This week we want to look at faith as a spiritual action of the soul and relate it in the end to justification. Faith is not something that can be worked up by the natural man, but instead faith comes from the spiritual nature of man and is focused and concentrated on the reality of the supernatural or spiritual realm. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). This text is instructive as to the nature of faith or belief. Those who believe are children of God and were born of the will of God. Faith, then, must correlate with being a child of God and being born of the will of God. Only the children of God are born of the will of God and only those born of the will of God are children of God. So faith is something that God’s children have and no one else. Without getting into the “faith precedes regeneration” debate at this moment, we can at least see that the exercise of faith is limited to the children of God who alone have true faith.Believers are said to walk by faith and not by sight (II Cor 5:7). How does this make sense in the modern world where everything is according to the senses? Because faith is that which is the sight of the soul which peers into the spiritual realm and lives by the sight of the glory of God, the believer is actually living off of something totally different than the world. The believer sees something different than the world even when they view the same actions. The believer values things in accordance with the sight of faith rather than the value system of the world. The world may operate by a system of values and morality, but it has a different reason for doing them than the believer does. Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter of the Bible. It sets out a series of people who operate by what they see with faith or by believing what God said over what the world would say according to its wisdom. It sets out Noah as being told to build an ark and so he did. He was laughed at and mocked (see Genesis) for 120 years and yet he believed that what God said determined reality rather than what had happened in the past and what others thought. Abraham let his world and headed for a world unknown because he operated by what God said rather than what good sense in the worldly view would tell him. Abraham believed what God said and so he took his son Isaac to sacrifice him, but God provided the sacrifice. Moses had it made but he chose to suffer with God’s people rather than stay and have the riches and pleasures of the world.
What Hebrews 11 and many other portions of Scripture show us is that those who believe operate by some way of knowing and seeing that is different than the world does. For example, we have Paul who was a rising star in the religious and political world. He was a very zealous man living by the traditions that he had been raised and trained it. What kept Paul going for so many years being beaten, starved, and always in danger? It was not for worldly treasures and pleasures. It was not for the honor of masses of people. But Paul saw things through the eye of faith and he lived according to the spiritual realm rather than the physical realm or the opinions of the world.
We must also ask how believers live in a way that is different than the ways of the world. “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. 19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:18-21). Those who live like the previous verses are those who live after the things of the fleshly, selfish, and sinful nature. They are guided by the principles of the world and live according to the pleasures and ideas of the world. Those who live like this show that the reign and rule of God by the Spirit is not in their hearts and so they give themselves to the things of the world. However, some people ruled by the world are also very religious. Saul was very religious and yet his heart and life were not governed by the Spirit. When the church is influenced by worldly people, it is influenced by those who are not living according to the Spirit but those who operate according to the principles of the world.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:22-25). Here we see what true believers walk by. Those who live by the Spirit (have true life) take each step (walk) by the Spirit. What is walking by the Spirit after al
l if not taking each step by the Spirit? In other words, the very life in a person is there because of the Spirit and so the way of life is also of the Spirit. When the Spirit is guiding a person’s steps, the fruit of that crucified flesh and life from the Spirit is His fruit of love and the others. It is opposite of the, shall we say, fruit of the flesh. The fruit of the Spirit is simply the working of the life of God in the soul of man by the Spirit working Himself in the person. Walking by the Spirit has a direct correlation with walking by faith. The believer walks by faith when the Spirit opens the eyes of the soul so it can see with faith and then trust in what it sees.
Another passage that sheds light on the subject is from Ephesians 3. “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:16-19). We should notice the order of things given. We see from v. 16 that God must grant a person to be strengthened with power through the Spirit in the inner man. Okay, whatever that means we must notice the reason that the person is to be strengthened by the Spirit is so that Christ would dwell in the heart by faith. It would seem to be a correct deduction to make that the more a person has of faith the more one would have Christ dwelling in his heart. The result of Christ dwelling in the heart is that the believer is rooted and grounded in love and filled with the fullness of God.
Now we can see that faith is indeed the sight of the soul and that which enables the believer to receive Christ and His love. But the fruit of the Spirit is love. Is it possible that the work of the Spirit is to work faith so that the very fruit of the Spirit is really bringing Christ and His love into the heart of the believer? Yes, that is what these texts seem to show. If we bring in other passages from I John we could show this very clearly. But the point I am trying to drive at is that faith is indeed something which operates in the spiritual realm and, as Hebrews 11:1 points out; it is a conviction of things not seen (with the eyes). What is true for the believer as he walks the walk of faith must also be true of the new believer as well. The faith which God uses to justify is a faith that grows and is used to sanctify. But we should be able to see the nature of saving faith from the faith that a believer has.
Justification as it relates to faith is utterly vital. One can set out the doctrine of justification, have people assent to it, and all that has happened is that the people are deceived. After all, those who believe are saved and they believe that it is true. But notice something very important here. All that I have set out previous to this has been an effort to show that true belief or true faith operates in the spiritual realm. There can also be a faith of sorts that operates in the physical realm and especially in the physical realm of religion. Whenever saving faith is limited to something a human does in the material realm, it is not going to be accurate in its entirety if at all. Saving faith is more than just agreeing that certain facts are true about Jesus and the Gospel. As the Bible and the Gospel of John especially show, many people believed in Christ and yet were not saved. One can have knowledge of the facts and assent to them as true and even admire them as beautiful in one sense and still not be converted. Why is that? One, the true glory of the facts of the Gospel of the glory of God is not seen. Two, the people have not been emptied of self-centeredness and so they cannot see things from any view but the fleshly self-centered view of the world.
True faith is not just something that is determined by what one believes, it is also determined by what one does not believe or trust in. It is true that one can trust in self to trust in Christ. That is not a true faith in Christ. But for the moment what we must see is that to see and understand the Gospel requires a spiritual understanding of the Gospel and not just a recitation of the facts of the Gospel. Jesus Christ is one Divine Person in whom a fully Divine nature is united to a fully human nature. To believe in Jesus Christ requires that one see and believe in Him spiritually. To believe in Jesus Christ in truth requires that one believe things from the spiritual realm by which the Holy Spirit alone gives understanding. The faith that unites to Christ is a belief in Christ and what He actually did in His life on earth and the cross. If we limit those to the earthly realm and the flesh, we end up with a gospel focused on man and his need. That is easy to believe, but it is a false faith and a false Gospel. To be justified by faith means to trust with the whole man that justification is all of God and all about the glory of God. It means that we must not trust in self at all, but in Christ alone. This requires that the Spirit turn us from the physical realm to the spiritual realm in which we deny self and trust in self to trust in Christ alone. True faith peers into the spiritual realm and beholds the Gospel of Christ as glorious and true. It believes and does not trust in self at all. Saving faith apprehends Christ and the Gospel in the spiritual realm and so has a trust that is from a spiritual nature and not from self-centered heart and nature. True faith comes from a spiritual nature when it sees the glory of God in the face of Christ.
God Loves... Himself 
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