Jesus said, "I am the way to heaven." I'm betting that he's not a liar. I'm betting that he told the truth.
Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace.
Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism. It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.
We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.
One chief cause of the amount of unbelief in the world is tha tthose who have seen something of the glory of Christ set themselves to theorize concerning him rather than to obey him.
You don't have to believe that there was a King Arthur to get the significance of those stories, but Christians say we have to believe there was a Christ, or the miracles don't make sense.
I will do as much as I can, says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he cannot do, attempts the impossible, and performs it.
Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel.
Ruthless trust ultimately comes down to this: faith in the person of Jesus and hope in his promise.
We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him.
Child of God, if you would have your thought of God something beyond a cold feeling of His presence, let faith appropriate Christ.
A man who knows that he is saved by believing in Christ does not, when he is baptized, lift his baptism into a saving ordinance. In fact, he is the very best protester against that mistake, because he holds that he has no right to be baptized until he is saved.
We trust as we love, and where we love. If we love Christ much, surely we shall trust him much.
