Faith is one of those words I have struggled with for a long time. As a person of the Reformed persuasion, sola fide is supposed to be the cheer for my team (although I think sometimes semper fi would be better). But what is faith? Reformed theology tells us that you can’t be justified before God without it, but “it” isn’t anything you do. And just to complicate matters further, we’re told that “we are justified by faith alone, but the faith which justifies is never alone.” I’m still not sure I really understand what that means.

More recently I’ve felt befuddled by the justification/NPP/FV wars raging across the blogosphere and in every other publisher shipment arriving at my bookstore. In way too many of these it sounds like those on the attack are saying that “saving faith” is dependent upon crossing every theological “t” and dotting every soteriological “i.”

I guess that is why I found this very comforting:

…faith isn’t something we are to try to work up in ourselves. It isn’t some inner state of certainty to which we somehow attain. God, in his mercy towards us, does not require us to hold within our heads at one moment the whole truth of Christianity, and to assent to it. Rather, he comes to us with concrete, audible promises: “Your sins are forgiven”; “Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ”; “This is my body, given for you… this cup is the new testament in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins”. Faith is believing the promise we are hearing right now.

From “Doubts and Loves and Faith” on Confessing Evangelical (HT: Alistair)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Discipleship, Rants, Reformedom, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.