Faith which receives Christ is as simple an act as when your child receives an apple from you, because you hold it out and promise to give him the apple if he comes for it. The belief and the receiving relate only to an apple; but they make up precisely the same act as the faith which deals with eternal salvation. What the child’s hand is to the apple, that your faith is to the perfect salvation of Christ. The child’s hand does not make the apple, nor improve the apple, nor deserve the apple; it only takes it; and faith is chosen by God to be the receiver of salvation, because it does not pretend to create salvation, nor to help in it, but it is content humbly to receive it. “Faith is the tongue that begs pardon, the hand which receives it, and the eye which sees it; but it is not the price which buys it.” Faith never makes herself her own plea, she rests all her argument upon the blood of Christ. She becomes a good servant to bring the riches of the Lord Jesus to the soul, because she acknowledges whence she drew them, and owns that grace alone entrusted her with them.

Faith, again, is doubtless selected because it gives all the glory to God. It is of faith that it might be by grace, and it is of grace that there might be no boasting; for God cannot endure pride. “The proud he knoweth afar off,” and He has no wish to come nearer to them. He will not give salvation in a way which will suggest or foster pride. Paul saith, “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Now, faith excludes all boasting. The hand which receives charity does not say, “I am to be thanked for accepting the gift”; that would be absurd. When the hand conveys bread to the mouth it does not say to the body, “Thank me; for I feed you.” It is a very simple thing that the hand does though a very necessary thing; and it never arrogates glory to itself for what it does. So God has selected faith to receive the unspeakable gift of His grace, because it cannot take to itself any credit, but must adore the gracious God who is the giver of all good. Faith sets the crown upon the right head, and therefore the Lord Jesus was wont to put the crown upon the head of faith, saying, “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

- C.H. Spurgeon, All of Grace

I find this timeless book a must read for every believer in Christ, may they be mature or a mere babe in the spirit. I would highly recommend it as well to those seeking Salvation by the Lord Christ Jesus. Get it here.

I honestly am at a wonder at how the majority of evangelical Christians perceive faith to be, as something we as unregenerate sinners have to perform ourselves in His drawing us or His “wooing” us to heed His call. I submit that this line of thinking is an effect of the Church’s neglect to define the terms she uses in her teaching of her people.ⁱ

The fundamental reality, dear friends, if considered honestly and consistently, we, in and of ourselves cannot produce faith, no matter how much a person is “wooed.” It certainly is a futile task.ⁱⁱ

Faith, as said and defined by Mr. Spurgeon from the words of Scripture, is nothing but a mere reception of God’s free and sovereign grace. Unless that is understood and accepted in the heart of a man, grace will never be the wonderful jewel that it is to that person. It will never be. For grace to be seen in it’s full luster we must place it before the blackness of our hearts and the inability of our faculties to ascent to anything holy and true. Only ’till then will grace be seen in all it’s beauty. The hand of faith, bringing nothing of himself before the throne of God, just as the leper came before Christ, cries out: “If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.”ⁱⁱⁱ

In the final analysis of things, Salvation is wholly of the Lord. Salvation is all of grace. Anything and everything involved in the saving of a man is of God’s free and sovereign grace. There’s is nothing we can add to it, for if there is such a thing then grace would no longer be grace. It is God who births us in the Spirit. It is God who regenerates our souls. It is God who gives us the ability to procure faith. It is God who gives us the ability to see and believe in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. In all helplessness and utter dependency to Christ, we cry with that dear desperate father: “I believe! Help my unbelief!”^iv

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)

Footnotes

1. On this context I would certainly like to ask these sort of people, theologically default Arminians, to point out to me in what point in time did Lazarus, in his tomb, exercise faith. [↩]
2. But then people would counter this argument by quoting passages like in Genesis 20, where Abimelech “obeyed God.” Are we then entitled to conclude that unregenerate men such as Abimelech do have the ability to generate faith? No, in the first place Abimelech did not exercise faith. Any sort of obedience exercised wasn’t of his own moral ability either, as was declared in the 6th verse: “Then God said to him in the dream, Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.” (Genesis 20:1-6)

   They may try to refute the Biblical teaching wherein faith itself is a gift of God with verses such as the one presented, but does it have anything to do with “saving faith?” In the matters of salvation, shouldn’t we use passages that do talk about salvation? [↩]

3. Mark 1:40 [↩]
4. Mark 9:24 [↩]