The Gospel: Faith

Romans 1:16d

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

(Verse 16) - The third key word regarding the gospel is that of faith. The sovereign power of God working through the gospel brings salvation to everyone who believes.

To everyone that believeth – (Compare Mark 16:16-17). This expresses the condition, or the terms, on which salvation is conferred through the gospel. It is not indiscriminately to all people, whatever may be their character. It is only to those who confide or trust in it; and it is conferred on all who receive it in this manner. If this qualification is possessed, it bestows its blessings freely and fully. All people know what “faith” is. It is exercised when we confide in a parent, a friend, a benefactor. It is such a reception of a promise, a truth, or a threatening, as to suffer it to make its appropriate impression on the mind, and such as to lead us to act under its influence, or to act as we should on the supposition that it is true. Thus, a sinner credits the threatenings of God, and fears. This is faith. He credits his promises, and hopes. This is faith. He feels that he is lost, and relies on Jesus Christ for mercy. This is faith. And, in general, faith is such an impression on the mind made by truth as to lead us to feel and act as if it were true; to have the appropriate feelings, and views, and conduct under the commands, and promises, and threatenings of God; see the note at Mark 16:16.

The word used for faith carries the basic idea of trusting in, relying on, or having faith in. When used in the New Testament of salvation, it is usually in the present, continuous form, which could be translated “is believing.” Daily living is filled with acts of faith. We turn on the faucet to get a drink of water, trusting it is safe to drink. We drive across a bridge, trusting it will not collapse under us. Despite occasional disasters, we trust airplanes to fly us safely to our destination. People could not survive without having implicit trust in a great many things. Virtually all of life requires a natural faith. But Paul has in mind here a supernatural faith, produced by God—a “faith that is not of yourselves but the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

Eternal life is both gained and lived by faith from God in Jesus Christ. “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul tells us (Eph. 2:8). God does not first ask men to behave but to believe. Man’s efforts at right behavior always fall short of God’s perfect standard, and therefore no man can save himself by his own good works. Good works are the product of salvation (Eph. 2:10), but they are not the means of it.

Salvation is not merely professing to be a Christian, nor is it baptism, moral reform, going to church, receiving sacraments, or living a life of self-discipline and sacrifice. Salvation is believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Salvation comes through giving up on one’s own goodness, works, knowledge, and wisdom and trusting in the finished, perfect work of Christ.

The great Scottish evangelist Robert Haldane wrote,

From the days of Abraham, their great progenitor, the Jews had been highly distinguished from all the rest of the world by their many and great privileges. It was their high distinction that of them Christ came, “who is over all, God blessed for ever.” They were thus, as His kinsmen, the royal family of the human race, in this respect higher than all others, and they inherited Emmanuel’s land. While, therefore, the evangelical covenant, and consequently justification and salvation, equally regarded all believers, the Jews held the first rank as the ancient people of God, while the other nations were strangers from the covenants of promise. The preaching of the Gospel was to be addressed to them first, and, at the beginning, to them alone, Matt. 10:6; for, during the abode of Jesus Christ upon earth, He was the minister only of the circumcision, Rom. 15:8. “I am not sent,” He says, “but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; and He commanded that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, “beginning at Jerusalem.”… Thus, while Jews and Gentiles were united in the participation of the Gospel, the Jews were not deprived of their rank, since they were the first called.

The preaching of the Gospel to the Jews first served various important ends. It fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, as Isa. 2:3. It manifested the compassion of the Lord Jesus for those who shed His blood, to whom, after His resurrection, He commanded His Gospel to be first proclaimed. It showed that it was to be preached to the chief of sinners, and proved the sovereign efficacy of His Atonement in expatiating [sic] the guilt even of His murderers. It was fit, too, that the Gospel should be begun to be preached where the great transactions took place on which it was founded and established; and this furnished an example of the way in which it is the will of the Lord that His Gospel should be propagated by His disciples, beginning in their own houses and their own country.

It might be helpful for us to do a sort of general study of the concept of faith in the Bible as a whole at this point.  Faith, in the Bible is trust in, or reliance on, God who is himself trustworthy. The NT and the Greek OT express the understanding of faith primarily with two terms (pistis, pisteuein), which are related to the primary OT verb ‘to be true’ or ‘be trustworthy’ (’aman). The OT concept is considerably broader than this term and its cognates, yet ’aman remains the most profound expression to describe faith in the OT.

Faith in the OT : It is important to recognize the context in which the concept of faith functions in the OT. God stands at the center; it is his initiative and faithfulness as described by the OT writers in creation, in the Exodus event, in the covenant and the subsequent history of Israel that allow his people to respond to his fidelity. Since God’s promises are intended for his people, the emphasis of faith is not focused primarily on the individual, but on the relationship of the people of Israel to God. However, in the Psalms, and to a limited extent in Isaiah (i.e., Isa. 40-55) and elsewhere, the individual expression of faith is given attention. The prophets intensify the covenant dimension of faith and in Isaiah the imagery of faith is given a new and creative impulse. Throughout the OT the focus of faith is exclusively on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: ‘And Israel saw the great work which the Lord did against the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord; and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses’ (Exod. 14:31). God’s mighty acts allow and call for trust and belief in him.

The Hebrew verb means, for the most part, ‘to be true’; lying behind this is the root meaning ‘solid,”firm.’ This sense of ‘to be true’ is intensified in the passive form of the verb so that one can speak of a person as ‘trustworthy’ or ‘reliable.’ The causative form of the verb suggests the acceptance of someone as trustworthy or dependable. Thus, one accepts God as trustworthy and believes his word (Deut. 9:23) and his promises, as is the case with Abraham in Gen. 15:1-6: ‘And he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.’ It has been argued that it is the use of the verb in the causative form that encompasses the most personal relationship of faith between God and the believer.

