What Is Saving Faith

One of the deepest thinkers, I think, living today, says that religion, and by that he means religion, man's response to God. Not Christianity, but religion. This man says that religion has a meaning for men only if it can find in history a certain point to which it can absolutely surrender.

Christianity, then, or a Christian, is real, and his face is authentic, and his relationship is what God requires if and only if he finds someone one to whom he can totally surrender himself. I will repeat, a man's bragging about I'm saved is no good unless by that he expresses the fact that he's met somebody to whom he may totally, we can answer rightly God's call in elective grace. In Christ Jesus, only by that choice, he revolts of a commitment, and that commitment is the commitment of oneself utterly, with utter abandonment to another.

Christ Jesus didn't come and die on a cross to do anything short of possessing us. Whether you are saved or dead, you belong to Jesus Christ. He bought you, and if he sends you to hell, he will send you to hell because you belong to him by purchase price.

Every church in America, some more than others, and every preacher and every individual Christian need desperately to reexamine what's involved in answering God's call. What's involved in saving faith, which is response to the revelation of God in Christ and his call through the Spirit in the gospel? What's God calling men to, and how can Ralph Barnett or anybody else properly and savingly respond to God's elective call? I don't know of anything more important than that. And under God, if God Almighty could be pleased to use somebody in this congregation to come up with some good answers as to how we can start all over again, nearly, and rescue the word faith, make it meaningful again.

How we could stop this traffic in the souls of men going through the motion of profession and church membership and so forth without any change that keeps on change in the lives of men and women? How can we reexamine our message and our message to the air that we could do a better job of being true, true to men and women, telling them the truth, telling them in love, but telling them the truth, not trying to get people converted by hiding the truth from them. Not what we've called evangelism of the last sixty years that is built on the proposition that the less truth, the more results. This is a serious proposition.

I do not know about you. My father and mother are both gone. Last Lord's Day was my mother's birthday, the ninety-two as she is living.

Yesterday was my father's birthday, the ninety-five if he's living. I have, I'm one of six remaining children, brothers and sisters. My older brother is gone.

I have five brothers and sisters, one of them in California, one's in Montana, two are in Alabama, one's in Georgia. They are products of what's called Christianity today. They're all devout, faithful, hardworking church people, and only one of them gives us tiniest little bit of evidence.

We can't judge what it is. Oh, we look for just a little bit of evidence. If there you look, my soul, how people are being butchered today.

The fact that for the last hundred years we've been whittling down on what saving faith is, what God demands of men and women as a response to His dying on a cross in Jesus Christ. My loved ones are as honest as you are. They're as sincere as you are.

They're as kind-hearted, humane, good neighbors, all of that you are. But they're the product of what passes for salvation, the gospel and Christianity in cross-section of America. My soul, I wish something could take place where churches all over the country are making Christians, men and women, who are faced up to the fact that the last word that God Almighty says to a man is not, I save.

The last word He says to an individual is, I claim. You're mine. You belong to me.

For the chief sign of salvation's not a sense of freedom, but it's an experience of being mastered by somebody. And I look you in the face and tell you now that you're not fixin' to become a Christian unless you are willing to be mastered by and ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ. Nobody's tryin' to wish anything off on anybody.

Nobody's tryin' to get you to accept anybody. And if you're determined to split hell wide open in spite of everything, nobody can keep you from it. But I'm tellin' ya, if you wanna be saved, utterly mastered, utterly conquered, utterly possessed by the Lord Jesus, I wish we'd quit tryin' to talk people into accepting Jesus.

I don't know what good that'll do anyhow, for men don't need to accept Him. They need to surrender to Him, for that's exactly what He demands. How can men savingly respond to the holy God who in Christ Jesus bought you lock, stock, and barrel with His own precious blood? How? The Scripture's divided up by thinking we could say three things quickly first.

Saving faith, savingly to respond to God's claim upon you in Jesus Christ, dying on a cross in your behalf. Saving faith, that faith that'll do to ride the river where since ever I've got faith. That faith that is man's act and God's gift, that faith that is the method through which God works salvation in a human being, that faith requires very simply a response of not of my soul, but of me, of me.

