f) Faith
and feelings. Faith in God involves all
of me: my mind, my will and my feelings.
For example, my mind may come to know that I am a sinful person and that
Christ has provided forgiveness for me on the cross. But I have not trusted or believed until I
have made a choice, a choice to accept this free gift from Christ. When one chooses to trust Christ for
forgiveness of sin that person will often be overjoyed at the thought of being free
from his sin. In one sense it seems it
would be hard not to be joyful at the thought, or to have a sense of
relief. However, if a person has been
driven to Christ out of a sense of guilt, the feeling of release might not come
immediately, even though the release has been applied immediately. By the wisdom of our Creator people are “wired”
differently. I always appreciated the
Campus Crusade illustration of the old-fashioned train that speaks to this issue. In the days of the “coal powered locomotives”
you had an engine followed immediately by a car loaded with coal. At the end of the train was the caboose
where, among other things, the train personnel could rest. In the illustration, the engine was the mind
where the “facts” of the gospel were considered. The coal car was the “faith” in the gospel,
that which brought life to the facts.
The caboose was the “feelings” that result from the gospel. The train could run without the feelings, but
not without the truth and faith. Today’s
passage on the Ethiopian eunuch shows all three: the facts of Isaiah 53, his
faith expressed in baptism, and the rejoicing as he went on his way.
g) Faith
vs. presumption. This has been the “title”
of this section on faith, but we have not mentioned “presumption.” For me, you can see this all over Scripture. The Israelites “presumed” that if they took
the ark into battle that God would give them victory (1 Sam. 4). They were wrong. Israel “presumed” that God would not destroy
the temple that was built to worship Him and where He had put His name. But after continued disobedience He did it
not once (Shiloh) or twice (by Babylon) but thrice (by the Romans). All the murmuring and complaining of the
Israelites in the wilderness had an element of “presumption.” The clearest illustration I think is in Matt.
4:5-7. Satan tempted Jesus with the word
of God, quoting Ps. 91:11-12, that God would protect Jesus. He has a verse to back up his temptation,
that Jesus could be famous if He were to jump off the pinnacle of the
temple. But the promise was never
tested. Jesus did not put His Father to
the test as Israel did so often. You
shall not tempt the LORD your God (Deut. 6:16 quoted in Mt. 4:7). He, not Satan, trusted in God’s word.
We need one more post on this topic which we
will do, Lord willing!
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