Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Sometimes we say that we are saved by our faith in Christ, and we want to emphasize this so we don't lapse into the idea that we are saved by our works. But again, we want to be careful that we grasp the truth accurately. Truth saves (John 8:32) and error produces the lethal lukewarmness that permeates the church of the Laodiceans (Rev. 3:14-21).
God's people in the last days are distinguished in Revelation as those who demonstrate two great identification marks: they (1) "keep the commandments of God and (2) the faith of Jesus" (14:12). The former is not possible to "do" except by the latter. But it never was their faith; it was something they have received from Jesus.
Thus we are not saved by our faith in Jesus, but by His faith. He alone is "the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). That is, in all the 6000 years of human history Christ is the one Man who has totally believed the saving truth. His faith alone works through love (Gal. 5:6).
He is the one and only human being who has fully experienced what it is to be "forsaken" of God (Matt. 27:46). No one else has been capable of sensing to the full what that means; it was He alone who has been "made ... to be sin for us" "who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21). Therefore, no one else has ever "tasted" lostness as fully as He did as He hung on that cross in the darkness. It was His faith that saved Him from eternal despair! God saw fit to record the story in Psalm 22 (and also 69).
The faith that we are to exercise is therefore second-hand; we got it from Him! Rightly defined, it is a heart-appreciation of what it cost Christ to save us; it is to "comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height--to know the love [agape] of Christ which passes knowledge" (Eph. 3:18, 19). Our salvation is in "comprehending."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 31, 2005.
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