October 18

Jesus replied, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.” — John 6:29 BSB

Oh! how many living saints long to believe in Jesus, to place their trust fully in His holy name, and yet they struggle, plagued and pestered by the constant rise of unbelief within them. They know that they do not yet believe in Him in a way that brings true deliverance, for their conscience testifies that if they believed in the Lord Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, it would bring the love of God into their hearts, take away the sting of death, and fill them with joy and peace. But as long as they feel condemned by the law and their own guilty conscience, they know within themselves that they have not yet experienced that living faith in Christ, which they are convinced would save and free them from their guilty fears and dismal apprehensions. So they labor to attain this special, peculiar faith in the Lord Jesus, hoping that God, in His infinite mercy, will bestow it upon them.

Here, then, is the core struggle of faith: to believe in Jesus Christ in a way that brings pardon, peace, and deliverance. Many a poor soul is laboring hard in this pursuit, but with a deep and growing realization that it is a work they cannot accomplish by their own strength, except by the direct power of God. Unbelief is such a powerful foe that, despite all their efforts, they find themselves unable to conquer it or produce even a grain of the true faith that would bring Christ into their hearts in an experiential way. Yet, this very struggle reveals that there is life within—a work of God in their soul—because all this conflict comes from the movements of His grace and the opposition of their carnal mind to it.

Then, when the blessed Spirit, in due time, brings Christ near to their eyes and heart, reveals Him within, takes His atoning blood and sprinkles it on their conscience, clothes them with His righteousness, and pours out the love of God into their heart, He creates that special faith in the Lord Jesus. This is the faith by which the soul clings to Christ and, if I may say so, hooks itself upon Him—upon His person as God-man, upon His blood as cleansing from all sin, upon His righteousness as perfectly justifying, upon His grace as overwhelming all evil, and upon His dying love as a healing balm for all the sorrows that weigh it down. This is what it means to believe in the Son of God, to believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the soul.