XXVII

XXXIII. FAITH AND UNBELIEF

A What is not evangelical faith?

1   The term faith, like most other words, means many things. The Bible sometimes uses faith to designate a state of the intellect, in which case, faith means an undoubting persuasion, a firm conviction, or an unhesitating intellectual agreement. However, this is different from evangelical faith. Evangelical faith cannot be a phenomenon of our mind because the Bible always considers evangelical faith as a virtue. The intellectual state of our mind is passive. It is involuntary. Faith is a condition of our salvation. Faith is something that God commands us to do on pain of eternal death. But, if it is something we must do, then it cannot merely be a passive state or a mere intellectual conviction.
     The Bible makes a distinction between intellectual and saving faith. There is a faith of devils, and there is a faith of saints. James clearly distinguishes between them, and between faith without works and a saving faith. “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works, faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:17‑26)
   This passage clearly distinguishes the difference between intellectual and saving faith, just like it does in other parts of the Bible. A saving faith produces good works or a holy life; the intellectual faith is unproductive. This shows that an intellectual faith is merely a phenomenon of our mind and does not control our conduct. Evangelical faith must be a phenomenon of our will, because it manifests itself in our outward life. Evangelical faith, then, is not a conviction or a perception of the truth. It does not belong to our intellect. Although it implies an intellectual conviction, the evangelical or virtuous element is not found in our intellect.

2 Evangelical faith is not a feeling of any kind. It is not a phenomenon of our emotions. Our emotions are passive and therefore, they have no moral character all by themselves. Faith, regarded as a virtue, cannot consist in any involuntary emotional state of mind whatever. The Bible represents evangelical faith as an active and most efficient state of mind. It “works by love.” It produces “the obedience of faith”. We say that Christians are sanctified by the faith that is in Christ. Indeed there are many places in the Bible that represents faith in God and in Christ as a fundamental form of virtue, and as the mainspring of an outwardly holy life. Hence, faith cannot consist in any involuntary state or exercise of our mind whatever.

B       What is evangelical faith?
     Since the Bible represents saving or evangelical faith as a virtue, we know that it involves our will. It is a phenomenon of our will. Evangelical faith consists in embracing the truth that is in our heart. Evangelical faith is our will embracing the truths of the gospel. It is yielding our self up, or committing our self to the truths of the evangelical system. Faith is willfully trusting in Christ, committing our soul and our whole being to Him in His various duties, functions, and relationships with us. It is confiding in Him, confiding in what the Bible reveals about Him, and confiding in His word and providence, and by His Spirit.
     The same word that the New Testament uses for ‘faith’ is also translated as ‘commit’; as in, “But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men.” (John 2:24) “Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” (Luke 16:11) The Greek word for ‘commit’ in these two passages is the same word that we translate as ‘faith’ in other passages. Faith is confiding in God and in Christ as revealed in the Bible and in our reason. It is receiving the testimony of God concerning Christ, and concerning all the things that He speaks about. Faith is receiving Christ for just what He is represented to be in His gospel, and completely surrendering our will, as well as our whole being to Him.

C What is implied in evangelical faith?

1 Evangelical faith implies that we are intellectually aware of the things, facts, and truths that we believe in. We cannot believe what we don’t understand. It is impossible for us to believe in something that God has not revealed to us. Many people today think that faith does not need light, that light is not essential to faith, that we do not need to understand the doctrines or facts that we must believe in. This is not true because, how can we believe, trust, or confide in what we do not understand? I must first understand what a proposition is, a fact is, a doctrine is, or anything else is, before I can decide whether I should believe in that thing or not. If you state a proposition to me in a foreign language, and ask me if I believe it, I have to say that I can’t believe what you say, because I don’t have a clue what you said. Maybe I should believe what you told me. Maybe I shouldn’t. I won’t know until I understand what you told me. Any fact or doctrine I don’t understand is like a proposition in a foreign language. It is impossible for my mind to either receive or reject it, there is no way I can believe or not believe it, until I can understand it.
The more we understand a truth, a fact, or a doctrine, the more we can receive or believe it. Therefore, we may believe something as far as we understand it, although we may not understand everything about it. For example: I can believe in both the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. That He is both God and man is a fact that I can understand. I can believe that much. But how His divinity and humanity are united, I cannot understand. Therefore, I can only believe the fact that they are united; how they are united I know nothing about, and I can believe no more than I know. Also, I can understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. That the Father is God, that the Son is God, that the Holy Spirit is God, and that these three are Divine persons, I can understand as fact. I can also understand that there is no contradiction or impossibility in the declared fact that these three are one in their substratum of being; that is that they are one in a different sense than that they are three; that they are three in one sense, and one in another. I understand that this may be a fact, and therefore I can believe it. But how they are united, I have no theory, no idea, no facts, no opinion, and so I have no faith on how they are united. Therefore, faith in any fact or doctrine implies that we have some idea about that fact or doctrine, or that our soul has an understanding, an opinion of what our heart embraces or believes.

