Saving Faith
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2024 · 24 November 2024
The nature of saving faith is looking at salvation positively. Nothing is more tragic than deception where people think they’re saved but they’re not, because their faith is not a saving faith. To begin let us look at John 2. This is a good to begin a discussion of the nature of saving faith, because Jesus identifies here a non-saving kind of faith. In John 2:23 he reminds us that Jesus had done many miracles.
Verse 24-25 says, “Jesus, however, would not entrust himself to them, since he knew them all 25 and because he did not need anyone to testify about man; for he himself knew what was in man.” They believed in Him, but He did not commit Himself to them as their Savior, because He knew what was in them, and what was in them was something less than a saving faith.
What is saving faith? It is believing in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ to the degree that you are completely satisfied with Him so as to commit your life to Him in loyalty, faithfulness, allegiance, submission, duty, fidelity, obligation; and it is not only believing intellectually. Faith cannot be placed in opposition to commitment, to surrender, to repentance, to delighting in the Lord.
We’re going to find in Hebrews 11 the nature of the faith that saves. Understand two things: what faith is and what faith does. Verse 1-3 says, “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. 2 For by this our ancestors were approved. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”
Hebrews was written to Jews. And in their culture and society, the dominating religious thought was that of the Pharisees. Because they subscribed to the highest level of the Mosaic Law. And according to the Pharisees righteousness, forgiveness from sin and salvation could only be achieved through a rigorous system of works. So you saved yourself by your activities and moral duties.
Jewish tradition had twisted God’s law, the law that had been given to show man was a sinner, and turned it into a means of salvation. Now in the New Testament this matter of works-based salvation is directly attacked and shown to be a misrepresentation of what the Scripture teaches. Salvation is not obtained by a system of works, but by believe in what Christ did for all believers.
The problem is that even after they had been shown the basics of Christ, the basics of the gospel, the truths of Christ’s death and resurrection, most of them were unwilling to abandon their religion of works righteousness. And so the writer pens Hebrews 11 to show them that salvation has never been by works. And He goes all the way back to the time of the first Adam.
In verse 4, “By faith Abel.” Verse 5, “By faith Enoch.” Verse 7, “By faith Noah.” Verse 8, “By faith Abraham.” Verse 11, “By faith Sarah,” and so it goes. Verse 20, “By faith Isaac, by faith Jacob, by faith Joseph, by faith Moses.” It was never anything but faith. He is really undercutting this Pharisaic system of meritorious works designed to earn your own salvation.
In Habakkuk 2:4 it says, “The just shall live by faith.” That’s not a truth about the New Testament, that’s a truth about God’s plan of redemption from beginning to end. And as Hebrews 11 points out, from Adam on, the instrument of God’s salvation has been faith not works. Ephesians 2:8 says, “For you are saved by grace through faith, and that is not from yourselves, it is God’s gift.”
Hebrews 10 is about justification by faith, and Hebrews 11 gives us examples of the people who were justified by their faith. They proved that salvation is not by works. But what is the faith that saves?” Number one: This faith can be defined as the assurance of things hoped for. What saving faith does is translate the promises for God for the future into the present tense.
In other words, real saving faith takes God at His word about the future. Faith is a supernatural confidence that God will actually someday take us to heaven, that He will actually someday make us perfect and free from sin, that He will actually someday bring us face to face with Christ and make us like Him, that He will actually someday reward us with an eternal reward.
Faith is believing something that God promises will happen, not because we will it to happen, but because He pledged it will happen. It is absolute certainty with regard to the promises of Scripture. And anybody who has weak view of the Bible is bound to have weak faith. It is the faith that God has the ability and the will to fulfill His promises, that He can be trusted.
This faith is supernatural. This true saving faith is something God gives us. You don’t have the faith that saves, it’s not natural. It’s not natural to believe in something you’ve never seen. It’s not natural to believe in someone you’ve never seen. We believe in a God we’ve never seen, a Christ we’ve never seen, a Spirit we’ve never seen. We believe we’re going to a heaven we’ve never seen.
When a sinner comes to the greatest level of desperation, which he’s had a whole lifetime to accumulate, and embraces Jesus Christ in the desperation of his desire for forgiveness, all of a sudden he’s able to believe without any proof. And then once you believe, you go back to read and study the Word of God and you begin to see the reasonableness of what you have come to believe.
The natural man, according to 1 Corinthians 2:14 does not accept the things of the Spirit of God because they are foolishness to him. So here you have a man who is spiritually dead, he’s alive physically; so the only faith that operates is the faith that’s connected to his physical experiences. And he comes to faith in Christ only when God intervenes in his life and grants him supernatural faith.
Verse 27 says, “By faith Moses left Egypt behind, not being afraid of the king’s anger, for he persevered as one who sees him who is invisible.” He could have been the richest of the rich and the most prominent of the prominent. But he left, walked away, had no fear for the wrath of the king, and he endured through all of it because he could see Him who is unseen that is God.
