Ephesians 2:8,9; Hebrews 11:1-3; John 13:23
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.
CASPER OLEVIANUS (1536-1587): What is true faith?
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): It is “the substance of things hoped for.” Faith and hope go together; and the same things that are the object of our hope, are the object of our faith. It is a firm persuasion and expectation that God will perform all that He has promised to us in Christ…It is “the evidence of things not seen.” Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of things that cannot be discerned by the eye of the body. Faith is the firm assent of the soul to the divine revelation and every part of it, and sets to its seal that God is true. It is a full approbation of all that God has revealed as holy, just, and good.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Faith comprehends within its grasp the past, the present, and the future. By it, the Christian knows that the universe, but a few thousand years ago, had no existence, and that it was created out of nothing by the Word of God.
ZACHARIAS URSINUS (1534-1583): True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart; that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.
HULDREICH ZWINGLI (1484-1531): Faith is a matter of fact, not of knowledge or opinion; for it is born only when a man begins to despair of himself, and to see that he must trust in God alone. And it is perfected when a man wholly casts himself off and prostrates himself before the mercy of God alone, in such a fashion as to have entire trust in it because of Christ who was given for us. What man of faith can be unaware of this? For then only are you free from sin when the mind trusts itself unwaveringly to the death of Christ and finds rest there.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): Faith is that act of the soul whereby it rests on Christ crucified for pardon and life, and that upon the warrant of the Word. The person of Christ is the object of faith as justifying: secondly, Christ as crucified. First, the person of Christ, not any axiom or proposition in the Word―this is the object of assurance, not of faith. Assurance saith, “I believe my sins are pardoned through Christ;” Faith’s language is, “I believe on Christ for the pardon of them.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): What is faith? Even those who know what faith is, personally and experimentally, do not always find it easy to give a good definition of it. They think they have hit the mark; then, afterwards, they lament that they have failed. Straining themselves to describe one part of faith, they find they have forgotten another, and in the excess of their earnestness to clear the poor sinner out of one mistake, they often lead him into a worse error. So that I think I may say that, while faith is the simplest thing in all the world, yet it is one of most difficult upon which to write.
JOHN G. PATON (1824-1907): For a long time no equivalent could be found for the word “faith” in the native language of Aniwa Island, and my work of Bible translation was paralyzed for the want of so fundamental a term. The natives apparently regarded the verb “to hear” as equivalent to “to believe.” I would ask a native whether he believed a certain statement, and his reply would be, should he credit the statement, “Yes, I heard it,” but should he disbelieve it, he would answer, “No, I did not hear it,” meaning, not that his ears had failed to catch the words, but that he did not regard them as true. This definition of faith was obviously insufficient.
I prayed continually that God would supply the missing link, and spared no effort in interrogating the most intelligent native pundits, but all in vain, none caught the hidden meaning of the word. One day I was in the Mission House anxiously pondering. I sat on an ordinary kitchen chair, my feet resting on the floor. Just as an intelligent native woman entered the room, the thought flashed through my mind to ask the all-absorbing question again, if possible in a new light. Was I not resting on the chair? Would that attitude lend itself to the discovery? I said, “What am I doing now?” “Koikae ana,” the native replied, “you are sitting down.”
Then I drew up my feet and placed them upon the bar of the chair just above the floor, and leaning back in an attitude of repose, asked, “What am I doing now?” “Fakarongrongo,” she said, meaning “you are leaning wholly, or you have lifted yourself from every other support.” “That’s it!” I shouted with an exultant cry; and a sense of holy joy awed me, as I realized that my prayer had been fully answered. To “lean on” Jesus wholly and only, is surely the true meaning of saving faith. And now “Fakarongrongo Iesu ea anea mouri,”—leaning on Jesus unto eternal life, or, for all the things of eternal life, is the happy experience of those Christian Islanders, as it is of all who thus cast themselves unreservedly on the Saviour of the world for salvation.
ALEXANDER COMRIE (1706-1774): It will mean that they rest their whole weight upon Him, upon the Christ. O! as long as a man leans and supports himself partly upon Jesus, and partly upon duties, for sure the left hand will be pierced by the broken reed of Egypt, by legal duties, and self-strength. Here we must lean upon Him and upon none other, else we shall ever be wrong in the exercise.
C. H. SPURGEON: It is essential that our faith rest alone on Jesus. Mix anything with Christ, and you are undone. If your faith stand with one foot upon the rock of His merits, and the other foot upon the sand of your own duties, it will fall, and great will be the fall. Recumbency on the truth was the word which the old preachers used. You will understand that word: Leaning on it; saying, “This is truth, I trust my salvation on it.” Now, true faith, in its very essence rests in this—a leaning upon Christ. It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust Him to be my Saviour. I shall not be delivered from the wrath to come by believing that His atonement is sufficient, but I shall be saved by making that atonement my trust, my refuge, and my all. The pith, the essence of faith lies in this—a casting one-self on the promise.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): Many are lost because they cannot use possessive pronouns.
HUGH BINNING (1625-1654): To believe in Christ is simply this: that I, whatsoever I be, ungodly, wretched, polluted, desperate—am willing to have Jesus Christ for my Saviour. I have no help or hope if it be not in Him.
