Monday, May 21, 2012

D.A. Carson on The Problem of Weak Faith


I've been listening to D.A. Carson these past few months and on a certain Q&A portion on the book of Hebrews, I find this theological (and spiritual) nugget quite helpful.

Question (from one of the audience):
"Sometimes I feel my faith is very weak. Does that mean that it is not God-given and that it's just me trying to believe?"

Here's Carson's reply:
"Probably not. The important thing to remember is that faith's ultimate strength does not depend on the faith but on faith's Object. You're saved not on the basis of how strong your faith is but on the reliability of faith's Object, which in fact you may cling to still pretty weakly. And ultimately, the stronger you see, the more clearly you see that at the end of the day it's not the strength of your faith that is the crucial thing but the reliability and truth that's in the faith's Object that is the crucial thing, the more you'll be driven to having stronger faith. Because if you're trying to strengthen your faith by simply turning up your stomach muscles to believe more strongly then you're wanting the faith to be the thing that is the crucial ingredient rather than faith's Object. At the end of the day, you're saved by faith in the sense that faith is the means of salvation. But you're not saved by faith in the abstract, you're saved by Christ. You're saved by the correct Object of faith, namely, Christ and Christ crucified, and so on. So the way you will strengthen your faith is not by simply turning up your stomach muscles to try harder to believe. The way you'll strengthen your faith is by studying Christ. And the more you understand him and his cross' worth in the scriptures... the more you'll strengthen your faith."

Without the elaborate relationship of faith, Christ and salvation, I think another theologian sufficiently answered with these words:
"...the weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith." ~ Sinclair Ferguson

2 comments:

Hello Bro. Donnie!

Great post here!

It reminds me of what Paul E. Little has written in his book "Know WHY You Believe." In page 8 of the book, he wrote:

"Meager faith placed in a reliable object, however, will bring results. For instance, if you have a weak faith in thick ice, the result is nonetheless positive: the ice holds your weight regardless of the strength of faith."

He also wrote, "Faith is only as valid as the object in which it is placed."

Soli Deo Gloria!

I think I heard that quote or something similar before by D A Carson. Thanks for posting because I have been struggling with my "weak" faith lately and praying to get through this uncertain time with stronger faith in the end.

Post a Comment