Faith is Spirit-Given

 Faith is not self-generated but Spirit-given. Faith does not arise from fallen human nature (1 Cor. 2:14) but from the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit (John 6:63). The Spirit opens the heart, grants understanding, and creates faith through the gospel. As Calvin states elsewhere, "Faith itself is a singular gift of God." — Institutes 3.2.34

Unbelief of Anxiety

 "We battle the unbelief of anxiety with the promises of God. When I am anxious about some risky new venture or meeting, I battle unbelief with the promise: “Fear not for I am with you, be not dismayed for I am your God; I will help you, I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). When I am anxious about my ministry being useless and empty, I fight unbelief with the promise, “So shall my word that goes forth from my mouth; it will not come back to me empty but accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

When I am anxious about being too weak to do my work, I battle unbelief with the promise of Christ, “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9), and “As your days so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25). When I am anxious about decisions I have to make about the future, I battle unbelief with the promise, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8). When I am anxious about facing opponents, I battle unbelief with the promise, “If God is for us who can be against us!” (Romans 8:31). When I am anxious about being sick, I battle unbelief with the promise that “tribulation works patience, and patience approvedness, and approvedness hope, and hope does not make us ashamed” (Romans 5:3–5). When I am anxious about getting old, I battle unbelief with the promise, “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4). When I am anxious about dying, I battle unbelief with the promise that “none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself; if we live we live to the Lord and if we die we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose again: that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living” (Romans 14:8–9). When I am anxious that I may make shipwreck of faith and fall away from God, I battle unbelief with the promise, “He who began a good work in you will complete it unto the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:6). “He who calls you is faithful. He will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). “He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25)."

Sermon, Battling the Unbelief of Anxiety, John Piper.

The Hand of God in Everything

Ah, dear reader, there is no real rest for your poor heart until you learn to see the hand of God in everything. But for that, faith must be in constant exercise.
—Arthur W. Pink

Through Faith

 We are not said to be justified 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘮 (on account of faith) but 𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘮 (through faith).

—Puritan Thomas Manton, Works 13:478

Faith is said to justify, because without it we cannot apprehend the righteousness of Christ; as the hand may be said to feed and nourish the body, but the nutritive virtue is not in the hand, but in the meat. —Puritan Thomas Manton, Works 13:477

Faith in Christ for Sanctification.

 Faith acts upon Christ for justification, as he is a Jesus, or by receiving him as a Jesus; faith acts upon Christ for sanctification, as he is a Lord, or by receiving him as Lord.

- Ralph Erskine

John Cotton: Faith

 There is no more required of you than to lay hold on Christ. He does not look for perfection of faith, but truth of faith. Be your faith ever so weak, if true, it gives you Christ, and He gives you the promise, and that gives you eternal life.

—Puritan John Cotton, Works 3:310

That which makes us doubt [our salvation] is a secret cleaving to the works of the law. —Puritan John Cotton, Works 3:310

Faith is a Gift

Calvin on faith being a gift from God “Faith itself is a work of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in none but the children of God. So then, in various respects, faith is a part of our regeneration, and an entrance into the kingdom of God, that he may reckon us among his children. The illumination of our minds by the Holy Spirit belongs to our renewal, and thus faith flows from regeneration as from its source; but since it is by the same faith that we receive Christ, who sanctifies us by his Spirit, on that account it is said to be the beginning of our adoption.” -- John Calvin

Warfield on Faith

 Of faith's subjective nature we have what is almost a formal definition in the description of it as an ‘assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen’ (Heb. 11:1). It obviously contains in it, therefore, an element of knowledge (Heb. 11:6), and it as obviously issues in conduct (Heb. 11:8, cf. 5:9, 1 Pet. 1:22). But it consists neither in assent nor in obedience, but in a reliant trust in the invisible Author of all good (Heb. 11:27), in which the mind is set upon the things that are above and not on the things that are upon the earth (Col. 3:2, cf. 2 Cor. 4:16–18, Mt. 6:25.

