Faith

John’s gospel is constructed around a series of signs – seven in particular – that he masterfully employs to prove that Jesus is the Eternal Word who was from the beginning with God and was God, who was now made flesh and dwelt among us. The entire flow of John’s gospel is focused on a series of narratives exhorting the reader to come to a firm conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. This exhortation to believe is, subsequently, accompanied by a promise: all who come to believe in earnest that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, by believing, receive eternal life in His name. Accordingly, it would help to remember as well these words from chapter 1 where we are introduced to the major themes that John unfolds over the next 20 chapters. In 1:11-13 we read:

He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 

From these words we could distill this core idea: all who believed in His name were born of God, that is, they received eternal life in His name “as a result of” their faith. But there is another idea here that is equally fundamental to John’s purpose, to Christian theology, and to our practical understanding even today. All who believed in His name were born of God, but that is a passive reality: “they were born.” The Author of our spiritual birth is not us but Christ – the One who gives us the right to become a child of God. This much then is elementary to our Christian understanding: there is but one way to eternal life: faith in Christ the Son of God. 

But our understanding of eternal life must include the fact that such life is granted by the Son of God. It is not something we achieve; it is something we receive. It is not something we work for; it is something already accomplished for us. Jesus alone is the one who gives eternal life. As He said in John 5:21: “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will.”

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try. 

Scripture teaches that faith alone is the condition for salvation. A simple evidence of this is that the explicitly evangelistic gospel of John never once mentions repentance as a condition for salvation, but repeatedly exhorts us to faith (Jn. 1:12, 3:16, 6:47, 7:38, 11:25, 14:1, 20:31). Furthermore, salvation is clearly by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8) and no degree of repentance divorced from faith can be said to save anyone (e.g. Matt. 27:3-5; 2 Cor. 7:9-10)

But true saving faith, while not simply a synonym for repentance, undoubtedly includes the element of repentance. The emphatic teaching of Scripture is that “God now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Hence, faith and repentance should be viewed as two sides of the same coin, with faith being the “positive” side and repentance being the “negative” side. While repentance departs from unbelief in the gospel, faith is the positive inclination toward trust in the gospel. Repentance is “leaving there,” while faith is “coming here.”

Another way to look at faith and repentance is through the law of non-contradiction. The Bible describes saving faith as “being fully persuaded that what God has promised He is also able to perform” (Rom. 4:21). There are only two relationships a sinner can have in regards to Christ: either the sinner has saving faith in Christ or the sinner does not have saving faith in Christ. And to have saving faith in Christ is not the same as to not have saving faith in Christ.

Therefore, when a sinner exercises saving faith in Christ, he by that very act “repents” of the previous state of not having exercised saving faith in Christ. In other words, God’s call to repentance is the call to faith, and His call to faith is the call to repentance.