Thomas Charles
Faith in its very nature, and also in all its operations, is amazingly mysterious and glorious. But what is faith? To believe is to give credit to a thing as true on the testimony of another. And divine faith is to believe divine testimony respecting spiritual and divine things. Thus we believe truths, which we could not discover and cannot understand, only because God, who we are assured knows them perfectly and cannot lie, testifies that they are so. And this is, in some respect, the same as if we did know them, for God is the most competent judge of what He bears testimony to, and we may depend on His truthfulness with perfect safety.
When we believe the record He has given of His Son, we believe Him to be infinitely more glorious than we can comprehend, because the Father, who knows Him to perfection, says so. The Father, who knows Him and will not deceive us, commands us to believe in Him for our whole eternal salvation, in the face of all our misery. Therefore we may as confidently rest our guilty souls upon Him as if we had the same knowledge of Him as the Father has.
God gave His Son “that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life”. We are afraid to believe in Him, but the Father is not afraid to entrust the salvation of His people into Christ’s hands; nor is He afraid that His testimony respecting Christ should ever be called in question by the perishing of any who believe in Him. No, the Father knows the Son, and knows what He says when He declares that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish.
In proportion as we believe this His testimony is our confidence in relying on Christ and our assurance of salvation from all our misery. And by believing the testimony of the Father respecting the Son, and acting accordingly towards the Son, we honour both the Father and the Son, and “he that honoureth not [thus] the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him” (Jn 5:23). The Father has honoured the Son by giving Him a divine commission and qualifying Him amply for the great work of saving sinners. We honour both the Father who sent, and the Son who is sent, when we receive Him as thus commissioned and qualified. The Father testified in various ways that He was well pleased with the undertaking when the Son came into the world. And by receiving Him at last into glory and sending the Holy Ghost, the Father has sufficiently testified that He is well pleased with the work as accomplished. We, on our part, honour the Father and the Son when we approve of the wonderful plan of salvation, and glory in it as accomplished by the Son.
The Father twice testified publicly from heaven that Jesus was His beloved Son, and that He was well pleased in Him, and He commands us to hear Him as one who is divinely commissioned to reveal His whole mind and purpose. We cannot but approve of the whole plan, and also the glorious execution of it, when we believe God’s testimony respecting both, for He alone is competent to judge of them. The Father has testified that Jesus is His only begotten Son and that in Him He is well pleased, that He has glorified His name and will glorify it again in His Son. Believing this testimony, we believe that the honour, taken from the divine majesty by sin, is again restored by Christ. We are not competent to judge of Jesus or of His work; but the Father is fully competent; therefore His testimony about both is more to us than if, without it, we had the comprehension and the knowledge of the highest angel in heaven.
There is something divine in faith, which goes far beyond the understanding of every creature and is familiar with objects which are incomprehensible, it is familiar with the heights and depths of mysteries far beyond the capacities of creatures. What though the mind cannot see them, cannot understand them, and cannot fathom them? Yet God can, and we have His testimony, which, more than anything else, will give the soul satisfaction. Faith fathoms not with its own plummet, but with God’s, which can reach the greatest depths; it measures infinite objects with infinite comprehension, and removes infinite obstacles with infinite power. “God hath said” is more to faith than if it saw all that the angels in heaven see. And perhaps the record about divine things, which God has given to His Church here on earth, makes known to the inhabitants of heaven things which otherwise they could not know.
Faith will support itself on divine testimony, as on an eternal foundation, against sin, death and hell. Divine testimony about the unknown merits of Christ’s sufferings will support the soul under all possible guilt. God knows both, and has testified that guilt is surpassed and removed eternally by Christ’s sufferings. God knows, and has testified to us, about all the evil of sin. It is far beyond our comprehension, but He who knew what sin is, and also Christ’s ability to bear it, laid upon him the iniquity of all His people, and made Him sin for them, that they might be made the righteousness of God in Him. So “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”.
