NO one unless he have faith can please God, for no moral association exists between man and God where man lives in independence of God. A heathen does not believe that God is; he is, therefore, without compass or guiding star upon the waters of life; whence he came or whither he is bound, he knows not. The mere professing Christian believes as an article of his creed, the fact that God is, but does not believe God Himself; he is like a mariner accepting the theory of the compass yet setting sail without it, and knowing that the pole star is overhead yet refusing to cast his eye up to it. Better not to have knowledge of compass, or of pole star, than to have it and drift to shipwreck rejecting their guidance. The genuine believer takes God at His word, and shapes his course by its directions. Faith is the great principle upon which the people of God go holily through this world to heaven.
The believer needs faith for his daily life. We must not suppose because we have faith in Christ for our soul's salvation that we have reached the end of the voyage. Quite otherwise, for while there cannot be any pleasure given to God by us before we believe on Him, our daily progress in the life of faith only commences after our hearts have truly taken in the tidings of His love to us in His Son.
This paper is addressed to such as "believe to the saving of the soul," and who being saved, "live by faith," that is, live in a practical way by faith. (Heb. 10:36-3936For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. 37For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. 38Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. 39But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. (Hebrews 10:36‑39).) It is necessary not only to plead with the unsaved to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," that they may be saved; it is also necessary to exhort the saved soul to remember that faith is the only principle on which he can please God.
In the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we have the activities of faith presented to us in a series of groupings, which, like a picture in partitions, unfolds the life of faith from the moment God is believed by the sinner, till the time when life's pilgrimage being over the saints shall be perfect in resurrection bodies.
The first three verses of the chapter are preliminary to these groupings. These words, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," none but a true believer can really understand in his heart. We do not deny that any man may comprehend the idea, that he who has faith has in him the assurance, the giving substance to, of things hoped for; but no man, save a true believer, can know in himself what this assurance, this substance is! Knowing about a truth, and having the truth in the heart, are vastly different things. No amount of infidel argument can thrust out of the soul of the dependent child of God this substance, or drive from him this divinely-given conviction of what he sees not.
The believer dependent on God has in him the God-given assurance and conviction of the truth of what God says to him. Because he has set to his seal that God is true there is in him a rock-like basis. His soul is firm, unlike those whose hearts are movable as water, or variable as the wind. Melted hearts and shifting souls are no testimony for God.
Holy men of old obtained a good report through faith: they believed God, and so lived for God. Faith in God was the cause which produced in them the effect of godly living.
It is remarkable that before faith in God for salvation is spoken of, faith in Him as Creator is set forth. What these eyes behold, what these feet tread upon, of this material world, was not made from what appears. The believer has faith to know God as the Creator, as well as his Saviour.
In Abel, Enoch, and Noah, we have the first of the series of pictures of faith, which this portion of the Scriptures presents to us. Three great traits of faith are here grouped together, by means of the record of incidents in the lives of these three men. First, faith which is wise as to the sacrifice; second, faith which waits for translation to heaven; third, faith which saves others, and condemns the world hastening on its judgment.
Both Cain and Abel were religious, but Cain's religion was the presumptuous bringing to God of the fruits of the earth He had cursed, while Abel's was the witness of death being the sinner's only desert, and of the excellency of the victim slain in his stead. Here are the two great divisions of all religious zeal— the cultivation and improvement of that which by nature is prolific in thorns and thistles brought to God; the acknowledgment that for the sinner's approach to God the sacrifice of the life of another is necessary.
Let no one think that mere religion will save his soul. There is no little of the pleasure of self-complacency in bringing to God the toil of the hand and the sweat of the brow—no little self-satisfaction in doing our best, and working, as we think, well to gain God's favor; but the religion of Cain, ancient as it is, only shuts out the sinner from God's presence: "Unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect." (Gen. 4:55But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. (Genesis 4:5).) The round of religious duties, the whole array of prayers, works, tears, penances, labors; the outcome of the sentiment, that provided a man does his best according to the thoughts of his heart—which sentiment is at the bottom of the popular religiousness of our times—are all merely natural religion. They are merely "an offering of the fruit of the ground," the energy of the fallen nature of man. And those who are thus active go "in the way of Cain." (Jude 11Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: (Jude 1))
Cain was offended because God accepted not his offering. And the question which Jehovah put to him may be put to-day to the religious man who has not found peace through the blood of Jesus, and who rebels against the declaration that his works are worthless. "Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?" Angry and disappointed, Cain would not heed the word of God.
Cain did not well—he sinned—but the word of mercy for him was, "If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door"—sin, or a sin-offering, croucheth at the door. As if the Lord had said, "The victim lies at the very door of your house!" Why, then, did not he avail himself of the provision for his sin? Why did he not go and take a lamb, and bring it as an offering to the Lord? His religiousness, his pride refused that sacrifice. He would not heed or have it, even as men will not have Jesus now—even as men deliberately and willfully reject the one offering of Christ. Cain was angry because God received not his self-elected offering; he was disappointed because God would not have his religion, and he sank deeper into the mire he became guilty of his brother's blood, and at length became a vagabond, a wanderer from the presence of Jehovah.
Oh! poor travelers to eternity on the way of. Cain, the value of the Sacrifice slain for sinners, the Lamb of God is nigh you. Will you still refuse the Lamb of God? "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Oh! be not ignorant of God's righteousness, and still go about to establish your own righteousness, submitting not to the righteousness of God.
Abel's faith recognized his own sinful state, and trusted in God for the remedy for man's ruin. God testified of Abel's gifts—"the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof" —the sacrifice, and its excellency. Abel's gifts told of the worthlessness of self and the worthiness of the Lamb, and these, his gifts, speak to us of Jesus, the Lamb of God. Thereby he obtained witness that he was righteous, even as in this day do all who believe God and rest in the finished work of His Son.
Here are the two great religions of men— the religion of self-effort, the religion of faith in the sacrifice of Jesus. Which is yours, dear reader? We are received by God in the value of Christ's work, or rejected in the worthlessness of our own. This way of Cain is an awful road upon which to travel to eternity.
To reject God's sacrifice for sinners is to do in the end as Cain did; he "went out from the presence of the Lord" and "dwelt in the land of (the vagabond) Nod." This is the course the world has taken; on this fatal roadway the popular religiousness of our times is hastening. Away from the presence of the Lord, Cain built a city, and filled it with inventions and with arts, and made there his home, of a world without God. How familiar to this nineteenth century, with its inventions and its arts, is the way of Cain!