Salvation by Faith Scriptural Bases 2

2. Salvation by Faith Scriptural Bases:  What Faith It Is Which We Are Saved

A.  It is not the faith of the heathens.  They know to do good and treat each other with goodness and punish badness.

Luke 4:34—Get out of here!  Leave us alone!  What’s Your agenda, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who You are:  You’re the Holy One, the One sent by God!  (Demonic possessed people will feel this way about Jesus.  Unsaved people will feel this way about Jesus.  They do not want Jesus to interfere with their agenda, with that they want!)

Hebrews 11:6—Without faith no one can please God because the one coming to God must believe He exists, and He rewards those who come seeking.  (Grace is the source, faith the condition, of salvation.)

Luke 2:20—The shepherds returned to their flocks, praising God for all they had seen and heard, and they glorified God for the way the experience had unfolded just as the heavenly messenger had predicted.  (Glorifying God is the means of finding God.  We thank God for the indescribable, incredible, unbelievable gift of Jesus and other blessings.)

B.  It is not the faith of the devil, for they know who Jesus is and all about the Scriptures.

(A careful practice of moral virtue, of justice, mercy, and truth toward fellow creatures is expected even by non-believers, so this is the faith of a heathen, non-believer, non-Christian.  These are the being and attributes of God.  There will be consequences (reward and punishment) to ourselves and our behavior.  This is a natural religion!)

(If orthodoxy produces no better people than natural religion, then it too is the faith of a devil.  Even the devil believes in a wise and powerful God, gracious to reward and just to punish, but also that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, the Savior of the world.) 

Luke 4:34—Get out of here!  Leave us alone!  What’s Your agenda, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who You are:  You’re the Holy One, the One sent by God! 

Acts 16:17—She began following and shouting:  These men are slaves like me, but slaves of the Most High God!  They will proclaim to you the way of liberation.  (Unhappy spirits believe the words of Jesus.  In fact they will proclaim who Jesus is.)

1 Timothy 3:16—And I think you will agree that the mystery of godliness is great:  He was revealed in the flesh, proven right in the Spirit; He was seen by the heavenly messengers, preached to outsider nations, He was believed in the world, taken up to the heavens in glory.  (The great enemies of God believe that God was come in the flesh.)

1 Corinthians 15:25—And He must reign as King until He has put all His enemy under His feet.  (The enemy of God knows that they have been defeated and that Jesus is reigning as King.  It’s just that humans haven’t grasp this concept yet.)

2 Timothy 3:16, 17—All scripture is God-breathed; in its inspired voice, we hear useful teaching, rebuke, correction, instruction, and training for a life that is right so that God’s people may be up to the task ahead and have all they need to accomplish every good work.  (The devil even knows this!  Scripture is a means of grace that prepares God’s people for the work of salvation.  The devil knows God’s written words.)

C.  It is not the faith of the apostles.

(While Christ was upon the earth, they believed in Jesus and left everything and followed him, had power to do miracles (to heal the sick and diseased and power over the demons, and even preached the Kingdom of God.  Yet, after doing all this, Jesus called them “a faithless generation.”

Luke 9:1,2—Jesus convened a gathering of the twelve.  He gave them power and authority to free people from all demonic spirits and to heal them of diseases.  He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. (This is the what the apostles can do being faithless.)

Luke 9:41—O generation faithless, twisted, and crooked, how long can I be with you?  How much can I bear?  Bring your boy here.  (The apostles are faithless, twisted and crooked; therefore, ineffective for Jesus.)

Luke 9:40—While you were up on the mountain, I begged Your disciples to liberate him from this spirit, but they were incapable of helping us.  (Non-believers noted the ineffectiveness of the disciples.)

Mark 6:6—He was amazed at the stubbornness of their unbelief.  (God’s mighty works can’t be done among non-believers.)

Luke 17:5,6—We don’t have enough faith for this?  Help our faith to grow!  It’s not like you need a huge amount of faith.  If you just had the faith the size of a single, tiny mustard seed, you could say to this huge tree, “Pull up your roots and replant yourself in the sea,” and it would fly through the sky and do what you said.  So even a little faith can accomplish the seemingly impossible!  (So, a little faith goes along way!)

So, the heathens have faith, the devil have faith, and the apostles had ineffective faith, so what is the faith through which we are saved?  It is faith in Christ.  Herein in what distinguishes our faith from the faith of the heathens.  It is Jesus and all about Jesus.  The faith distinguished from the devils is a disposition of the heart. 

Romans 10: 9, 10—So if you believe deep in your heart that God raised Jesus from the pit of death and if you voice your allegiance by confession the truth that “Jesus is Lord,” then you will be saved!  Belief begins in the heart and leads to a life that is right with God; confession departs our lips and brings eternal salvation.

The faith acknowledges the necessity and merit of Jesus’ death and the power of the resurrection.  It acknowledges Jesus’ death as the only means of redeeming people from eternal death, and his resurrection as the means to our restoration and all of creation’s restoration to  life and immortality;

Romans 4:25—He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and raised so that we might be made right with God.

Christian faith is as assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance (trust) on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection; a relying upon him as our atonement and out life, as give for us, and living in us.  It is a sure confidence which a person has in God, that through the merits of Christ sins are forgiven, and they are reconciled to the favor of God (A confidence in the goodness of God, through the son of his love, living, dying, and interceding for us.  It is an acceptance of him in all his offices—Prophet, Priest, King.

We close with Christ!  We are totally dependent on Christ for our salvation.  He is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.  He is our Salvation.