He who knew the law, in all its divine extent, testifies that Christ has magnified it and made it honourable. By His obedience unto death, He has shown to the whole universe that the law is eternally unchangeable, because it is holy, just and good. In short, in contemplating all these divine objects, faith leaves our own understanding and our own reason behind here on earth, and takes God’s understanding and reason as manifested in the Word for its guide instead. The carnal mind will always cavil at this: “How can these things be?” It may cavil, but no satisfaction can ever be given to the carnal mind; blind it is, and blind it will continue. But they who have the spiritual mind have a practical understanding of what it is to take God’s wisdom and knowledge instead of their own. There is no possibility of making a blind man see but by giving him eyes. No more can a man discern spiritual things spiritually without a spiritual mind; without it we can as soon see without eyes.
But he who believes the record that God has given of His Son has the witness in himself. Such amazing effects accompany this belief as nothing else could produce. He finds that eternal life which God has testified to be in His Son. He has this life in him as a witness in himself, corresponding to God’s record in His Word. He has within himself the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. The testimony of God is the only foundation of faith, but this witness within himself proves that he indeed believes this record and that his faith is genuine. If he finds in himself that life which God testifies to be in Christ, then he has indeed come to Christ through believing the record.
To pretend to believe the record of God, and at the same time not to find that life in Christ which He testifies of, is in the highest degree to dishonour both the Father and the Son – it is making God a liar and supposing that Christ died in vain. No, there is life eternal in Christ and whoever, believing God’s testimony about it, comes to Christ is sure to find it. And, in proportion to the strength of our faith in God’s testimony, are our applications to Christ and our consequent experience of life from Him.
We must carefully observe that God’s testimony is to be believed, because it is His testimony, and for no other reason. Faith sets the bare testimony of God in opposition to all reasonings to the contrary from sin and its guilt, from the power of unbelief and from the accusations of Satan. If we endeavour to support it by anything else, we weaken its power and destroy its effects. And this record must be delivered just as it is: “that God hath given us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son”.
The gift is great and the objects are unworthy; but great as it is, it is freely given; God will have it so, and we must not dispute. But “this gift is in His Son”. To Him we must apply for it, and from Him we must receive it. All communication between God and sinners is through Him, and those who are not willing to receive all from and through Christ will never receive one spiritual blessing. “This life is in His Son”, that is, all the blessings of the covenant of grace – pardon, grace and glory, joy, peace, strength, wisdom and comfort – all are treasured up in Christ, who dwells among us “full of grace and truth, for “it pleased the Father”, in consequence of His obedience unto death, “that in Him should all fulness dwell”.
Only the Spirit of God can enable us to believe God’s testimony and make us willing to receive life in the way which God has appointed to bestow it. He who has found no difficulty in this is hitherto an utter stranger to that living faith which works by love and overcomes the world. The whole body of sin, the life of which is unbelief and pride, will for ever oppose it. By nature we are as devoid of belief in God as we are full of enmity against Him; nor do we seek for that life which He gives in His Son.
How then can we believe His testimony without a supernatural change? How can we apply for this life till we see our need of it and are in love with it? The carnal mind is enmity against God. It neither loves God, nor anything of a spiritual nature which He has to give, nor does it believe anything that He says. The carnal mind will have nothing to do with God in any sense. It believes the devil and loves the world more than God. The spiritual mind, on the contrary, deals with God only. Its essence is belief in God’s love and submission to Him. God’s Word is sufficient to rest eternal concerns upon; it will have nothing else. The spiritual mind is exactly opposite to the carnal mind in everything. But to enable it to act with efficacy in opposition to the whole body of sin, He who gave faith, and this believing nature, must enable it to believe in every particular case against all opposition.
In all its operations, faith is mysterious and glorious. It acts something like God Himself. It acts in opposition to difficulties with the same ease as when there are none. God’s Word removes them all. It is delightfully and familiarly conversant with things above reason: infinities and incomprehensibilities. It wants nothing but God and His Word; passes by everything else, and deals only with them. Being of such a nature, so divine and supernatural, it cannot but overcome all things in the end. With infinite ease, the Lord at the beginning produced everything from nothing by His mere Word. But faith engages the same God and the same Word in all its operations, and therefore it must prevail – and be more than a conqueror.
1Taken, with editing, from Thomas Charles’ Spiritual Counsels. Charles (1755-1814) was a noted minister of Bala, in north Wales, but preached far and wide with remarkable blessing. This volume of essays and letters has been reprinted by the Banner of Truth Trust and is available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.