What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it the condition of justification which it is left to man to fulfill? Is it a part of God’s gift of salvation, or is it man’s own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God, or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who deny the latter (as the Arminians later did) thereby deny man’s utter helplessness in sin, and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all. It is no wonder, then, that later Reformed theology condemned Arminianism as being in principle a return to Rome (because in effect it turned faith into a meritorious work) and a betrayal of the Reformation (because it denied the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, which was the deepest religious and theological principle of the Reformer’s thought). Arminianism was, indeed, in Reformed eyes a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favour of New Testament Judaism; for to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other (Johnson and Packer’s introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will).
If the only source of true faith is the grace of God, then if we teach that faith comes from the free-will of man or remain silent on the source we are not telling the truth about the Gospel. It is thought by many that God gives faith but we must not tell men that and simply tell them to repent and believe. But if we don’t tell them that part of their repentance is to repent of any hope in themselves and that includes a belief that they can choose at any time to be saved, we have not told them about true repentance. If we don’t tell them that part of true faith is not to have any faith in their own faith or belief, then we have not told them about true belief or faith.
One of the divinely predicted characteristics of the “perilous times” in which we are not living is that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (II Tim 3:13). The deeper reference of these words is to spiritual seducers and deceivers. Men with captivating personalities, men who occupy prominent places in Christendom, men with an apparently deep reverence for Holy Writ, are beguiling souls with fatal error. Not only are evolutionists, higher critics, and modernists deluding multitudes of our young people with their sugar-coated lies, but some who pose as the champions of orthodoxy and boast of their ability to “rightly divide the Word of Truth,” are poisoning the minds of many to their eternal destruction (Arthur W. Pink from The Doctrine of Salvation).
The source of faith is a vitally important topic to deal with in evangelism. It is either man’s contribution to salvation or it is God’s. If man thinks that it is his contribution, and he thinks that he can do this of his own free-will at any moment, then he is utterly wrong about the nature of salvation and of his own sin. If man thinks that salvation depends on his act of free-will and all that he needs to do is to pray a prayer or make a choice, them man will never look to Christ alone and grace alone for salvation. If man is not looking to Christ alone and grace alone for salvation, then he does not have faith alone either. The Gospel that depends on the slightest effort of the so-called free will is a false Gospel altogether because it cannot be by Christ alone and grace alone.
The closer a person is to truth and yet does not teach the purity of truth on issues like this the truth is used to blind sinners to reality. There are so many spiritual seducers and deceivers in the world who are very orthodox and yet at what they think is a minor point their orthodoxy is used to hide or blind their own eyes and the eyes of others from the whole truth. In the book of Galatians we see this in several places. The Judaizers just wanted to add one thing to Christ. They had a lot of truth, but they wanted to add circumcision. But Paul told them that adding that one thing was to bring the whole Gospel crashing down in their cases. That one thing meant that “Christ will be of no benefit to you” (Gal 5:2). It meant that they were “under obligation to keep the whole Law” (5:3). It meant that they “were severed from Christ” and “have fallen from grace” (5:4). They had so much right and only went astray at one point. That one point led to eternal destruction.
In the modern day the point that the Reformers thought so vital to the Gospel is brushed away as something not so important. But if we add one act of will or one choice of a free-will to the Gospel as so many do today, we have added that one thing. It is no longer grace alone and that means that justification by faith alone has been destroyed. The Gospel of grace alone means that nothing can come from the human will that does not come from God Himself. A free-will by definition is a will that is free from the internal work of God. One little act of the will brings the whole Gospel crashing down for that soul. If we depend on our own free-will, Christ will be of no benefit to us. If we depend on one act of our own free-will, then we are under obligation to keep the whole Law. If we depend on one act of our own free will, then we are severed from Christ and have fallen from grace. It may be only one point, but a whole lot depends on that one point. It is not a minor point at all, but leads to eternal destruction.
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