Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
So why is the doctrine of faith toward God so important? There are numerous reasons given in scripture as to why it is important for the saints to understand the subject of faith, and we will briefly mention just three of those reasons in this section. The first reason that I have listed is because without faith it is impossible for people to be saved. In the above quoted passage of scripture the Holy Spirit teaches us that there are two ingredients required for the salvation of mankind, the one is grace and the other is faith. We can see very clearly from this passage that both ingredients come from God, for it is by God’s grace that we are saved, but it is also clear from this passage that the faith we need in order to receive God’s grace is also a gift from God. Sadly there are many suffering torment in hell today, because they rejected God’s counsel that they could only be saved by faith in His grace and tried to earn their salvation through works, only to find that God’s counsel stands.
Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
The second reason that I have listed, is because without faith it is impossible to please God, and that particular truth is made very clear to us in the above quoted passage of scripture. It should be the desire of all saints to want to please God, and so when God tells us how to do that then we should be obedient. And so if we want to please God we are going to have to learn about the subject of faith so that we can walk in it, and thus be well pleasing to Him. Sadly however, there are many Christians who start out correctly by entering the Kingdom of God through faith when they believe the gospel of salvation and are born-again. But they then become deceived into thinking that they can be perfected in their Christian walk through works, thinking that in doing so they are pleasing God when in fact they are doing the exact opposite. Our Christian walk begins by faith and it must continue by faith if we are going to live lives that are well pleasing to God our Father. So does that mean that we are not supposed to do works? Not at all, for the scripture is very clear when it tells us that as believers we are to be careful to maintain good works (Titus 3:8). Where many Christians miss it however, is in their eagerness to do good works they forget about faith and thus try to please God through works alone, which as we have already established is impossible to do. The apostle James explained the Christian walk in the following way when he said that our faith works together with our works (James 2:22).
Habakkuk 2:4 “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith.”
The third reason that I have listed, is because as quoted in the above passage of scripture, God has specifically instructed His saints how He wants us to live, which is by faith. The Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul quoted this same scripture in His letters to the churches in Rome (Romans 1:17), Galatia (Galatians 3:11) and Judea (Hebrews 10:38). And so all believers know these scriptures very well, for we all know that we are to live by faith. So what does that actually mean? It means that every aspect of our lives should be impacted by our faith and in fact the Holy Spirit tells us that anything not done by faith is sin (Romans 14:23). That statement becomes very sobering when Christians examine their lives to see just how many things they do without exercising their faith. And so in just looking at the three reasons discussed in this section, we can see how important it is for believers to have a clear understanding of faith so that they can learn to walk in it.
Michael E.B. Maher
Comments