out into a "larger life," but to
give life, through His death and resurrection, to those who were dead
in trespasses and sins; we are Christians not because we have faith in
God like the faith in God which Jesus Himself had, but because we have
faith in Him.
One fearful doubt, however, still assails us. It comes from the
nothingness of human life, the thought of the infinite abyss which is
all about us as we walk upon this earth. It cannot be denied that man
is imprisoned on one of the smaller of the planets, that he is
enveloped by infinity on all sides, and that he lives but for a day in
what seems to be a pitiless procession. The things in which he is
interested, the whole of his world, form but an imperceptible oasis in
the desert of immensity. It cannot be denied: man is a finite creature.
From one point of view he is very much like the beasts that perish.
But that is not the whole truth. Man is not only finite: for he knows
that he is finite, and that knowledge brings him into connection with
infinity. He lives in a finite world, but he knows, at least, that it
is not the totality of things. He lives in a procession of phenomena,
but he cannot help searching for a first cause; in the midst of his
trivial life, there rises in his mind the thought of God, an
inscrutable power. In the presence of it man is helpless, but more
unhappy — unhappy because of fear. With what assurance can we meet the
infinite power? Its works in nature, despite all nature's beauty, are
horrible in the infliction of suffering. And what if physical suffering
should not be all; what of the sense of guilt; what if the condemnation
of conscience should be but the foretaste of judgment; what if contact
with the infinite should be contact with a dreadful infinity of
holiness; what if the inscrutable cause of all things should be, after
all, a righteous God?
Can Jesus help us? Make Him as great as you will, and still He may seem
to be insufficient. Extend the domains of His power far beyond our ken,
and still there may seem to be a shelving brink with the infinite
beyond. And still we are subject to fear. The mysterious power that
explains the world still, we say, will sweep in and overwhelm us and
our Savior alike. We are of all men most miserable; we had trusted in
Christ; He carried us a little on our way, and then left us, helpless
as before, on the brink of eternity. There is for us no hope; we stand
defenseless at length in the presence of unfathomed mystery, unless our
Savior were Himself the eternal God.
Then comes the full, rich consolation of God's Word — the mysterious
sentence in Philippians: "who, being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God" (Philippians 2:6); the strange cosmology
of Colossians: "who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born
of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were
created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him
all things consist" (Colossians 1:15-17); the majestic prologue of the
Fourth Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1); the mysterious consciousness of
Jesus: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man
knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither knoweth any man the Father,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" (Matthew
11:27).
These things have been despised as idle speculation, but in reality
they are the very breath of our Christian lives. They are, indeed, the
battle ground of theologians; the church hurled anathemas at those who
held that Christ, though great, was less than God. But those anathemas
were beneficent and right. That difference of opinion was no trifle;
there is no such thing as "almost God." The next thing less than the
infinite is infinitely less. If Christ be the greatest of infinite
creatures, then still our hearts are restless, still we are mere
seekers. But now is Christ, our Savior (the One who says, "Thy sins are
forgiven thee"), revealed as God. There is now for us no awful Beyond
of mystery and fear. We cannot, indeed, explain the world; to us it is
all unknown, but it contains no mysteries for our Savior; He is on the
throne; He is at the center; He is ground and explanation of all
things; He pervades the remotest bounds; by Him all things consist. The
world is full of dread, mysterious powers; they touch us already in a
thousand woes. But from all of them we are safe. "Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is
written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted
as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39)
(1) Excerpts
from What is Faith? (1925).