2 Evangelical faith implies appropriating of the truths of the gospel. It implies accepting Christ as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. The person, who truly believes, believes that Christ tasted death for every man. Faith apprehends Christ as the Savior of the world, as offered for all, and embraces and receives Him for himself. Faith appropriates Christ’s atonement, and His resurrection, and His intercession, and His promises to him self. The gospel presents Christ, not only as the Savior of the world, but also for every one of us to individually accept Him. The world can embrace Him no further than individuals embrace Him. He saves the world no further than He saves individuals. He died for the world, because He died for the individuals that make up the world. Evangelical faith, then, implies believing the truths of the Bible, apprehending those Biblical truths, receiving them, and personally accepting and appropriating Christ to specifically meet the needs of your soul.

3 Evangelical faith implies an evangelical life. This would not be true if faith was merely some intellectual state or an exercise. But, faith is of the heart because it consists in committing our will to Christ. Therefore, it naturally follows that our life will correspond with that faith.

4 Evangelical faith implies repentance towards God. Evangelical faith particularly relates to Jesus Christ and His salvation. Faith is embracing Christ and His salvation. Of course, it implies repentance towards God, that is, a turning from sin to God. We cannot submit our will to Christ; we cannot receive Him as the gospel presents Him, as long as we neglect our repentance towards God. As long as we reject the authority of the Father, it cannot embrace and submit to the Son.

5 Evangelical faith implies unselfish love for our neighbors, or for others; because it is committing our soul to God and to Christ in all obedience. Evangelical faith must therefore imply fellowship or sympathy with Him concerning the great end on which His heart is set, and for which He lives. Yielding up our will and our soul to God must imply embracing the same end that He embraces.

6 Evangelical faith implies an emotional state that corresponds to the truths that we believe because such emotions are a natural result of faith, and this result must follow accepting Christ and His gospel with all our heart.

7 Of course, faith implies peace of mind. In Christ, our soul finds its full and present salvation. Faith finds justification, which produces a sense of pardon and acceptance. We find sanctification, or grace for God to deliver us from the reigning power of sin. We find all our soul’s needs met, and all the grace that we need to help our soul. Evangelical faith sees no reason to be disturbed; there is nothing to ask or desire that is not treasured up in Christ. We are no longer at war with God. We have found our resting‑place in Christ, and we rest in profound peace under the shadow of the Almighty.

8 Evangelical faith must imply that every virtue is present in our soul. Why? Because we yield our whole being to God’s will. As a result, all the different forms of virtue that the gospel requires must exist, either developed or undeveloped, in every heart that truly receives Christ by faith. Now, certain forms of virtue may not have had a chance to develop at all, but it is certain that every form and type of virtue will manifest itself under the right circumstances if there is a true and living faith in Christ. This follows from the very nature of faith.

9 Present evangelical faith implies a state of current sinlessness. Evangelical faith is yielding and committing our whole will and our whole being to Christ. This implies present, true, and complete obedience to Christ. This is why we speak of faith as a condition of salvation. Faith really implies every virtue. You can think of faith as a distinct form of virtue (which would then make faith an attribute of love), or as including all virtue. When we consider faith as an attribute of love, it is only a branch of sanctification. When we consider faith in the wider sense universally conforming our will to God’s will, it means the same thing as sanctification. Either way, the existence of faith in our heart must be inconsistent with the existence of any sin there. Faith is an attitude of our will, and therefore, we cannot willfully rebel against Christ and have faith at the same time. This must be true, or what is faith?

