Faith Comes Naturally

Consider the importance of faith. Consider its place in human behavior. Is there one single act that one single man has ever taken, from the trivial to the sublime, which has not faith as its method of performance?

A man desires to eat. How then does he eat, and what? He sees some food which appears both pleasant and nutritious, he believes in its value. He takes, chews, swallows, digests, every action of which is pure faith and nothing but faith. At any moment in any of these actions, if his faith in the food is shaken, if he were caused to change his faith into its reverse – believing that it was bad for him – he would immediately and automatically cease to take, chew, swallow, or even digest (if he could!).

Faith IS human action. Faith is the God-implanted, natural and only way by which a man can go through all the processes of doing or obtaining the things he desires.

Sufficient, I hope, has now been said to bring home this first point of fundamental importance: THAT, NEXT TO THE CAPACITY TO RECEIVE GOD’S LOVE, FIATH IS THE MOST IIMPORTANT FACULTY THAT MAN POSSESSES.

Spiritual Faith

Faith may come naturally, but it proceeds on spiritually. What is the difference between natural and spiritual faith? There is really no difference. But you say, “What about Ephesians 2:8 – “by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God?” The answer is that all have the capacity to believe; but actual faith is that capacity stimulated to action by a faith-producing object. In this sense spiritual faith – the act of believing in Christ – is a gift on God. For it could not exist without Christ as its all-satisfying object. Bit it remains equally true that the capacity to believe is inherent in all, otherwise God could not command us to believe, as He does.

So the difference between natural and spiritual faith is merely in the object of faith. But this difference is so radical that it might appear as if there were two altogether different types of faith.

So in the normal acts of life the process of living faith is so natural, so unnoticed, so continual, that no one dreams of calling it faith – but it is.
Now, however, we have a gulf to cross, a chasm which man cannot bridge, from the natural to the spiritual. How can faith leap that gulf? And is the same quality of faith effectual on both sides?

God, not man, has bridged that gulf, and bridged it for the one purpose of reclaiming, redeeming to Himself, back from the devil, back from the flesh, back from the world, man with his two dynamic faculties, productive of so much sin or so much good, those faculties of love and faith.

And so God comes down to meet man’s naturally faith with His Son, His Word, His Spirit. The gulf is bridged. Natural faith can now operate in the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven as simply and naturally as in the things of earth. Faith now has a spiritual object.

Let’s not get things out of proportion – the relative importance of giver and recipient in this matter of faith. In one ceaseless river God pours His gifts upon us, all things natural and supernatural, whether it be sun and rain, food and the riches of the earth, or His grace in Jesus Christ. All things but one! He does not force acceptance on us. He presses all upon us, His earthly gifts, His Son, Himself. But we must take. 99% of life consists of God’s endless giving. 1% consists of taking. Both are essential, but in that proportion.

Faith supplies the 1%. That is all. God supplies the 99% (properly speaking, the 100% is His, for faith itself is a God-given natural faculty.) Our consideration is only centered around the 1%, yet experience shows that so many Christians are lukewarm and dull, not because they don’t know the grace of God revealed in Christ, but because they don’t know how, steadily, consistently, to appropriate, use, and apply what they are given, according to the set natural laws of appropriation – of faith.

Every man by nature has built around him some working philosophy of life. He is as good as other people, probably better than some. He doesn’t do his neighbor any harm. He believes in a Creator who has place him in a world that he, the man, must sustain. Or else he has a frankly materialistic and hedonistic, or agnostic, or even atheistic point of view. Anyway, he has some basis to life, however flimsy, however unsatisfactory, or however self-satisfying. AND TO THAT BASIS HIS FAITH IS ATTACHED. He is a believer all right – in his particular outlook: it may be a false faith, a perverted faith, but it is HIS faith.

Now conviction of his sin knocks that flimsy prop from under him. It no longer satisfies, it is no longer reliable. Now his faith is tossed here and there without an anchoring object.

The Spirit points him to Jesus. Here is faith’s sure resting place. The decision is made, Christ for me. Faith dares to take Him at His word: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Not a new faculty of faith, kind you, but a new content and object for faith. That’s all. The very same faith which was once centered in the man’s self-sufficiency in the world is now changed to rest in Christ – a natural faculty purified, redirected, possessed and controlled by the Spirit.

And note again that the 1% of human faith had to go out to meet the 99% of God’s grace. That is all God asks of our free will. He wants us to make the choice of faith in Christ. That 1% faith is important to Him so that all His human creatures are not automatons.

Human life in the world is a schoolhouse to bring our natural faculty of faith into the spiritual. Everything involves the powers of persuasion. We at first are persuaded by the world, the flesh and the devil. But as powerful as these may be at times, these are imperfect persuaders. The human race has an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Creator God who also is a persuader – a Perfect Persuader!

And each human creature, although the final choice is ultimately his, makes his choice by persuasion. And only the Creator God knows exactly what is necessary in the “schoolhouse”, what lessons of life, what deep and trying circumstances, how far the person must sink to be persuaded within his natural faculty of faith. God wants a deliberate choice by the person to accept His love and forgiveness, BUT ONLY THAT 1% “MEASURE OF FAITH” IS INVOLVED. God does the rest of the 99% which makes it, for all intents and purposes, THE UNMERITED GIFT OF THE GRACE OF GOD.

The faith could not save, only God’s abounding grace could do that. But the faith was the decisive action of a free person, seeing, believing, being freely persuaded, receiving and opening his being to the control of Jesus Christ.

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