John Dick
Faith implies giving up our own righteousness as the foundation of our hope. It is not a partial but an unreserved reliance on Christ for salvation. To believe is not to call on Him to assist us in what we have commenced and carried on to a certain extent, but to commit the work of our salvation wholly to Him from a consciousness of our utter inability even to begin. This is the test of genuine faith. The faith of God’s elect leads the sinner away from himself to the Saviour, fixes his undivided attention on the cross; he derives his peace and hope solely from the sacrifice which was offered upon it.
It is a spurious faith which forms a treacherous alliance with good works, and attempts to introduce them as a partial cause of our acceptance with God. “To him that worketh,” says Paul, “the reward is not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom 4:4,5). These words are worthy of attention. To work and to believe are opposed to each other. He who believes does not work; that is, he does not work that he may live, perform duties with a view to obtain God’s favour, associate his own obedience with that of the Redeemer as the ground of his justification. He simply believes; that is, he receives the testimony of God concerning His Son, and expects salvation through Him alone.
It is on this account that true faith is so rare. Men would not object to the aid of Jesus Christ, for their own power is insufficient to save them; but to depend on Him to the exclusion of all their own qualifications and good deeds, to owe every thing to Him, and to have nothing left of which they may boast as their own – all this is so contrary to the natural bias of the heart, so mortifying to pride, so destructive of our schemes for appearing respectable in our own eyes and maintaining what we falsely call the dignity of human nature, that we all revolt from it at first with secret indignation, and will not
1Taken, with editing, from Dick’s Lectures on Theology, vol 3.
submit to the humiliating plan, till we have been prepared by the discipline of the law and the grace of the gospel.
It is the function of faith to receive Christ as He is revealed in the Scriptures. He is offered freely, and we must receive Him without presenting any price in exchange. He is exhibited as the only Saviour; and to receive Him as such is to trust, neither in the merits of any saint, the intercession of any angel, or our own repentance and obedience, but in Him whose arm brought us salvation, and who claims the undivided glory of a work which He accomplished without an associate. To believe is to submit to the righteousness of God; it is to desist from our vain attempts to establish our own righteousness, and to say, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength”.