10 Faith implies that we are receiving and practicing all the truth we know or comes our way. If our heart embraces and receives truth as truth, then it must receive all known truth because it is truth. It is impossible that our will should embrace some truth because of our unselfish love for God and our neighbor, and reject other truths. Truth is harmony. One truth is always in harmony with every other truth. The heart that truly embraces one truth, will embrace all known truth for the same reason. If, out of our regard for the highest good of others we receive any one revealed truth, as long as we remain in that state of mind, it is impossible for us to receive every truth that come our way as soon as we know about it.

D What is not unbelief?

1 Unbelief is not ignorance of truth. Ignorance is a blank; it is the absence of knowledge. This unbelief certainly cannot be the unbelief that the Bible represents everywhere as an abominable sin. Ignorance may be the result of unbelief, but ignorance cannot be identical with unbelief. We may be ignorant of certain truths because we reject other truths, but this ignorance cannot be unbelief.

2 Unbelief is not the absence of faith. The absence of faith is simply nothing, a nonentity. But the scriptures represent unbelief as something abominable, as a great and a damning sin. Unbelief certainly has to be more than simply nothing.

3 Unbelief cannot be doubt or skepticism. A state of doubt may result from unbelief, but it cannot be identical with it. Unbelief often leads to doubt, but when the Bible considers unbelief as a sin, don’t confuse with doubt. You find doubt in your mind. You find unbelief in your will or heart.

4 Unbelief cannot consist in feelings or emotions of disbelief, doubt, or opposition to the truth. In other words, unbelief as a sin cannot be an emotional phenomenon. We often use the word unbelief to express either an intellectual or an emotional state. Sometimes, we use the word unbelief to designate a state of intellectual disbelief, doubt, distrust, or skepticism. But when we use it this way, we cannot justly base our moral character on that state of mind, which the word unbelief represents.
Sometimes unbelief expresses a simple feeling of disbelief concerning truth. But this state of mind has no moral character; and can’t have, for the simple reason that it is involuntary. In short, the unbelief that the Bible so severely denounces as a very serious abomination cannot consist in any involuntary state of mind whatever.

E What is unbelief?
Unbelief, when we look at those Bible passages that treat it as a sin, suggests that it is a phenomenon of our will. Unbelief must be a willful state of our mind. It must be the opposite of evangelical faith. Evangelical faith is willfully receiving truth, and unbelief willfully rejecting truth. Faith is our soul confiding in truth and in the God of truth. Unbelief occurs when our soul withholds confidence from truth and the God of truth. Our heart rejects the evidence and refuses to allow the truth to influence us. Our will operates in an attitude of opposition to the evidence presented to us. When God presents light to us, unbelief always implies the unbelief of our will or our heart. If our mind knows that there is light on any question concerning what we should do, and we do not make an honest effort to obtain that light, it is because our will does not want to know what we are supposed to do. In this situation, we reject the light. We know that light is coming our way, but we reject this revealed light. This is the sin of unbelief. All infidelity is unbelief in this sense, and infidels are infidels not because of their lack of light, but because they made every effort, they could possibly make, to shut their eyes against that light. Unbelief must be a voluntary state of our will, as distinguished from a mere act of our will. Conscious decisions often reveal our unbelief through the things we say and do. But, our conscious decisions are only a result of unbelief, and not identical with it. Unbelief is a deeper, a more efficient, and more permanent state of our heart than a mere conscious decision. It our will in its strongest opposition to the truth and will of God.

F Conditions of both faith and unbelief.

1 A revelation in some way to the mind, of the truth and will of God, must be a condition of both faith and unbelief. Remember, neither faith nor unbelief is consistent with total ignorance. There can be no more unbelief than there is light.

2 Concerning those truths that we can only discern only by Divine illumination, such illumination must be a condition of both faith and unbelief. Once the Holy Spirit has revealed a truth, we don’t deed God’s Divine light to continue for our belief or unbelief to continue. The truth, once we know that truth, and it lodges into our mind, we can continue to accept or resist that truth long after the agent who revealed that truth withdraws.

3 Intellectual perception is also a condition of our heart’s belief or unbelief. Our mind must have evidence of the truth as the condition of a virtuously believing in it or wickedly rejecting it. Therefore, our mind must have evidence of the truth before our mind can accept or reject it. Therefore, intellectual light is the condition of both our heart’s faith and unbelief. When I say that intellectual light is a condition of unbelief I don’t mean that our mind should continuously accept the truth in theory; but that the evidence must be such, that our mind, at anytime, could justly accept the truth that our heart rejects. It is very common for an unbeliever to deny in words, and reject in theory, those things that he knows is true in all his practical judgments.

