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OK, Cam, what is faith? It's a very good question, and it's a three-word question, very simple, but good to open up. And I think the first thing to say is that there are two types of faith. in the Scriptures. For example, as we talked about our conference, confessing the faith, what is the faith in that context?

In Jude 3, for example, where it speaks about contending for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. Elsewhere, where the Apostle Paul uses the language of the faith of the gospel, That is speaking to the objective content of the Christian faith, the propositions to be believed, the articles of the Christian religion, the triune God, the deity and the humanity of Christ. You know, the truths regarding the incarnation, regarding salvation, justification by faith alone.

So, the faith in that context or according to that meaning is, again, the truths of the gospel, what is to be believed. And then the other understanding of the faith is the act of believing. So, if we ask the question, what is faith, according to that understanding, we could simply say that it's believing.

It's the act of believing. When the disciples or when the apostles, for example, in the book of Acts, are preaching the gospel to unbelievers and, for example, the Philippian jailer asks, sirs, what must I do to be saved? The answer is, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. That belief on the Lord Jesus Christ is faith.

Our confession of faith defines faith as something like the grace of faith is that whereby sinners are enabled to believe unto the saving of their souls, and that it is a work of grace wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God. And by that, we rest and we receive and rest upon the Lord Jesus Christ as declared in the gospel. And I think it's an important thing to observe with regards to faith because it can be a term that is stripped of the objective content of what is being believed. you know, if this person just has sincere faith in something, then that's commendable, regardless of what the object of that faith is. The faith, the Christian faith or Christian believing, has its precious and glorious object as Christ Jesus, the Savior of men. And so our act of believing rests upon the precious and the glorious content of Christ, very God of very God, true God from true God, begotten, not made, who came into this lower world by the assumption of our humanity, taking upon himself all the properties of humanity and all the common infirmities, yet without sin, in order to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death, and to rise again in order that he might bring many sons and daughters to glory. And so that act of believing rests upon that precious one, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the language that the Apostle Peter uses regarding those who have this faith, that to those who believe, Christ is precious.

He is the object of our faith. He's the one who sovereignly gifts us with the faith by which we believe unto the saving of our souls.

I think it's another important thing to emphasize that faith is not natural to man. Faith is not something that the sinner has in and of himself. It is a grace that is given by the Holy Spirit working upon the heart. It's a gift given. Regeneration precedes faith. Faith doesn't precede regeneration. God does that glorious work upon the heart where he takes out the stony heart, replaces it with that heart of believing flesh that lays hold of the Savior and lays hold of the promises of God.

It's the instrument through which we receive the redemptive benefits of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's not salvation on account of our faith. As Cam points out, it's not that we have faith, bring it to the table, God rewards us and gives us salvation. No, He gives us the faith based on faith.

You know, Ephesians 2, 8-10, Philippians 1, verse 29. So, faith is the instrument, the empty hand by which we receive the benefits that were secured by our Lord Jesus Christ. And I love what our confession says in 14 too. It basically says, You know, by this faith, a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word of God. In other words, everything Scripture says, we believe.

We believe the dimensions of the tabernacle and the temple. We believe that David was the king of Israel. We believe that Solomon was a king and that there was a division in his kingdom after his death. But the end of it says, but the principal acts of saving faith have immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, and resting upon Him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of the covenant of grace. So, we believe everything the Bible says, but the principal acts of saving faith is not the dimensions of the temple. It's not that David was the king of Israel. It's that Jesus is the one that Cam described, true God from true God, or light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. That one who took our humanity, lived, died, and rose again.

Principal acts of saving faith are directed to Jesus as the object of saving faith. So yeah, what ways have you seen faith or understanding of what faith is, what believing is, get distorted? A lot of ways. Well, I think one of the ways has already been mentioned where the assertion that the natural man can exercise faith outside of amazing and victorious grace. And it's not that God just partially acts by what's been called a prevenient grace where He acts along with man who is with God working unto the end that a faith is exercised, but that the Bible finds man as it describes man. God finds man, as the Bible describes man, and as God himself describes man, as dead in trespasses and sins, without hope, without strength, following after the allurements of the world, following after the temptations of the devil, and a slave to his own flesh.

