Watson’s Wonderful Savior

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Sometimes we misunderstand the shorthand formula of our salvation, namely that we are “saved by faith.” The truth is we are not saved “by faith.” Rather we are saved by grace…on account of Christ…through faith. Faith is but the instrument that God uses to attach us to Himself and all His riches for us in Christ Jesus.

Faith is what God uses to connect us to the thing that saves us. And so, it is not the strength of our faith that saves us but the strength of God’s grace in Christ. It is not the quantity of our faith that saves us but the fact of it.

The old Puritan pastor Thomas Watson put it this way:

“The promises are not made to strong faith, but to true. The promise does not say, he who has a giant faith, who can believe God’s love through a frown, who can rejoice in affliction, who can work wonders, remove mountains, stop the mouth of lions, shall be saved, but whosoever believes, be his faith never so small. A reed is but weak, especially when it is bruised; yet a promise is made to it. ‘A bruised reed shall he not break.’ Matt 12: 20.”
~Thomas Watson (1620-1686), Cambridge (Emmanuel College) graduate and Puritan pastor in his work The Ten Commandments

You may feel that your faith is weak. You may feel that your faith is not strong enough to save you. Nonsense! Look, my friend, not to your faith but to your faithful Savior. He is not weak. He is strong.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

~ Ephesians 2:4-10 (ESV)