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The Two Parts of Faith
" We should realize that saving faith has
two parts. First, faith is a spiritual sight of glory (or beauty) in the Christ
of the gospel. In other words, when you hear or read what God has done for
sinners in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, this appears to your heart
as a great and glorious thing in and of itself, even before you are sure you are
saved by it. I get this from 2 Corinthians 4:4 where Paul says that what Satan
hinders in the minds of unbelievers is seeing ‘the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the image of God.’ For faith to be real there must be a
supernatural ‘light’ that God shines into the heart to show us Christ is
glorious and wonderful (2 Corinthians 4:6). This happens as a work of the Spirit
of God through the preaching of the gospel.
"Second, faith is a warranted resting in this glorious gospel for our own
salvation. I say ‘warranted resting’ because there is an ‘unwarranted
resting’ – people who think they are saved who are not, because they have never
come to see the glory of Christ as compellingly glorious. These people believe
only on the basis of wanting rescue from harm, not because they see Christ as
more beautiful and desirable than all else. But for those who ‘see the light of
the gospel of the glory of Christ,’ their resting is warranted."
–John Piper, Taste and See, p.
194f.
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