G The guilt and ill‑desert of unbelief.

1 We have seen that the light under which sin is committed conditions the guilt of sin. For each sin, the amount of light is the measure of guilt. This is true of all sin. But it is especially true with the sin of unbelief; for unbelief is rejecting light. It is rejecting the truth selfishly. Of course, the amount of light we reject and the degree of guilt we receive for rejecting it are equal. The Bible everywhere assumes and teaches this, and this is clearly the doctrine of our reason.

2 The guilt of unbelief under the light of the gospel must be infinitely greater, then when we only reject the light of nature. The guilt of unbelief, in situations where people have enjoyed special Divine illuminations, must be much greater than where they have enjoyed the light of the gospel without any special enlightening of the Holy Spirit.

3 The guilt of unbelief in one, who has been converted and has known God’s love, must be greater beyond comparison than the guilt of an ordinary sinner. The things implied in unbelief show that unbelief must be one of the most provoking abominations to God in the universe. Unbelief is the perfection of all that is unreasonable, unjust, and ruinous. It is infinitely slanderous and dishonorable to God, and destructive to man, and to all the interests of the kingdom of God.

H Natural and governmental consequences of both faith and unbelief.
By natural consequences, I mean consequences that naturally flow from our constitution and the laws of our mind. Governmental consequences are those consequences that result from the constitution, laws, and administration of moral government.

1 One of the natural consequences of faith is peace of conscience. When our will receives the truth and we yield to the truth, our conscience is satisfied and we becomes at peace with our selves. Our soul is then in a state to really value itself, and we can look at our face in a mirror without blushing. Faith in the truth that we perceive is the unalterable condition of a our being at peace with our self.
A governmental consequence of faith is peace with God:

a In the sense that God is satisfied with our current obedience. We allow the truth to completely influence us, and this is our duty. Of course, God is at peace with our soul, because our soul is currently obedient.

b Faith governmentally results in peace with God, in the sense that faith is a condition of our pardon and acceptance. That is, God remits the penalty of the law for our past sins on condition of our true faith in Christ. Our soul not only needs present and future obedience in order to be at peace with itself; but it also needs pardon and acceptance on the part of God’s government for past sins as a condition of our peace with God. But, since we will examine the subject of justification or our acceptance with God later, I will not discuss it here.

2 Self‑condemnation is one of the natural consequences of unbelief. God made our constitution and placed His laws in our mind in such a way that it is naturally impossible for our mind to justify us when we reject the truth with all our heart. Instead, our conscience will condemn such rejection, and pronounce judgment against it.
Legal condemnation is a necessary governmental consequence of unbelief. No just government can justify the rejection of known truth. All just governments must utterly abhor and condemn anyone who rejects truth, and especially those truths that relate to the obedience of the subject, as well as the highest good of both the rulers and the people. The government of God must condemn and utterly hate all unbelief because it rejects those truths that are indispensable to the highest good of the universe.

3 A holy or obedient life naturally results from faith. Faith is an act of our will, which must control our life. Therefore, when our heart receives or obeys the truth, our outward life will conform to it.

4 A disobedient and unholy life naturally results from unbelief. If our heart rejects the truth, our life will not be conformed to it.

5 In our heart and life, faith will develop every form of virtue that whatever situation we are in calls for. Faith consists in committing our will to truth and to the God of truth. As different occasions arise, faith will conform us to all truth on all subjects, and then every modification of virtue will exist in our heart, and appear in our life, as circumstances and the providence of God develop them.

6 However, you can expect that unbelief will develop a resistance to every truth that opposes selfishness; and so nothing but selfishness in some form can keep unbelief from appearing in every form possible or conceivable. Remember, when our heart rejects truth and embraces error, unbelief results. The natural result of this will be that every form of selfishness that some other form of selfishness does not prevent will develop in our heart, and appear in our life. For example, selfish greed may restrain promiscuity, intemperance, and many other forms of selfishness.

7 Faith governmentally results in obtaining help from God. God may and does gratuitously help those who have no faith. However, this is not a governmental result or act in God. But to the obedient, God extends His governmental protection and aid.

8 Faith allows God to come into our heart to dwell and reign there. Faith receives, not only the atonement and mediatorial work of Christ as a redeemer from punishment, but it also receives Christ as king to set up His throne and reign in our hearts. Faith secures communion with God.