“Through Faith…”

“Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.” —Hebrews 11:11

Sarah believed God. She believed his promise, trusted his Word, without anything to back it up, without any evidence, without any basis in human science, history, or reason. She just believed God, because God gave her the blessed gift of faith.

All things spiritual are utterly beyond the scope of human reason. The gospel of Christ and all that is revealed in the gospel is irreconcilable to human reason. The things of God are totally contrary to what the depraved mind and heart of man considers common sense. The Divine Trinity, the Fall of our race in Adam, Eternal Election, the Incarnation, Substitutionary Redemption, and Free Salvation are all matters utterly beyond the reach of human reason.

These are things which every heaven born soul sees, believes and rejoices in; but things which no unregenerate man can reconcile in his own mind with “common sense.” Why? The Holy Spirit gives us the answer in 1 Corinthians 2. That which is the wisdom of God is hidden from the wise and prudent of this world. It can be known only by divine revelation (1 Cor. 2:7-15).

Not only is it true that the gospel itself is beyond the reach of human wisdom, contrary to the depraved mind’s idea of “common sense,” but faith, true faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by whom alone the triune God reveals himself, is totally contrary to human reason, contrary to it because it is so far above it that reason cannot grasp it.

True, saving faith (Faith in Christ—Faith in the living God) is a supernatural thing. Faith does the impossible, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and touches the intangible. I fear that the vast majority of those who profess to have faith in Christ have nothing more than faith in their faith. Their faith is all talk, theory and emotion. Not so with true faith! Most religious people have a faith that has been, in one way or another, produced by men. There is nothing at all supernatural about it. True, saving faith, this supernatural faith, faith that believes God without evidence, without proof, without any foundation except God himself, is the gift and operation of God. In other words, no one can or will believe God until and unless God the Holy Spirit gives him faith.

If you and I believe God, if we truly believe God, it is because God has wrought his work of grace in us by the omnipotent power and grace of his Spirit, as Paul puts it, “according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead” (Eph. 1:19-20). This faith is the gift and operation of God (Eph. 2:8; Col. 2:12; Phil. 1:29). It cannot be had or explained in any other way.