Faith and Grace

Faith and Grace April 25, 2007

Faith is often characterized as a “receptive” and “responsive” disposition, or as “passive.” Even if we accept standard definitions of faith, that characterization seems to overlook the variety of ways in which grace and faith can be related. There appear to be at least three.

For clarity, in the following I am assuming that “grace” means God’s favor toward men (whether in the face of demerit or simply unmerited), a favor expressed in words and gifts. I am assuming that “faith” means assent and trust, which of course assumes knowledge of some kind and in some degree.


1. The notion that faith is purely receptive, that it is “instrument” of receiving God’s favor/grace is true. This is perhaps clearest if we examine what happens when the gospel is preached and believe. The fact that God arranges things so that a sinner hears the gospel is, by itself, a gracious act (by the definition offered above). God speaks kindly to the sinner, announces the good news of liberation from Sin and warns against the consequences of rejecting the gospel, promises forgiveness through the Crucified and Risen Christ. That act of grace toward the sinner is received by faith: For that grace to become the “possession” of the sinner at all, he needs to assent to its truth and trust both in the message and the Lord who speaks to him. Here, faith is rightly described as the instrument of reception.

Protestant theology has generally treated the grace-faith relation exclusively on this model.

2. But that word-faith model is not the only one we find in Scripture. At times, Jesus responds to the faith of people who seek His aid: “Your faith has made you whole.” Here faith takes the initiative, and the grace of healing is a gift that responds to pre-existing faith. The same might be said of the faith by which Abraham is justified: Abraham believes God, and God reckons him as righteous (Genesis 15:6). In this last case, the faith is also responsive, since Abraham believes a promise (15:4-5). But the specific grace of being reckoned as righteous is God’s response to the faith that Abraham placed in that promise.

Two additional qualifications here: First, the faith that leads sick people to find Jesus is of course a gift of God and is of course a response to some prior grace (grace of some sort is always prevenient to faith). But the specific gift of healing is not received by faith; the healing happens, and doesn’t need to be believed ; rather, the gift is given in response to faith. Second, it is correct to say the grace of justification is a gift received by faith: When the gospel is preached, God makes a promise to forgive sins and to count as righteous, and a sinner “receives” that promise by believing it and trusting the God who makes it. My point has to do with the exegesis of Genesis 15, where Abraham believes, and then God reckons him righteous.

3. Can grace be given and received without faith involved at all? Protestant theology has denied that it can. Grace might be offered in the absence of faith, but it is never received except by faith. This has created obvious difficulties for the practice of infant baptism. It is not surprising that many who take model #1 as normative are reluctant to baptize babies at all. The difficulties of infant baptism might be solved by saying that we can presume on infant faith. Or, they might be resolved by saying that faith and grace are differently related in this case than in model #1.

Let’s start, though, with creation. God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, and breathed into him the breath of life. For Adam, life itself is a gift of grace, of unmerited favor. And life is not just offered, promised, or held out to Adam. Adam receives life. Here faith is not a receptive instrument at all, because the grace of life is handed over to Adam and becomes his “possession” before he exists to have faith. The same, of course, is true of every birth: None of us deserves to live; and we have this gift from God wholly apart from any kind of response we might make.

If we consider the case of infant baptism, the grace of baptism falls into this category. When an infant is baptized, the baptism itself is a gift from God’s unmerited favor. Baptism itself gives the child membership in the church, an identity as a member of the people of God and as a Christian, a family of brothers and sisters whose Father is in heaven and whose Brother is on a heavenly throne, the gift of public identification with Christ, a place in the temple of the Holy Spirit, a commission to serve Christ, a deputation (to use Thomas’s language) to a place in the worship of God, and much more. These are not, I submit, merely offered or promised to the child, but actually delivered. And they are his, whether he believes and trusts or not.

Of course, if the baptized infant grows up and refuses to believe and trust, renounces his identity with Christ and His people, serves Mammon and worships Power, then his baptism is a witness against him, and sooner or later God will withdraw the gifts given. Here, though, faith is a condition of proper use of the grace given, not a condition of its reception.

One might, of course, say that the improper use of a gift is tantamount to a failure to receive it, but that seems to me inexact: Adam did receive life, though he abused it by his sin. Had he died in his sin, we would not have said that he never had life, never had fellowship with God.


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