He didn't come down here to save your soul, honey. He came down here to possess you, you. And if we'll cut out that silly stuff that all of us talk about, every last one of us, He saved my soul.

Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. He didn't know such a thing. He saved people, people.

He bought you. He owns you. He's possessing you.

He's after men and women. And the only way that Rothbard can respond to God's claim and demand upon him in his call from a cross is to do exactly toward him that he did toward us. He didn't give us some advice.

That's God. He gave us himself. You will not give yourself to him.

If you want a nice little salvation, you can put up and refer to it now and then, talking about you saved my soul. Praise the Lord. But no, if you want him to have your lock, stock, and barrel, you, you, you, not part of it, but you, not some of your time, but you, not this damn good stuff about you all to give your talents to the Lord.

You ain't got nothing to start with. He, as a fellow of my goodness of life, isn't that silly? But he wants you. And he's not going to trade for anything beside you.

He's not going to accept anything short of you. Here I am, Lord. I surrender.

He gave. He gave. He gave himself for you.

You will not give yourself to him. That, blessed God, is a part of saving faith. Away with this foolishness about accepting something, or believing something, or trusting something.

Salvation isn't in reference to a something. Salvation's in reference to a someone. Saving faith is the response of me, all the rest of me.

That's reading, blessed God, Scripture don't know nothing about one act of faith saving anybody. Hell going to be full of Baptists talking about what God did thirty years ago. Every reference to faith, belief, saving belief in the New Testament, this is the God's truth, is in the present tense.

He that believeth, just keeps on. We are kept by the power of God's power. How? How? Through faith.

Somebody says, will I lose my faith? Will I go to heaven? No, sir. That's a silly question. But the only way God keeps you is how? Through faith.

My soul, anybody on earth that's willing to trust yesterday is silly. It's got to be today. If salvation were a transaction that I could settle, Brother Paul, and lock it up in the safe and refer to it now, and then be a white horse of different color.

But salvation is a bringing into a relationship of two persons. And every decision and every involvement between persons must be renewed and renewed and renewed and renewed. That's right.

Oh, you're a day late if you're talking about what happened yesterday in your relationship with Jesus Christ. I don't understand why Ralph Barnes has to repent every day. I have to put my faith again in Jesus Christ every day.

Bless God, I need Him today just as badly and much terribly and absolutely as ever I will or ever I dare. I can't make it today without appropriating the blood and the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, my soul, don't tell me about your beliefs.

Tell me about your daily feeding upon and appropriating all the living Christ. That's faith. That's faith that produces life, not Phariseeism that stalks us.

The devil can't get us one way, he'll do it another, you know. We're never safe from his attacks if we're headed in the right direction. Oh, my soul, every day must be a renewing of relationship with the living Lord.

It's only this kind of response, a daily response that the New Testament talks about. Authentic or saving faith is that response that's required which one surrenders himself utterly to the sovereignty of God in Christ. You can put it down that unless God's claims, sovereign claims are bowed to, you'll never know peace.

You'll never know peace. You can put it down that you can't keep your shotgun pointed in the direction of the heart of God and have his peace. I'm telling you the truth, that the very heart of saving faith is a crisis and then a daily dealing with the claims of an all-sovereign God.

That means he's simply God, very God. I'm saying to you that saving faith has one thing that it's got to face and it has to face it every day, for every day, for as thy days, so shall thy strength be, and that is we are bound to the will of God. That's what it means, that we are unto another.

We are not alone. We're bought with a price. Unless you're willing to have the one thing foremost in every day's experience, the will of God, you haven't faced the demands of God on a cross for a proper response.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're talking about doing the will of God yesterday, you're a day late. This thing's got to be faced every day, every day, every day. This is the biggest thing between the eternities.

If there isn't anything else, Mounts to Hill obeisance. Whose will is to be done today? I tell you right now, you can't depend on past experience here. This thing is vital.

