ALL OF GRACE 7

7. By Grace Through Faith

 “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” --Ephesians 2:8

I think it well to turn a little to one side that I may ask my reader to observe adoringly the fountainhead of our salvation, which is the grace of God. “By grace you have been saved.” Because God is gracious, sinful men are therefore forgiven, converted, purified, and saved. It is not because of anything in them, or that ever can be in them, that they are saved; but because of the boundless love, goodness, pity, compassion, mercy, and grace of God. Wait for a moment, then, at the source of the well. Behold the pure river of water of life, as it proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb!

What a bottomless well the grace of God is! Who can measure its breadth? Who can fathom its depth? Like all the rest of the divine attributes, it is infinite. God is full of love, for “God is love.” God is full of goodness; the very name “God” is short for “good.” Unbounded goodness and love enter into the very essence of the Godhead. It is because “His mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136) that men are not destroyed; because “His compassions fail not” (Lamentations 3:22) that sinners are brought to Him and forgiven.

Remember this; or you may fall into error by fixing your minds so much upon the faith that is the channel of salvation as to forget the grace that is the fountain and source, even of faith itself. Faith is the work of God’s grace in us. No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Spirit. “No one can come to Me,” Jesus says, “unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). So that faith, which is coming to Christ, is the result of divine drawing. Grace is the first and last moving cause of salvation; and faith, essential as it is, is only an important part of the machinery that grace uses. We are saved “through faith,” but salvation is “by grace.” Sound forth those words as if it were the archangel’s trumpet: “By grace you have been saved.” What glad tidings for the undeserving!

Faith occupies the position of a channel or conduit pipe. Grace is the fountain and the stream; faith is the aqueduct through which the flood of mercy flows down to refresh the thirsty sons of men. It is a great pity when the aqueduct is broken. It is a sad sight to see around Rome the many noble aqueducts that no longer transport water into the city because the arches are broken and the marvelous structures are in ruins. The aqueduct must be kept intact to transport the current; and, even so, faith must be true and sound, leading right up to God and coming right down to ourselves, that it may become a serviceable channel of mercy to our souls.

Still, I remind you again that faith is only the channel or aqueduct, and not the fountainhead, and we must not look so much to it as to exalt it above the divine source of all blessing that lies in the grace of God. Never make a Christ out of your faith, nor think of as if it were the independent source of your salvation. Our life is found in “looking unto Jesus,” not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things become possible to us; yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God upon whom faith relies. Grace is the powerful engine, and faith is the chain by which the boxcar of the soul is attached to the great locomotive power. The righteousness of faith is not the moral excellence of faith, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ which faith grasps and makes its own. The peace within the soul does not come from the thoughtful meditation of our own faith; but it comes to us from Him who is our peace, the hem of whose garment faith touches, and virtue comes out of Him into the soul.

You see then, dear friend, that the weakness of your faith will not destroy you. A trembling hand may receive a golden gift. The Lord’s salvation can come to us though we have only faith as a grain of mustard seed. The power lies in the grace of God, and not in our faith. Great messages can be sent along slender wires, and the peace-giving witness of the Holy Spirit can reach the heart by means of a thread-like faith that seems almost unable to sustain its own weight. Think more of Him to whom you look than of the look itself. You must look away even from your own looking, and see nothing but Jesus, and the grace of God revealed in Him.

[Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s classic, All of Grace, has been edited in Modern English by Jon Cardwell. A chapter or two will be posted each Friday.]