Saving Faith: Am I the only one to notice that much of the faith-centered language common in evangelical and even calvinistic circles tends (often unconsciously) to shift the center of gravity from Christ Himself to our believing about Christ. It seems a subtle, but serious displacement. The term “saving faith” may, in a certain sense, be affirmed from Scripture, for the Word does indeed speak of believing “unto salvation.” When faith is understood rightly, if by it we mean that faith which beholds Christ as salvation itself, and receives the testimony that God has already justified His people in His Son. In that light, it may be called saving, not as a cause, but as a witness to Christ’s finished work, that inward persuasion to the truth that Christ alone is our salvation. Saving, not for what it is in itself, but for what it apprehends, and I think that’s how the term is being used by those acclimated to a “grace” vocabulary; yet even so, I find the expression somewhat unwise, for it unwittingly mirrors the language of conditionalists who view faith as the hinge upon which salvation turns. Nehemiah 13:24. However unintended, it lends itself to the idea that man’s believing contributes to his justification, or that salvation waits to be made effectual by the act of faith. Scripture never speaks in such a way. It declares that salvation is of the Lord, finished, perfect, and given freely. Faith does not activate redemption; it perceives it. The danger lies not in the word itself, but in the subtle suggestion that God’s grace is suspended until man believes.
A little deviation in speech may work a great alteration in thought. If the gospel’s sound is not kept simple, the soul soon rests upon the act of believing rather than upon Him who is believed. Language, once meant to magnify Christ, turns to magnify the believer’s faith; and that which was to exalt grace ends by setting up experience or a confession in its stead. In this manner, faith is made to share the credit of salvation, not by deliberate design, but by careless habit, and thus the center of glory has been drawn little by little from Christ to man.
Many speak much of faith and little of Christ, as though believing were the condition upon which salvation depends. Faith saves no one! We are not justified by our believing, but believe because we are justified in Christ, who was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. This righteousness stood perfect before faith ever stirred in the heart; but that righteousness, complete and entire in Christ, is made manifest to the conscience only when faith, wrought by the Spirit, awakens to behold what grace has already secured. Faith does not summon it into being but awakens to see it finished. And when the church exalts the act of believing above the Savior believed upon, she dims the glory of grace and places the shadow where the light should shine. II Timothy 1:9. MPJ