And so God comes in amazing and victorious grace, and brings that sinner forth by that grace from the deadness and darkness of sin to life and light in Jesus Christ, and gives him that gift of faith whereby he is enabled to believe unto the saving of his soul. I think another way that faith is distorted is by smuggling faithfulness into faith.

So that our justification is then by our faith and our faithfulness. So that our evangelical obedience, a term that has historic roots, is therefore then the ground of our justification. And it steals away from the reality of what Jim had already mentioned, that faith is that instrument, that empty hand that lays hold of the redemptive benefits of the Lord Jesus Christ. It isn't our faith that saves us. We're saved by or through faith, that faith resting on Christ and receiving Christ and all the benefits of His glorious redemptive work.

Another, I think, diminishing of faith is the sentimentalizing of faith, where, you know, someone, you know, someone who is really, really sincere or really, really demonstrative or really, really emotional or, you know, sappy or whatever is, that's faith. It's this sort of subjective demonstration of feeling and that sort of a thing. So, I mean, but let's just say that we ought to have a blessed and warm Christian response to the truths that we are believing.

We love the Christ who has brought us from out of the deadness of sin to life in Him. And so there ought to be, perhaps we could say, a wholesome sentimentality, but faith itself is the act of believing, whereby God has enabled us by His Spirit, according to His Word, to rest upon the glorious champion of our salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ. Another way is, I think, smuggling in other things into a definition of faith, like smuggling love into faith. so that, you know, we're justified, you know, not by faith alone, but the amount by which we love the Savior. Are we to love the Savior? Absolutely. Are we to love the truth concerning Jesus Christ? Absolutely. Do we love God and ought we to love God? Absolutely. He's the one who has first loved us.

But to say that the intensity or the amount, you know, by which we express a love towards God has some sort of proportional relationship to the amount by which we're saved or by which we're, you know, a true Christian is to distort saving faith and it's to heap obligations and meanings upon faith that God has never intended nor has he revealed. So I think it's important to also emphasize that it's not a, you might remember the quote that you've said a number of times, but it's not a strong faith that unites us to Christ. It can be a weak faith as well that unites us to Christ. And I think that's a glorious reality that we're not saved by the strength of our faith. We're saved by the strength of a Savior who gives us that faith by which by which we're saved. And maybe Jim's able to find that Machen quote, which is wonderful. Yeah. And I was thinking, you know, as Cam ran through that list, one of the obvious things I think I've seen is attaching feelings to faith.

I believed and nothing happened. Well, what do you think this is, a fireworks display? There's times, and you see it in the Psalms, why are you cast down, O my soul? You know, you ask David at that particular instance, do you have faith? Of course I have faith, but I'm cast down.

Faith is not to be loaded up with feelings. It's not to be loaded up with Yeah, love. Of course, love is the chief fruit of saving faith, but we need to keep those things distinct. I just fear that people judge faith, whether they have it or not, based on their feelings. You know, if you're going to live like that, you're going to be miserable. You know, I don't really feel like I'm believing today. I don't know that there's a feeling connected to any other act of believing.

I believe the sun is in the sky. Does that promote a feeling? I mean, the heat from the sun, obviously. And again, when we stress this, it's not a negation of any feelings in the Christian religion. Of course there are. You can't load faith up with that and suggest that, well, you don't seem to have those fiery feelings, so therefore there's no faith.

That is to do great disservice to the Word of God and to the people of God. That Machen quote is beautiful. Weak faith will not remove mountains, but there is one thing at least that it will do. It will bring a sinner into peace with God. Our salvation does not depend upon the strength of our faith. Saving faith is a channel, not a force. If you are once really committed to Christ, then despite your subsequent doubts and fears, you are His forever. And I think that the more We live, move, and have our beings, we stress that reality.

