To Him That Worketh Not, but Believeth

Both Calvinists and Arminians (including Arminian Pentecostals and Charismatics) agree that a person must have faith in Christ instead of seeking to earn salvation by works of obedience to God’s moral law—which can never be done.

But we must not think of faith as an alternative kind of work—a mental or spiritual work. The apostle Paul teaches that God saves people through sending Jesus Christ to die for them, and that through this substitutionary sacrifice God imputes Christ’s righteousness to them. It is not that their faith justifies them, but that God justifies them by Christ’s blood (Romans 5:9).

Faith in Christ (i.e. believing in Christ), sometimes known as saving faith,¹ plays an instrumental part in salvation—but this faith, too, is a gift from God to the sinner being saved (Ephesians 2:8; Philippians 1:29).

Saving faith involves a desisting from all “works”—that is, from all self-conceited attempts at saving yourself through religious acts or good deeds (compare Romans 10:3).

Saving faith is not the “exercise of your spiritual muscles,” as I have heard faith-prosperity preachers describe it.²

Saving faith is not an altered state of consciousness, as some “Christian mystics” teach. They think that faith is essentially a trance-state in which the practitioner “extinguishes the self” through “spiritual exercises” such as:

• By depriving themselves of food, hydration or sleep for long periods;
• By becoming hypnotically fixated upon an image (a statue or icon) of Christ or of an exalted “saint”;
• By deeply imagining and meditating upon Christ’s passion (i.e. his pain-filled sufferings and crucifixion);
• By being enchanted by the repetitive singing of choruses or inhaling incense;
• By being engrossed in a great ceremony or pageant.

All these religious practices (and more) have been adopted from paganism.

Believing, Trusting, Resting in Christ Alone for Salvation

True saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is a simple trusting in (or, as is sometimes helpfully described, resting upon) Christ alone for salvation.

Paul made this clear when he referred to Abraham as our example. He said of the believer, not only that he “worketh not” (i.e. he stops attempting to save himself by doing the works of the law), but also that God reckons this “reward” of imputed righteousness (i.e. justification) to be his entirely “of grace” and not at all “of debt” (Romans 4:4-5).

Clearly, believing in the Saviour for salvation involves no attempt at working to save yourself. It is a total desisting from such work, and instead resting and trusting in Jesus Christ alone.³ This is the opposite of all kinds of self-salvation.

We cannot save ourselves by law-keeping, “spiritual exercises,” door-knocking “evangelism,” “being good”—or by “faith.” Saving faith is not a kind of meritorious work.

All attempts at self-salvation will end in failure. And this means damnation to hell. This is because there is nothing that we can do (and nothing we can think, believe in, or “positively confess”) that can earn, merit, or deserve salvation as its wage or reward.

And we cannot believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—as he really is: as revealed in the Bible—unless God gifts us with this faith—such is our fallen, totally depraved, God-rejecting, Christ-rejecting nature.

The apostle Paul could not have put it more clearly: “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work” (Romans 11:6).

God’s saving grace is his totally unmerited favour, which he bestows upon his people. We are not saved by our works but saved by God’s grace alone.

The good news is this: God, of his sovereign and free grace alone, imputes the righteousness of Christ (his works of obedience and atoning sacrifice on the cross) to the believer, in the salvation of his or her soul.

Appendix

James Fisher et al., An Exposition of the Shorter Catechism, Question 33:56-62 (supplemental to Question 33 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism).

Q. 33:56. Why is faith the instrument of our justification?
A. To show that our justification is wholly of grace; it being the nature of faith to take the gift of righteousness freely, without money, and without price; “therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace” (Romans 4:16).

Q. 33:57. What, then, is the instrumentality of faith in our justification?
A. It is merely the hand that receives and applies the righteousness of Christ, by which we are justified. (See Westminster Larger Catechism, Q.73)

Q. 33:58. Is the grace of faith or any act of it, imputed to a sinner for justification?
A. No; for, “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

Q. 33:59. What is the difference between saving faith, and justifying faith?
A. Saving faith receives and rests upon Christ in all his offices, as “of God made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption;” but justifying faith receives and rests upon him, more particularly, in his priestly office, for pardon and acceptance, on account of his meritorious righteousness: “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9).

Q. 33:60. Why is the righteousness of Christ said to be received by faith alone?
A. That works may be wholly excluded from having any share in our justification, less or more: “Therefore we conclude, that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28).

Q. 33:61. If good works have no influence upon our justification, of what use are they to the justified?
A. Though they cannot justify us before God, yet they are good “evidences” of our justification, being the fruits of a true and lively faith (James 2:18): they “adorn the profession of the gospel (Titus 2:11-12); stop the mouths of adversaries (1 Peter 2:15); and glorify God (John 15:8). (Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 16, section 2).

Q. 33:62. If faith’s receiving of Christ’s righteousness justify us, does not faith justify as a work?
A. It is not properly the receiving, or any other act of faith, that justifies us, but the righteousness of Christ RECEIVED (Romans 3:22); even as it is not the hand that nourishes us, but the food which we take by it.

Q. 33:63. If we are justified by faith alone, why is it said, “That by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” (James 2:24)?
A. This is to be understood of justifying, or evidencing the reality of our faith before men, and not of justifying our persons before God.