|
It is here that the most characteristic act of faith appears; it is engagement of person to person, the engagement of the sinner as lost to the person of the Saviour able and willing to save. Faith, after all, is not belief of propositions of truth respecting the Saviour, however essential an ingredient of faith such belief is. Faith is trust in a person, the person of Christ, the Son of God and Saviour of the lost. It is entrustment of ourselves to Him. It is not simply believing Him; it is believing in Him and on Him.
It is the genius of the Romish conception of salvation to intrude mediators between the soul and the Saviour-the Church, the virgin, the sacraments. On the contrary, it is the glory of the gospel of God's grace that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And it was the glory of our Protestant Reformation to discover again the purity of the evangel. ["Ed Note: Baptists are NOT protestants, nor part of the Protestant Reformation, but rather we trace our beginning to the time when Jesus personally, in His earthly ministry, founded the Church, before Pentecost."] The Reformers recognized that the essence of saving faith is to bring the sinner lost and dead in trespasses and sins into direct personal contact with the Saviour Himself, contact which is nothing less than that of self-commitment to Him in all the glory of His person, and perfection of His work as He is freely and fully offered in the gospel.
As one has aptly and truly stated the case, it is not faith that saves but faith in Jesus Christ; strictly speaking, it is not even faith in Christ that saves but Christ that saves through faith.
|
![[GospelWeb.net Globe]](../graphics/GW90logo.gif)