The examples cited in Heb. 11 are themselves enough to show that the faith there commended is not a mere belief in God’s existence and justice and goodness, or crediting of His word and promises, but a practical counting of Him faithful (11:11), with a trust so profound that no trial can shake it (11:35), and so absolute that it survives the loss of even its own pledge (11:17).

So little is faith in its biblical conception merely a conviction of the understanding, that, when that is called faith, the true idea of faith needs to be built up above this word (Jas. 2:14 ff.). It is a movement of the whole inner man (Rom. 10:9, 10), and is set in contrast with an unbelief that is akin, not to ignorance but to disobedience (Heb. 3:18, 19, Jn. 3:36, Rom. 11:20, 30, 15:31, 1 Thess. 1:8, Heb. 4:2, 6, 1 Pet. 1:7, 8, 3:1, 20, 4:18, Acts 14:2, 19:9), and that grows out of, not lack of information, but that aversion of the heart from God (Heb. 3:12) which takes pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thess. 2:12), and is so unsparingly exposed by our Lord (Jn. 3:19, 5:44, 8:47, 10:26).

In the breadth of its idea, it is thus the going out of the heart from itself and its resting on God in confident trust for all good. But the scriptural revelation has to do with, and is directed to the needs of, not man in the abstract, but sinful man; and for sinful man this hearty reliance on God necessarily becomes humble trust in Him for the fundamental need of the sinner—forgiveness of sins and reception into favor.

In response to the revelations of His grace and the provisions of His mercy, it commits itself without reserve and with abnegation (renouncing) of all self-dependence, to Him as its sole and sufficient Savior, and thus, in one act, empties itself of all claim on God and casts itself upon His grace alone for salvation.

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Biblical Doctrines, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 501–502.

REPENTANCE RENOUNCES; FAITH GOES OUT

 THOMAS WATSON Self-renunciation. Faith is going out of one's self, being taken off from our own merits, and seeing we have no righteousness of our own. "Not having my own righteousness." Self-righteousness is a broken reed, which the soul dares not lean on. Repentance and faith are both humbling graces; by repentance a man abhors himself; by faith he goes out of himself. As Israel in their wilderness march, behind them saw Pharaoh and his chariots pursuing, before them the Red Sea ready to devour; so the sinner behind sees God's justice pursuing him for sin, before, hell ready to devour him; and in this forlorn condition, he sees nothing in himself to help—but he must perish unless he can find help in another.

Possession of Faith versus of Profession of Faith

 You are not justified by a profession of

faith. You are justified by a possession

of it. You can't manipulate that. Only the

Holy Spirit can convert. Only the Holy

Spirit can change the disposition of the

soul and regenerate that person who is

dead in sin and trespasses. We can't force

that. And when we do? We put people

at everlasting peril by giving them a false

sense of security! RC Sproul

Faith is not giving but receiving.

 Cast away all idea of work, or merit, or doing or performing, or paying, or giving, or buying, or labouring, in the act of believing on Christ.

Faith is not giving, but taking, — not paying, but receiving— not buying, but being enriched. —JC Ryle, Old Paths, Pg. 160

Not for our Faith, nor according to our Faith

We are not elected....for our faith nor according to our faith, but "to our faith", that is, elected (in order that) we might (would) believe.  

-- William Perkins. 

MULTIPLE

 "As God at first gives faith through the Word, so He also exercises, increases, confirms and perfects it through the Word." - Martin Luther

"Faith is sustained by looking at Christ, crucified and risen, not by turning from Christ to analyze your faith… Paradoxically, if we would experience the joy of faith, we must not focus much on it. We must focus on the greatness of our Savior." - John Piper Faith is not built by preaching introspectively (constantly challenging people to question whether they have faith); faith is not built by preaching moralistically (which has exactly the opposite effect of focusing attention on the self rather than on...... Christ, in whom our faith is placed); Faith is built by careful, thorough exposition of the person, character, and work of Christ.- T. David Gordon; I cannot go anywhere without Christ; I cannot perform the least duty without him here to help me; without Christ in anything, I produce nothing but stenching smoke; I cannot take my next breath without Christ by my side or his permitting me to, and neither would I want to go anywhere or do anything without him. The loveliness of Christ shines through into the darkest of dungeons or prisons, and turns them into palaces. I would be mad to wish a second to be without Christ. (Covenanted Reformation) "Nevertheless, let me tell you, that trust, confidence, reliance, and dependence, for salvation, are all acts and very solemn ones too, of divine worship: and upon whatsoever you depend, whether in whole or in part, for your acceptance with God,and for your justification in His sight, whatsoever, you rely upon, and trust in, for the attainment of grace or glory; if it be any thing short of God in Christ, you are an idolater to all intents and purposes." - Augustus Toplady

Faith Defined.