Faith is the conviction of things not seen. That verse 27 transitions us into this point. This parallel phrase to the first phrase carries the idea a bit further. And the word implies a deeper manifestation of that assurance. We are ready to say, “My life is going to be committed to this, and it’s going to determine what I do, and where I go, and how I think, and how I talk, and how I live.”
We live every moment as though it is reality though, because we have that conviction of what we’ve never seen being true. Peter described it in 1 Peter 1:8-9, “Although we have not yet seen Christ, we love Him.” He goes on, “And though we do not see Him now, we believe in Him. With an expressible and glorious joy we are committed to Him, obtaining faith’s outcome, the salvation of our souls.”
Such faith is unassailable. No matter what tests it, no matter what it costs, it endures. It is a conviction of things not seen. And the point of Hebrews 11 is to show it’s an enduring, persevering faith, because all the examples in Hebrews 11 show people whose faith was severely tested. The nature of saving faith is that it is a confidence, an assurance, a foundation of things hoped for.
This faith is firm. It’s a supernatural conviction that governs the true believer’s behavior. It endures, and it perseveres, and it obeys. All the way through this chapter people are worshipping, obeying, enduring, sacrificing, working, and all by faith. It is a commitment that never changes. God gives divine faith, it is unassailable faith, and Hebrews 11 is the proof of that.
Now, there are three elements to faith, knowledge, assent, and trust. Knowledge is the intellectual element. It is to understand the truth, the gospel. Assent is the emotional element. It is to find your heart drawn to what your head has learned. And trust is the voluntary element, or the volitional element. It’s when you make the commitment. Real faith involves all three.
Saving faith has the mind embracing the knowledge, a recognition and understanding of the truth that Jesus Christ saves. The heart then gives assent. The will responds with a personal commitment to Christ. That final element, trust, the volitional component is the crowning element of believing, and it involves surrender to the object of faith. It is personal choice of Christ as Lord and Savior.
Faith is believing that God is. Verse 6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He exists.” He is the God of Scripture, who is the God incarnate in Jesus Christ. You have to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ who is a member of the Trinity, who was incarnated through the virgin birth, came into the world, and lived a sinless life.
He died as a substitutionary atonement for sinners, rose from the grave the third day, was taken to the right hand of the Father as affirmation of the success of His sacrifice, and there He intercedes for us until He returns. That’s the Christ of Scripture. And the God of Scripture is the God revealed there who was incarnate in Christ; and if you’re going to come to God you come believing that.
What does Romans 10:9-10 mean when it says, “If you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you’ll be saved”? What Christ can you believe in if you don’t believe in the crucified and risen One? And if you confess with your mouth Jesus Christ as Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, then you’re affirming all of His ministry and His death; you’ll be saved.
Faith is seeking God. “It is believing that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. ”It’s not enough to believe that the God of the Bible exists. There’s one other element: you must seek Him, and that’s that third component. You seek Him as Savior; you seek Him as Lord that you obey. It’s not enough to know about God and about Christ. It’s not enough to seek information, you must seek Him.
Isaiah said, “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.” Jeremiah said, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” Amos said, “Seek Me that you may live.” Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, and everything else will be added to you.” Salvation happens when the penitent sinner seeks with all his heart.
Instead of trying to earn favor with God, faith pursues God Himself. Faith follows after God as the soul’s greatest pleasure. Faith then is seeking and finding God in Christ, desiring Him, being satisfied with Him, and wanting to give your whole life to Him. It’s finding Him, the bread that satisfies, and the water that quenches. Now, in the next five minutes we see what faith does.
To understand faith we’ve got to know what it does. In a sentence: it perseveres in obedience. In verse 4, you find faith worshipping. In verse 5, you find faith walking with God. In verse 7, you find it working for God; in verses 8 to 10, obeying God; in verse 11, Sarah overcome barrenness even though she was old; and in verse 12, having offspring as numerous as the starts in the sky.
Faith enabled people to persevere to death, verses 13 to 16; to trust God with their possessions, verses 17 to 19; to believe God for the future, verses 20 to 23; to turn away from earthly treasure for heavenly reward, verses 24 to 26; to see Him who is invisible, verse 27; to receive miracles from the hand of God, verses 28 to 30; to have courage in the face of great danger, verses 31 to 34.
Verses 33 – 38 say, “Who by faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the raging of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, and put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received their dead, raised to life again. Other people were tortured, not accepting release.
So that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Others experienced mockings and scourgings, as well as bonds and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. 38 The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.”
Verses 39 – 40, “All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.” They never saw the Messiah come or knew about the cross and the resurrection. What are they witnessing to? The permanence of saving faith. When God grants faith, it’s the faith that endures.
They were looking forward. We can look back and know there really was a Jesus. These are the heroes of the faith. They show us that the faith that God gives endures everything, from being cut in half to being thrown to lions. Everything we know about the God of the Bible, affirms His reality. And everything we know about our personal experience in His salvation affirms its reality. Let us pray.