Berean Bible Study
Acts 17:10,11; Isaiah 8:20; 2 Corinthians 13:1
The brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): The Thessalonians would not so much as consider what they heard from the Apostle. The Bereans, on the contrary, made a diligent use of the means afforded them for solving their doubts: they “searched the Scriptures,” which they considered as the only standard of truth, and to which Paul had appealed; they “searched them daily,” that they might form their judgment upon the surest grounds: they would neither receive nor reject any thing which they had not maturely weighed.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): Now, to help thee in thy search for the sense and meaning of the Word—First, Take heed thou comest not to the Scriptures with an unholy heart. Second: Make not thy own reason the rule by which thou dost measure Scripture truths. Third: Take heed thou comest not with a judgment pre-engaged to any party or opinion—a mind prepossessed will be ready to impose its own sense upon the Word, and so loses the truth by an overweening conceit of his own opinion. Too many read the Scriptures not so much to be informed by them, as confirmed in what already they have taken up! They choose opinions, as Samson his wife, because they please them, and then come to gain the Scriptures’ consent.
CHARLES SIMEON: The Bereans “inquired whether these things were so.” They did not conclude every thing to be false which did not accord with their preconceived opinions. This was a noble spirit, because it showed that they were not in subjection to their prejudices.
WILLIAM GURNALL: Fourth: Go to God by prayer for a key to unlock the mysteries of His Word. It is not the plodding, but the praying soul, that will get this treasure of Scripture knowledge. John got the sealed book opened by weeping, Revelation 5:5. God often brings a truth to the Christian’s hand as a return of prayer, which he had long hunted for in vain with much labour and study; there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, Daniel 2:22. And where doth He reveal the secrets of His Word but at the throne of grace? “From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words,” Daniel 10:12—for thy prayer. And what was this heavenly messenger’s errand to Daniel but to open more fully the Scripture to him?
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If you study the original, consult the commentaries, and meditate deeply, yet if you neglect to cry mightily unto the Spirit of God, your study will not profit you―but if you wait upon the Holy Ghost in simple dependence upon His teaching, you will lay hold of very much of the divine meaning.
WILLIAM GURNALL: Fifth: Compare Scripture with Scripture.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The readiness of mind of the Bereans to receive the Word was not such as they took things upon trust, and swallowed them upon an implicit faith: no; but since Paul reasoned out of the Scriptures, and referred them to the Old Testament for the proof of what he said, they turned to those places, read the context, considered the scope and drift of them, compared them with other places of Scripture, and examined whether Paul’s inferences from them were natural and genuine, and his arguments upon them cogent, and determined accordingly.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): They searched the Scriptures of the Old Testament to see whether the promises and types corresponded with the alleged fulfillment in the person, works, and sufferings of Jesus Christ.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Only by prayerfully and diligently comparing Scripture with Scripture are its exquisite perfections revealed, and only thus are we able to obtain a complete view of many a scene―only by comparing Scripture with Scripture can we rightly interpret any figure or symbol…No verse of Scripture yields its meaning to lazy people.
WILLIAM GURNALL: Now, in comparing Scripture with Scripture, be careful that thou interpret obscure places by the more plain and clear, and not the clear by the dark. “Some things hard to be understood, which they that are unstable wrest,” 2 Peter 3:16. No wonder they should stumble in those dark and difficult places, when they turn their back on that light which plainer Scriptures afford to lead them safely through.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): We must remember that if our interpretation ever makes the teaching appear to be ridiculous or lead us to a ridiculous position, it is patently a wrong interpretation. And there are people who are guilty of this.
WILLIAM GURNALL: “He that is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not,” 1 John 5:18. This is a dark place which some run away with, and from it conclude there is a perfect state free from all sin attainable in this life; whereas a multitude of plain Scriptures testify against such a conclusion, as 1 Kings 8:38; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Job 9:20; 1 John 1:8-10, with many more. So it must be in a limited and qualified sense that “he that is born of God sinneth not.”
MATTHEW HENRY: Paul saw himself to be in a state of imperfection and trial: “Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect,” Philippians 3:12…If Paul had not attained to perfection, who had reached to so high a pitch of holiness, much less have we.
A. W. PINK: Our purpose in calling attention to this, is to remind the reader of the great importance of comparing Scripture with Scripture, and to show how Scripture is self-interpreting.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: We must remember that if our interpretation contradicts the plain and obvious teaching of Scripture at another point, again it is obvious that our interpretation has gone astray—there is no contradiction in Biblical teaching.
WILLIAM GURNALL: Sixth: Consult with thy faithful guides which God hath set over thee in His church. Though people are not to pin their faith on the minister’s sleeve, yet they are to “seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts,” Malachi 2:7.
JOHN ROBINSON (1575-1625): Make use of the commentaries and expositions of such special instruments, as God in mercy hath raised up for the opening of the Scriptures, and edifying the Church.
C. H. SPURGEON: Richard Cecil says his plan was, when he laid a hold of a Scripture, to pray over it, and get his own thoughts on it, and then, after he had so done, to take up the ablest divines who wrote upon the subject, and see what their thoughts were.
HULDRYCH ZWINGLI (1484-1531): I study them with the same feelings with which one asks a friend, “What do you understand by this?”
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: We must not swallow automatically everything we read in books, even from the greatest men. We must examine everything.
C. H. SPURGEON: If you do not think, and think much, you will become slaves and mere copyists. The exercise of your own mind is most healthful to you, and by perseverance, with divine help, you may expect to get at the meaning of every understandable passage. So, to rely upon your own abilities as to be unwilling to learn from others is clearly folly; so to study others, as not to judge for yourself, is imbecility.
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