 What does faith mean? In our culture it is often mistaken for a blind belief in something that is unreasonable. To call the Christian faith a “blind faith,” however, is not only demeaning to Christians, but an outrage to God. When the Bible speaks of blindness it uses this image for people who, by their sin, walk in darkness. Christianity calls people out of the darkness, not into the darkness. Faith is the antidote to blindness, not the cause of it.

At its root, the term faith means “trust.” To trust God is not an act of unreasonable belief. God demonstrates Himself to be eminently trustworthy. He gives ample reason for us to trust Him. He proves that He Himself is faithful and worthy of our trust.

There is a huge difference between faith and credulity. To be credulous is to believe something for no sound reason. It is the stuff of which superstition is made and thrives on. Faith is established upon coherent and consistent reasoning and upon sound empirical evidence. Peter writes, “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

Christianity does not rest upon myths and fables but on the testimony of those who saw with their eyes and heard with their ears. The truth of the gospel is based on historical events. If the account of those events is not trustworthy, then indeed our faith would be in vain. But God does not ask us to believe anything on the basis of myth.

The book of Hebrews gives us a definition of faith: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith comprises the essence of our hope for the future. In simple terms this means that we trust God for the future based on our faith in what He has accomplished in the past. To believe that God will continue to be trustworthy is not a gratuitous faith. There is every reason to believe that God will be as faithful to His promises in the future as He has been in the past. There is a reason, a substantive reason, for the hope that is within us.

The faith that is the evidence of things unseen has primary but not exclusive reference to the future. Nobody has a crystal ball that works. We all walk into the future by faith and not by sight. We may plan and make projections, but even the best foresight we have is based upon our educated guesses. None of us has experiential knowledge of tomorrow. We view the present and can recall the past. We are experts in hindsight. The only solid evidence we have for our own future is drawn from the promises of God. Here faith offers evidence for things unseen. We trust God for tomorrow.

We also trust or believe that God exists. And although God Himself is unseen, the Scriptures make it clear that the invisible God is made manifest through the things that are visible (Romans 1:20). Though God is not visible to us, we believe that He is there because He has manifested Himself so clearly in creation and in history.

Faith includes believing in God. Yet that kind of faith is not particularly praiseworthy. James writes, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!” (James 2:19). Here sarcasm drips from James’s pen. To believe in the existence of God merely qualifies us to be demons. It is one thing to believe in God; it is another thing to believe God. To believe God, to trust in Him for our very life, is the essence of the Christian faith.

Summary

1. Christianity is a faith because it is based on a body of knowledge revealed by God.
2. Faith is not a blind leap into darkness, but a trust in God that moves us out of darkness into light.
3. Faith is simple, but not simplistic.
4. Faith is not credulity. It is based on sound reason and historical evidence.
5. Faith provides the substance for our future hope.
6. Faith involves trusting in what is not seen.
7. Faith means more than believing in God; it means believing God.

R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992).

NO POWER IN FAITH

‎"Never make a Christ out of your faith, nor think of as if it were the independent source of your salvation. Our life is found in 'looking unto Jesus,' not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things become possible to us; yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God upon whom faith relies."-Charles Spurgeon

PRECEDES

totally copied from: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/sproul01.html

Regeneration Precedes Faith
By R. C. Sproul

One of the most dramatic moments in my life for the shaping of my theology took place in a seminary classroom. One of my professors went to the blackboard and wrote these words in bold letters: "Regeneration Precedes Faith."

