ONLY BELIEVE “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Romans 10:4
Faith and faith alone carries us beyond our carnal labor of striving to make ourselves acceptable with God. Faith opens the eye of the soul, yea becomes the soul’s eye to behold Christ alone as its righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, and redemption before God. How much faith is required? Faith of any degree is faith enough, faith in its bud or faith in its full bloom is faith; and faith pleases God as it lays hold of Christ, believing in His sufficiency alone to save the soul from sin. “For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6) But how do we come about this faith, how do we believe? It is a gift! Faith is a gift of God! In Ephesians 2:8 we read, “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” We must not fix our minds so much on faith itself but upon the grace of God which is the fountain and source of faith. Faith is the work of God’s grace in us. No one can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost. “No man can cometo me,” saith Jesus, “except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” (John 6:44) Faith in coming to Christ is the result of divine drawing; grace is the fountainhead of that drawing. “For by grace are you saved.” (Ephesians 2:8) Because God is gracious, sinful men are forgiven. It is not because of anything in us that we are saved, but because of the grace of God. The grace of God is the unbounded goodness and love of God. It is because “His mercy endureth forever” (Psalm 136) that we are not destroyed, because “His compassions fail not” (Lamentations 3:22) that we are brought to Him and forgiven. Grace is the fountain and faith is the channel which the flood of mercy flows down to our souls. Faith is not the fountainhead and we must not look to it as to exalt it above the divine source of all blessing, the grace of God. We are not to make a Christ out of our faith; our life is found in “Looking unto Jesus,” not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things are possible but the power is in the God upon whom faith relies on. Mr. C.H. Spurgeon said, “You must look away even from your own looking, and see nothing but Jesus, and the grace of God revealed in Him.” Now if my diligence has brought me to God, I can be assured that my diligence was stimulated by the grace of God and that my being there before Him is for the purpose of my sins being remitted. Therefore I must go away from Him believing that my sins have been forgiven for the sake of Him who atoned for them.
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