Faith Connects One With The Mediator
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
9/22/2013 PM
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Text:
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John 15;
Lord's Day 7
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Psalters: |
45, 392, 99, 355 |
- Faith’s power.
- The Catechism takes Jesus’ idea (John 15) of believers being grafted into Him.
- The figure of grafting.
- Applied: God takes the elect branches from the dead tree of Adam and grafts them into the vine of Christ.
- This work of uniting us with Christ is accomplished before we are conscious of it.
- Faith is given when God implants Christ = s life in the elect at regeneration.
- The activity of believing is possible because the power (ability) to believe was given first (Acts 5:31; Phil. 1:29).
- The figure implies:
- One, salvation is of God alone (not man), for He does the grafting, binding the elect to Christ.
- Two, only the grafted ones are saved, not all who fell in Adam!
- Three, the faith which connects Jesus to each believer becomes an activity.
- The power (ability) to believe is a living thing, and therefore it is active - faith without works is dead (James 2:17,20,26).
- Faith is not sight (II Cor. 5:7; Romans 8:24,25; Heb. 11:1).
- The essential activity of faith is that of knowing Jesus to be God’s begotten Son (John 3:16-18,36).
- Faith is knowing Whom we have believed (II Tim. 1:12), so we abide in Christ and cleave to Him (Acts 11:23); it is to draw from Him, to turn to Him, and to embrace Him.
- All in Him will produce the fruit of good works.
- Living branches (on this side of the grave) need pruning and purging, so we produce more and better fruit.
- The activity of faith is like anything living, namely, it should be developing, but sometimes is wanes.
- The activity of faith is also a work of the Holy Spirit, Who constantly breathes life into us.
- The Spirit works the activity of faith through the means of the Word, the means of grace.
- Bound together with Christ, Christians are assured of their salvation.
- The nature of our faith is that we have a certain intellectual knowledge of all that God has revealed in His Word.
- What believers know makes them confident and sure.
- Confidence is a part of friendship and is rooted in the knowledge that we are unchangeably loved.
- Our assurance usually corresponds to the activity of faith.