One of the most difficult things to see is somebody who, because they're having a bad day, or because they're having a bad season, or because they've had bad feelings, somehow talk themselves out of participation in the Kingdom of God. You may be excluded from the kingdom, but not because you're having a bad day, not because you're sorrowful and your heart is cast down. You're not cast out of the kingdom because you don't have these red-hot feelings for the Savior.

Do you believe what the Bible says concerning Jesus? Do you believe that He alone is the one that can bring forgiveness of sins and give you a righteousness by which you can stand before God? Now, again, hopefully the feelings catch up, but live in light of the reality of God's promises and lay hold of them by faith, and don't let go of that.

And don't think that, you know, unless my faith is loaded up with feelings, that's just horrible doctrine. It's horrible doctrine. would that we could purge it from every pulpit. Loading faith with feelings, loading faith with love, again, it's the chief fruit of love, of faith, but to sort of mingle it together. Purge from our pulpits, faith plus faithfulness.

We're Protestants, we're not papists. and any, you know, confounding of the blessed simplicity of that empty hand that God gives us. Again, it's not my reach. It's not any effort on my part. God gives me the empty hand, and we receive the benefits secured by our Lord Jesus Christ, with or without feelings, with or without, you know, the fireworks display.

I still remember when I was coming to faith and meeting with you, and you grabbed a bracket from your shelf and read... I can't remember exactly what page it was, but... That section, yeah. That section on... Some people have a Paul on the Way to Damascus experience, and some are like, I don't...

People know what day, and it was 11.23 in the morning, and whatever, right? Now the people are like, they don't know the year or even the decade, but they know they are believing and they are in Christ. Amen. And that's what I always say. You know, I don't remember the day I was converted. And I always say, well, if you didn't have a birth certificate, you wouldn't know for me, September 16th, 1966. It was a cool autumn day. You wouldn't know that unless it was printed. The fact is though, I am alive. So I may not know the September 16th that I believe the gospel, but I know presently I'm believing the gospel.

Yeah, and you know, if you think about what was discussed earlier in the context of baptism and Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch, the question that Philip poses isn't, were you knocked off your horse by the shining of the new moon sun expressed in the visible manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? And yeah, believing then you have life in his name.

We have a tendency to overcomplicate everything, you know, whether it's church membership we're talking about, whether it's baptism, whether it's Bible reading, whether it's faith. We always want to make it more difficult for whatever reason, and I think we ought to leave the simplicity of the gospel alone. If we're gonna, you know, mess up up with complications, let them be elsewhere, but not on justification by faith, not on what is it that brings peace to a sinner. It is faith in Jesus Christ our Lord. Yeah, I'm interacting with some people and they're reading good, cool authors and Puritans and Boston and stuff. But anybody we go to, they'll have some expression that just gives you doubts, like, oh, you need to have this or that.

But it's like, you gotta go back to the word. It's not 100% of what any author has written. Spurgeon's really good though. Spurgeon's really good, yeah. And you've got, if there weren't, solid examples in Scripture of believers struggling, right? I mean, David. Yeah. He did bad things. Peter denied the Master. Paul expresses the concept of remaining corruption in Romans 7 and Galatians 5.

You know, I'd love to only ever have positive, great feelings. I'd only ever love to have more love for the one that's altogether lovely. I, you know, need to get better, need to pray more, need to read more, but in the final analysis, nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.

Foul I to the fountain fly, wash me, Savior, or I die. I think, you know, in the final analysis, going back to the question about the Day of Judgment, it's all going to be the glory of Christ, that we're standing there on the Day of Judgment, favorably received in the presence of God. It's all about Christ. The Christian life is always about Christ, His glory, His power, His efficacy in terms of our salvation. And yeah, you should have great warm feelings about that, but sometimes you don't.