The primary nouns derived from the verb ‘to trust’ (’aman) are ‘firmness, stability’ (’emunah ; Isa. 33:6 : ‘and he will be the stability of your times…’) and ‘truthfulness, fidelity, faithfulness’ (’emet ; Ps. 71:22 : ‘I will also praise thee with the harp for thy faithfulness, O my God’). Throughout the OT stability results in security and together they are signs of God’s fidelity to his people. Another term used in this connection refers to God’s loving-kindness in a covenant context (chesed; Ps. 33:18 : “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love ”). God chose Israel (Deut. 7:6-7: ‘the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession…’) and his loving-kindness is demonstrated by the many blessings they have received. This covenant relationship presupposes a mutuality of obligation (Deut. 7:9 : ‘Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments…’); Israel’s response of faith is possible only because of God’s prior and continued faithfulness. Out of this mutuality of obligation the paradoxical relationship between faith and fear in the OT (Exod. 14:31 above) becomes more intelligible. The covenant relationship between God and his people results in an exclusive demand (Exod. 20:3 ; Deut. 6:5 ; 18:13 ; 1 Kings 8:61 ; Isa. 38:3) of obedience (Noah in Gen. 6:9, 22 ; 7:5; Abraham in Gen. 22:1-18; Joshua in 1:7-8 ; 24:22-31; Samuel in 1 Sam. 15:17-33) in which idols must be totally rejected (Isa. 42:17). In fact, the opposite of faithfulness is apostasy, as, for example, in Deut. 32:20, in which the phrase ‘children in whom is no faithfulness’ is synonymous with idolatry. Since the faith of Israel is always reflective of God’s fidelity and loving-kindness, it must be expressed not only in obedience but also in praise (Pss. 5:11 ; 9:10 ; 13:5 ; 18:1-3 ; 22:1-5 ; 27:14 ; 62:1, 5-8 ; 141:8).

The prophets deepen the meaning of faith in several ways. For Isaiah (7:1-9) security does not rest in political power but in utter trust in God; in fact, the totality of life must be based on such trust in him (Isa. 7:9 : ‘If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established’). This point is also stressed in Isa. 28:16, a verse of importance for the NT : ‘Therefore thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘He who believes will not be in haste.’’’ Isaiah broadens the concept of faith in the direction of hope and knowledge. Typical of the former is Isa. 40:31 : ‘But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.’ Faced with difficult predicaments, the energy of faith results not in despair, but in hope. The broadening of faith in the direction of knowledge is particularly evident in Isa. 43:10 : “You are my witnesses,’ says the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe and understand that I am He.” Knowledge is not used here in a speculative sense; the reference is to the knowledge of God’s fidelity and loving-kindness experienced in history.

Faith in the NT : For the NT understanding of faith, Hab. 2:4 is an important reference: ‘Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faithfulness.’ Here the characteristic meaning of trust (’emunah) is well summarized: fidelity to God as the sign of the righteous person. God alone can be the object of trust and faithfulness because he ‘is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold’ (Ps. 18:2).

In the NT the noun and verb denoting faith (pistis/pisteuein) appear frequently. In the synoptic Gospels, they are used least frequently, and among them it is used with least precision in the Gospel of Mark. Faith for Mark can have as its object God (Mark 11:22 : ‘And Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God”) or faith in Jesus as the manifestation of God’s power (Mark 5:36 ; 9:23-24). Closely related to this last usage are the direct references of Jesus to the faith of his audience (Mark 2:5 : ‘And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven”; Mark 5:34 : ‘And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease”; Mark 10:52 : ‘And Jesus said to him [the blind man], ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well”). Finally, Mark can have the gospel, in a way not dissimilar to Paul, as the object of faith (Mark 1:15 : ‘Jesus came…saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel”). Lack of faith can be referred to in a similar way (Mark 4:40 : ‘He [Jesus] said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?”). In the Gospel of Luke faith is often used in the most general sense of faithfulness (Luke 16:10-12 ; see also 1:20, 45: ‘And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord’). In addition, faith is used with the verb ‘to save’ (7:50: ‘And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace”; 8:12: ‘believe and be saved’).

The Gospel of Matthew further intensifies the theme of faith. At the conclusion of the story about the healing of the centurion’s slave, Matthew adds the words: ‘And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; be it done for you as you have believed” (Matt. 8:13). Similarly, Matthew modifies the Marcan and Lucan account of the healing of two blind men by inserting the question from Jesus: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord’” (Matt. 9:28). Other Matthean passages also emphasize faith. In the account of the Canaanite woman Matthew alters the Marcan account precisely for this purpose: ‘Then Jesus answered her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly’ (Matt. 15:28). Similarly, in an encounter with the chief priests and the elders Matthew elevates the issue of faith: ‘Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him” (Matt. 21:31b-32 ; cf. Luke 7:29-30). In an instructional passage dealing with scribes and Pharisees Matthew accuses them of neglecting the weightier matters of ‘the law, justice and mercy and faith’ (Matt. 23:23 ; Luke 11:42 does not contain the reference to faith). In the passage dealing with the false christs and false prophets Matthew twice uses the verb ‘to believe’ while Luke does not (Matt. 24:23-25 ; Luke 17:23-24). This same pattern can be found in Matt. 17:19-20 and in Matt. 21:21 . The former is an account of the boy possessed by a spirit who was healed by Jesus. Of the three evangelists, only Matthew adds this statement of Jesus by way of response to the disciples’ question, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’: ‘Because of your little faith.’ In Matt. 21:21 there is a clear intensification over against Mark 11:22 . In Mark Jesus answers, ‘Have faith in God’; in Matthew Jesus answers, ‘Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt…’