These words were a shock to my system. I had entered seminary believing that the key work of man to effect rebirth was faith. I thought that we first had to believe in Christ in order to be born again. I use the words in order here for a reason. I was thinking in terms of steps that must be taken in a certain sequence. I had put faith at the beginning. The order looked something like this:

"Faith - rebirth -justification."

I hadn’t thought that matter through very carefully. Nor had I listened carefully to Jesus’ words to Nicodemus. I assumed that even though I was a sinner, a person born of the flesh and living in the flesh, I still had a little island of righteousness, a tiny deposit of spiritual power left within my soul to enable me to respond to the Gospel on my own. Perhaps I had been confused by the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Rome, and many other branches of Christendom, had taught that regeneration is gracious; it cannot happen apart from the help of God.

No man has the power to raise himself from spiritual death. Divine assistance is necessary. This grace, according to Rome, comes in the form of what is called prevenient grace. "Prevenient" means that which comes from something else. Rome adds to this prevenient grace the requirement that we must "cooperate with it and assent to it" before it can take hold in our hearts.

This concept of cooperation is at best a half-truth. Yes, the faith we exercise is our faith. God does not do the believing for us. When I respond to Christ, it is my response, my faith, my trust that is being exercised. The issue, however, goes deeper. The question still remains: "Do I cooperate with God's grace before I am born again, or does the cooperation occur after?" Another way of asking this question is to ask if regeneration is monergistic or synergistic. Is it operative or cooperative? Is it effectual or dependent? Some of these words are theological terms that require further explanation.

A monergistic work is a work produced singly, by one person. The prefix mono means one. The word erg refers to a unit of work. Words like energy are built upon this root. A synergistic work is one that involves cooperation between two or more persons or things. The prefix syn -

means "together with." I labor this distinction for a reason. The debate between Rome and Luther hung on this single point. At issue was this: Is regeneration a monergistic work of God or a synergistic work that requires cooperation between man and God? When my professor wrote "Regeneration precedes faith" on the blackboard, he was clearly siding with the monergistic answer. After a person is regenerated, that person cooperates by exercising faith and trust. But the first step is the work of God and of God alone.

The reason we do not cooperate with regenerating grace before it acts upon us and in us is because we can- not. We cannot because we are spiritually dead. We can no more assist the Holy Spirit in the quickening of our souls to spiritual life than Lazarus could help Jesus raise him for the dead.

When I began to wrestle with the Professor's argument, I was surprised to learn that his strange-sounding teaching was not novel. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield - even the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas taught this doctrine. Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor Angelicus of the Roman Catholic Church. For centuries his theological teaching was accepted as official dogma by most Catholics. So he was the last person I expected to hold such a view of regeneration. Yet Aquinas insisted that regenerating grace is operative grace, not cooperative grace. Aquinas spoke of prevenient grace, but he spoke of a grace that comes before faith, which is regeneration.

These giants of Christian history derived their view from Holy Scripture. The key phrase in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians is this: "...even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have you been saved)" (Eph. 2:5). Here Paul locates the time when regeneration occurs. It takes place 'when we were dead.' With one thunderbolt of apostolic revelation all attempts to give the initiative in regeneration to man are smashed. Again, dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes place first, there is no possibility of faith.

This says nothing different from what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Unless a man is born again first, he cannot possibly see or enter the kingdom of God. If we believe that faith precedes regeneration, then we set our thinking and therefore ourselves in direct opposition not only to giants of Christian history but also to the teaching of Paul and of our Lord Himself.

(from the book, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit, Tyndale House, 1990

BUILT ON CHRIST

Faith is not built by preaching introspectively (constantly challenging people to question whether they have faith); faith is not built by preaching moralistically (which has exactly the opposite effect of focusing attention on the self rather than on Christ, in whom our faith is placed); faith is not built by joining the culture wars and taking potshots at what is wrong with our culture.

Faith is built by careful, thorough exposition of the person, character, and work of Christ.

- T. David Gordon;

FAITH FIRST

"the design of Christian doctrine is that believers should exercise themselves in good works," but "faith must go before in such a manner that good works may follow."

-- John Calvin