It's concerned with the relationship. Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but who will? Try to get your doctrine to throw this out. It's in the Bible, too, and it don't contradict anything else, but it just simply says the guy that will is the fellow that doeth.

That's continuous what? The will of God, brother. That won't fix you, make you roll up your sleeves, spit on your hands, and get out of your nice little comfortable religious pew. Brother, this thing's a day-by-day proposition.

Oh, that's Lord there going to give a testimony and brag to all the Lord, but that ain't worth a hill of beans. Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, that's orthodoxy, but he that doeth the will of God. God, help us, this thing's serious.

As long as we keep preaching to men and women that they ought to be saved so that what happens when they die, they can just float along and they get baptized and that's all of it. God's going to save them by faith, plus nothing, minus nothing, that's all of it. But no, bless God of salvation, that doesn't rightly relate yourself to the doing of the will of God.

It is not God's salvation. Saving faith involves giving the surrender of oneself to be a part of God's program of redemption, to be a part of God's program of redemption. Yes, something that if Satan had a heart that was as soft as a bunch of steel, it'd break his heart even.

Men and women who've been led to believe they're rightly related to God and Jesus Christ, who are not committed utterly to God's redemptive program through them. What are you talking about, Brother Barnum? I've mentioned it before, I'll mention it again before I leave you. The tragedy of what we call Christendom in America that's causing Christendom to die in America to rot is the fact that we've divorced salvation from accepting the great commission of the Lord Jesus Christ to be his instrument in his program of redemption.

And many of you believed that you were included when the Lord breathed on them, said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, John chapter 20. And then he said what? As my Father has sent me, even so send I you. You in on that? Who's that talking to? I tell you, you know that's pretty embarrassing.

Let's adopt this. I've read this. It's pretty popular.

That's just for the apostles. That all right? Can't take that? No? Well, who on earth is he talking about? You in on it? Huh? God help me, I've got no business claiming to be a Christian unless I've gladly received this commission to represent Jesus Christ. That's what he said.

I hope the Lord won't take the eyes off of a little weak me. But I want to leave this with you. There going on over there, that blessed, white-haired, greatly used man of God who literally burned himself out in the cause of Jesus Christ.

That's a good way to burn yourself out. He said to me, Brother Roth, he said, I hear one mighty bad thing about you. And the brethren have told it on you.

And I began to tremble. I thought he found out I robbed a bank or something. He let that soak in a little while.

He said, the brethren say you'll be dead by the time you're 30. That you won't be able to last very long. The case you set for yourself said you'll burn yourself out by the time you're 30.

And I was a pretty much stemwinder then. Therefore my old body got to where I couldn't do it anymore. I really burned him up.

I was right in there, but I did. And I said to him the truth. I said, well, Dr. Scarborough, I realize you're telling the truth, and I'm trying to correct myself of it, but I'm utterly unable to do it.

The way I know it. And when I got through with my apology, he said, thank God. And then he said something that may be in good theology, but it's pretty good theology.

You'll think it through. God bless you. He said, young man, I want you to learn.

Listen to me now. That it takes the blood of Jesus Christ and the blood of God's people to carry out the redemptive program of Almighty God. He knew what he was talking about.

Better stand. Without him singing tonight, if I may be permitted, I'm going to ask you to go home. Is that all right, brother pastor? God help us.

I preach to God's people. How can we do a better job than we've been doing? Facing men with what it actually means to savingly respond to the call of God. Our Father in bloodstained Jesus' name.

And we think if we know our hearts, we pray in for his glory. We think we do it these desperate hours when so little of spiritual power, so little of faith. Oh, God, come to the rescue of your people.

Anoint us. Garrison us. Equip us.

The spirit of the age is too much for us in our own strength. Oh, God. Helplessly but hopefully we see as little children we come.

And so, God, come to our rescue that we may come to the defense of the gospel in our day. We beg in Christ's name that you will speak as you see fit to people here tonight. Demand of them nothing short of total serenity.

In his name we pray.