Faith or Christ: Much of modern and not so modern theology rightly insists that salvation is by grace alone yet often locates that salvation in an act in time, namely the believer’s act of faith. Even when faith is confessed to be “the gift of God,” it is still frequently presented as the decisive instrument that secures our justification before God. Perhaps this is from where the term “saving faith” originates, implying that faith has some inseparable connection with salvation, such that salvation is no longer confessed as a finished reality in Christ, but as something that comes into being when faith is exercised or a distinctive set of doctrinal truths are confessed.
However carefully grace is affirmed, the decisive point is no longer Christ’s finished work, but the sinner’s conscious participation in it, so that salvation becomes inseparably tied not only to believing, but to believing rightly, and to believing in ways that align with an approved doctrinal framework. In this way, salvation is subtly transferred from Christ to the believer’s experience, affixed to “regeneration” or “conversion” as an identifiable moment in time.
Even careful theologians such as John Gill routinely speak of what they call “regeneration” as “the beginning of spiritual life.” In his “Body of Divinity,” Gill says this: “Regeneration is the beginning of spiritual life in the soul; it is the implantation of a principle of grace, from whence all acts of spiritual life flow.” Gill seems to be attempting to safeguard two truths. Spiritual life is of God, and that life is sustained entirely by divine grace. In my reading, and I may be misunderstanding him here, the difficulty is not in what he affirms, but where he locates the beginning of spiritual life. By saying “a spiritual life, begun in regeneration,” the starting point of life is placed at a temporal event within the individual. This shift relocates the center of salvation.
Life is no longer first confessed as existing in Christ objectively, but is instead sought within the sinner subjectively, so that either an act of believing or an arrival at doctrinal correctness becomes the moment when life is said to begin. The effect is the same in both cases. If Scripture says: “Christ is our life,” Colossians 3:4; “life is in the Son,” I John 5:11; that “we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world,” Ephesians 1:4; that “all things were created by Him, and for Him,” Colossians 1:16, &c., then spiritual life cannot begin in “regeneration” in an ultimate sense, because “regeneration” does not create life; it reveals, communicates, or manifests life already secured in Christ. If Gill is read charitably, his statement could be taken as describing the awakening of spiritual life rather than its origin. Psalm 36:9. But that is not what the sentence actually says, as it plainly says that “life” itself begins there. That difference matters, especially when some build entire systems on that phrasing. I do not suggest any bad intent here on the part of Gill, nor do I wish to be overcritical, but only to express a careful concern that language of inward quickening does not eclipse union with Christ, or experience eclipse Christ Himself.
Scripture consistently reverses this order. It does not present faith as the act that brings salvation into being, but as the result of a salvation already accomplished and secured in Christ. “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Believing follows ordination. “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” Coming follows giving. Faith does not create the union; it confesses it. The question, then, is not whether faith is necessary, nor whether faith is a gift of God, both of which Scripture plainly affirms. The question is far more fundamental: what is faith allowed to do? Is faith the means by which salvation is secured, or is it the confession of a salvation already secured in Christ? Does faith bring Christ to the sinner, or does Christ bring the sinner to faith? Faith does not secure Christ. Christ secured faith. That is why anyone believes anything at all.
Faith is not the essence of salvation, it is the confession of it. And when faith is treated as the hinge upon which salvation turns, Christ is quietly reduced from Savior to facilitator. But Christ is not the means to salvation. Christ is salvation. I Corinthians 1:30. “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” I John 5:11. MPJ