Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2898
“But there are some of you that believe not.” John 6:64.
ARE there really? Yes. He that searches the hearts says so. Then it is high time for us to enquire, “What is it to believe in Christ? What is it to believe to the saving of the soul?” It is not merely to consider the Gospel to be true. It is not simply to endorse the Doctrine that Christ is God. Those who hold a sound creed may be destitute of precious faith and those who are able to defend the Divinity of Christ with admirable scholarship may, nevertheless, be without God in the world. To believe in Christ includes much more than a religious profession. It is so to believe the Gospel as to forsake all other beliefs for the possession of its blessed hope! It is to imbibe the spirit of the Word of God while you accept the letter of its pure teaching! Or, in other words, it is to come to Jesus and to prove, in your own souls, His power to save.
Just as the faith of Abraham led him to leave his kindred and his father’s house under the guardian care of Jehovah, so saving faith leads a man to leave his self-sufficiency with all the carnal pursuits and ambitions that encircled, like a farmstead, his natural and primitive home and to go forth, led by Jesus Christ, not knowing where he goes. Just as faith led the harlot Rahab to anticipate the doom of Jericho—to hang the scarlet line in her window and then to rest securely in her house though the town walls upon which it was built, were shaking—so, by faith, the sinner comes to the blood of sprinkling, hangs the promise of Redemption in the window of his soul and though he feels himself to be, naturally, no better than others, yet he rests secure because that scarlet line is there and he is safe! Or, to use another figure, just as the Hebrew householder slew the lamb, dipped the bunch of hyssop in its blood, sprinkled it upon the lintel and the two side posts of his house and then calmly ate the Passover supper, though he knew that the destroying angel was flying through the land of Egypt and though, perhaps, he could even hear the shrieks of the dying and the wailing of the bereaved—yet he remained quietly in his house knowing that though he might be the guiltiest of men, the blood secured his safety according to the promise of God!
To believe in Jesus, then, is to trust our soul’s salvation to what Jesus has done for us, to prove what He is doing in us and to rely entirely upon His promise to save us even to the end. It is to drop from the giddy elevation where we stand on the rotten timbers of self-righteousness and to fall into the Omnipotent arms of Him who stands ready to receive us. It is to tear off the rags of our own spinning that we may be clothed with the righteousness which is from Heaven. Faith is the reverse of sight! It is to believe that we are saved when sin tells us that we are lost. It is to believe that Christ has cleansed us when we still feel defilement within. It is to believe that we shall see His face in Glory when clouds and darkness enshroud our path and doubts and fears distress our heart. This is the faith which saves the soul!
We are not saved by faith, itself, as a meritorious work. There is no merit in believing in God and even if there were, it could not save us, since salvation by merit has been once and for all solemnly excluded. Nor does faith save us as an efficient cause. Faith is the channel of salvation, not the fountain and source of it. Hence faith, though it saves, never boasts. He that boasts has not faith and he that has faith can say, “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When the poor man who was bitten by the fiery serpent looked to the bronze serpent upon the pole, it was his eyes that saved him—yet it was not the merit of looking, nor was it his eyes that were the efficient cause of his cure— all the glory of it was to be given to God who had ordained that the bronze serpent would be the means of healing to all
who looked to it. So, faith is the eye with which we look to Christ, yet it has neither merit nor efficacy in itself—all the merit and efficacy lie in the precious blood of Him to whom we look.
Again, faith is an empty hand. Yes, it is the filthy hand of the leprous sinner and Christ puts His mercy into that black hand. Is there any merit in the hand? God forbid! Is there any efficiency to save in the hand? Oh, no, my Brothers and Sisters—the hand which givesmust have the glory, not the hand which takes! He who bestows the blessing must have the honor of it, not the faith by which we receive the blessing from Him. Now, having thus spoken upon what faith is, and having tried to show you its peculiar position in the work of salvation, I am solemnly reminded, by our text, that “there are some of you that believe not.” The context shows that these words were spoken by Christ to His disciples. They were gathered around Him and He was addressing them. Some of them had murmured because what He said to them was too “hard” for them to receive and the Lord Jesus, being able to read their hearts, could say to them, “There are some of you that believe not.” And the Inspired Evangelist adds, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who would not believe, and who would betray Him.”