It may seem patently self-evident that faith must be primary in knowing God. But nothing seems more frequently and easily missed, especially by those who profess the greatest loyalty to Christ theologically! Protestants will often argue about the nature of faith alone in order to keep out all human works, or merit, in salvation. This is generally done in fierce opposition to Rome's teaching, because of the long debates about justification. The phrase sola fide becomes a kind of rallying cry for the faithful as if saying the words makes you faithful to the gospel. This is an argument that I have great sympathy for since I am persuaded that nothing I bring to God contributes a meritorious thing to my salvation. Catholics have responded to this sola fide argument by saying that real faith is always active. Thus any notion of "faith alone" that separates faith from love and active Christian obedience is not real faith at all. For Catholics, sola fide sounds like bare faith with no love and no action. I can also find biblical support for this argument in places like Hebrews 11. The Scripture puts this very simply: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him" (Hebrews 11:6).

The Faith Chapter

The great faith chapter of Hebrews 11 makes it quite obvious that faith will always love. It will also be active in receiving God's promises, and it will faithfully obey God in the midst of real trials and challenges. Faith is never, not once, defined in passive terms in Scripture. In this sense we must never say that faith is alone. Hear the Word of the Lord:

By faith Abel brought God a better offering . . . by faith he was commended as righteous when God spoke well of his offerings (Hebrews 11:4).

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death (Hebrews 11:5).

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear, built an ark to save his family (Hebrews 11:7).

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country . . . For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:8-10).

Faith brings an offering; it builds an ark; it makes a home and it obeys God and follows him. And the writer goes on to say that these men and women of faith refused honors, hid their children, passed through the Red Sea, marched around walls waiting for them to fall down, hid spies, conquered kingdoms, administered justice, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of flames, escaped the edge of the sword and became powerfully energized in battle. But, and this is needed to balance this picture properly, people of faith were also "put to death, faced jeers, flogging, chains and imprisonment." Such people "wandered in deserts and mountains, and [lived] in caves and holes in the ground" (Hebrews 11:38).

This great chapter ends with these amazing words: "They were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:39-40, emphasis mine).

Without a break in the writer's thought here, a chapter division occurs at verse 40 of Hebrews 11. This is unfortunate because chapter 12 opens with these words: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles" (Hebrews 12:1). Now I have no doubt at all that the church triumphant faithfully cheers for us, engaging in humble intercession before the throne of Christ on our behalf. This should prompt us to "run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12:2), not to en endless and profitless debate about what we do not know about the afterlife.

True Faith?

Hebrews simply says, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (11:1).

Faith is trust. We trust on a daily basis. We trust other people, we trust the world around us, and we daily trust devices and designs without a moment's thought. Faith is essential to all human experience. Everyone believes and everyone trusts. Densil Morgan puts it this way:

We need a measure of confidence in our circumstances, a sense of the reliability of those things with which we must deal and of the people with whom we have to do. Trust, therefore, depends upon circumstances or things or people. This, according to Wolfhart Pannenberg, is ‘the basic condition of the formation of a healthy personality.' Such trust, usually, can be taken for granted. In normal circumstances we are quite unconscious of the basis for our trust. It is only when that basis is threatened or collapses that we can realize the nature of our trust and how dependent upon it we really are.

The Bible makes it consistently clear that the primary object of human faith should be God and God alone. When any other object is substituted for Yahweh, the result will be a form of idolatry. This is why John Calvin rightly stressed that idolatry is the great human sin, saying that the human heart is an "idol-making factory." For this reason the biblical polemic against idolatry abounds in the Old Testament.

Yahweh, the Creator-Redeemer, is revealed to humankind as a gracious God from the beginning of history. This revelation is recorded for us in the first chapter of Holy Scripture. The Old Testament provides the inspired record of the unfolding revelation of this God, this one who is true and faithful. The New Testament, in harmony with, and in fulfillment of, the Old Testament shadows and types, supremely reveals this same God to us in the incarnate Christ. (Marcion, a wealthy businessman from Pontus in the second century, saw the God of the Old Testament, the Creator, as significantly different from the revelation of God in Christ, and concluded that they were two different gods. His influence, at least in terms of the radical disjunctions people still make between the Old and New Testaments, is felt to this day. His errors prompted the church's first full-scale attack on heresy and led to the first major church split in the ancient world.) Thus, true faith should be focused upon God alone, as he is finally revealed in Christ alone. This is what all real Christians happily confess.

Human Response and Divine Gift

Faith is the proper human response to God's revelation. Faith is also a divine gift, but God doesn't believe for us. And those who believe are commended by God for their faith. But we do not believe unless we are granted this ability by the Holy Spirit. It is not natural to trust God, but truly supernatural. Sin has so influenced us that we are alienated from God. Our natural condition is never one of faith. This is precisely why faith is so often commended by God. And this why real faith always trusts and obeys.

If we are to truly know God, then it can only be through faith. Someday this faith will be turned to sight. Until that day comes, we can only relate to God and his revelation through faith. And this is why faith is the victory that overcomes the world and the reason Hebrews 11 speaks as it does of ancient heroes and martyrs. For "without faith it is impossible to believe God."