I’ve been quoting recently from 18 Words: The Most Important Words You Will Ever Know by J. I. Packer. In the chapter on faith, he gives two reasons why “our evangelical ancestors insisted so strongly that salvation was by faith alone.” I posted the first reason yesterday. Here’s the second:
This emphasis is needed to safeguard the genuineness of faith itself.
True faith is an exclusive, wholehearted trust, a complete going out of oneself to put one’s entire confidence in God’s mercy. True faith springs from real self-despair, and involves a complete abandoning of trust in one’s own morality or religion or character to commend one to God. ‘To one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly,’ wrote Paul, ‘his faith is reckoned as righteousness.’ (Rom. 4:5). To him — but not to anyone else. And if one insists on adding one’s own works to faith - that is, to Christ - as a contribution to one’s acceptance with God, or treating Christ’s merits as no more than a makeweight to supplement one’s own, that is not true faith, and it will not secure the acceptance that is desired. ‘Christ will either be a whole Saviour or none at all,’ wrote John Berridge bluntly. ‘And if you think you have any good Service of your own to recommend you unto God, you are certainly without any interest in Christ: Be you ever so sober, serious, just and devout, you are still under the Curse of God … provided you have any allowed Reliance on your own Works, and think they are to do something for you, and Christ to do the rest’ (Works, p. 355). In the quaint words of the hymn, then, ‘cast they deadly doing down’; stop trusting to your religion, your prayers, your Bible-reading, all your little pieties; they will not save you, and until you cease to trust them Christ will not save you either, for you do not yet truly believe upon Him.
Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress,
Helpless, look to thee for grace.This is how true faith speaks. Faith abandons hope in man’s own accomplishments, leaves all works behind, and comes to Christ alone and empty-handed, to cast itself on His mercy. Such is the faith that saves.