Whose Faith? Part Two

Is It His Faith or My Faith?

            The question is, is it His faith or our faith that matters? The answer is yes. It is both. His faith becomes our faith. Note how the apostle Paul explained it in Galatians 3:22 (KJV): “But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” The faith of Jesus Christ has taken away our sin, reconciled us to the Father, given us forgiveness, made us righteous, and many other things that we will consider later. Those benefits of the cross are objectively, factually true because of Him. When He said, “It is finished,” He meant it! What is done is done.

            However, Paul said the promise is given to “them that believe.” This is believers’ subjective, actual experience. Critics of this pure message of grace wrongly accuse those of us who hold this viewpoint as suggesting that it isn’t necessary to believe, but that isn’t true. It is necessary for us to believe that we are in right standing with God because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. But we believe it because Jesus has already accomplished it! We believe it to experience it.

           

Objective and Subjective Aspects of the Gospel

            Both the objective (what God has done) and the subjective (what we believe and experience) aspects of the gospel are important. We can’t marginalize or minimize either, but modern Evangelicalism places so much emphasis on our subjective faith that the objective faith of Christ is largely ignored. That is why I am emphasizing the objective component so strongly in this book.

            Don’t wrongly conclude that I think the subjective experience of personally embracing the finished work of Christ is unimportant. It is not only important but essential! However, we can believe only because of the faith of Jesus Christ that already stands as an eternal witness to the finished work of the cross. Our faith is the activation of His faith in and through us. There aren’t two faiths—His and ours. There is only “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).

            Romans 1:17 says, “For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’” From faith to faith—what does that mean? It means that the faith of Jesus becomes our faith. When the apostle Paul wrote that the righteous man shall live by faith, he was pointing to Habakkuk 2:5, which clearly explains what Paul meant by his statement to the Romans. “But the righteous will live by his faith.” It is absolutely correct to insist that our faith is important, but it is also absolutely essential to recognize that there would be no basis for our faith unless it was all sourced in Him. When we believe, we begin to live out in time what has been settled in eternity.

           

None Are Left Out

            The atoning work of Christ doesn’t affect us simply because we believe it. It affects everybody whether we believe it or not. That is what makes the gospel so exciting. No one is excluded in the cross. All mankind was in Him on that horrible, wonderful day.

            Irenaeus of Lyon was a great theologian of the second century. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who had been a disciple of John. Here is his explanation of what Jesus did at the cross.

            Therefore, as I have already said, He caused man (human nature) to cleave to and to become, one with God. For unless man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And again: unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man to God, while He revealed God to man.⁵

            John the Evangelist actually walked and lived with Jesus. Who did John’s grandson in the faith believe was impacted by the finished work of the cross? Notice that he didn’t say this only applied to those who believed it. Irenaeus plainly taught that what God did in Christ affected all humanity. His statement expresses the witness of the early church at large.

            Move forward a few centuries, and Athanasius stands front and center in the church affirming what Irenaeus had said.

            Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against humanity have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.⁶

            When Jesus died, it was His faith (or to fine tune it even more, His faithfulness) that solved Adam’s problem. All humanity was gathered up in Him, and in His death, we all died.

            Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

            Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him (Romans 6:3-8).

            Scottish Bible teacher William Still commented on this passage.

            There, Paul repeats the truth verse after verse in varying forms of words: we are “baptised into his death”; we are “planted together with him in the likeness of his death”; “our old man was crucified with him”; “he that is dead has been justified from sin”; we are “dead with Christ.” Could anything be more plain? Paul says that when Jesus died, we died with him. The Negro spiritual is not wrong when it asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” We were all there.

            But we must take time to ponder it. Does it mean that when Jesus died on the Cross we all died to sin with him, before we were born? The answer can only be, “Yes,” although the actualizing of the fact awaits our birth and our conversion. The only way to grapple with the fact is to let its incredible statement strike home to our hearts with stark and daring force.⁷