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Last night two men from one of our local Baptist churches came by to invite me to "come
to church." We had a cordial visit at my door and, before parting, they asked me one
question: "If you were to die tonight, are you sure that you would be eternally saved?"
After giving my answer, one fellow asked, "Are you one-hundred percent certain?" I assured him that I was. "Upon what do you base that?" he asked. What a question! After I gave him a 45 second sermon on God's plan of salvation, he said, "So you have accepted the Lord into your heart as your personal Saviour?" "Well," I said, "as you folks mean that, I haven't. I have never been able to find in the Bible where that is taught. No one in the Bible did such a thing." "What I have done," I explained, "is received Christ by following in the steps of faith (Rom. 4:12), and now I continue to walk with Him (Col. 2:16)." Now, if you are familiar with the false doctrine of "salvation by faith only," you can well imagine the looks on their faces when I pointed out that their "method of being saved" is not in the Bible. They tried to explain to me that one must understand that he is a sinner — I agreed — and that Christ paid for our sins with His blood — so true — and that there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves — to which I replied, "The apostle Peter thought there was!" (Acts 2:40). Having ignored my statement, he went on to his final point — We must "pray to Jesus and ask Him into our hearts." No matter how I tried or how many questions I asked him, he would not commit himself to discuss what the Bible says about his doctrine. What has happened to the Baptists?! They used to be so willing to accept most any challenge to their teaching. "Steps of Faith' is not a pleasing phrase for those of "faith only" persuasions. Yet, when pinned down they will admit that one is not saved before faith — that he must believe, which involves something on their part. They will also admit that one must repent and confess, but they hurriedly explain that there is not "work" that can be done. When they are shown that all of the above are works — that even their starting place (faith) is a work (Jn. 6:28-29) — they will say, "Well, that is the only one." How convenient! Who said it is the only one? The bottom line is that they want convenience, not commitment — salvation on their terms, not God's. Let us not stop with Romans 4 when we study the faith of Abraham. Let us investigate what God means by these "steps of faith." Let us also look into Hebrews 11 and James 2. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed...and he went; By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac" (Heb. 11:8-9, 11). "Was not Abraham our father justified by works?" (We ask "how"?) "in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?" (Jas. 2:21). Abraham's action fulfilled Scripture that had been spoken 20 years earlier! We learn that faith causes us to "walk" in a certain way. As it caused Abraham to walk in certain steps, so it will cause us to walk in certain steps today. Simply put, faith ought to cause us to obey or else, as James put it, that faith is dead! May we always, as our father Abraham (Gal 3:7) follow in the steps of faith that we may be justified. |