GOD’S GIFTS AND MAN’S FAITH
‘The promise by faith of Jesus Christ … given to them that believe.’
It would be difficult to say what portion of Holy Scripture can be of more vital moment to us than this. It is important both as regards its main subject, namely, the promises of God to man in Jesus Christ, and also in reference to ourselves, in teaching us how and by what means we obtain the benefit of those promises.
I. All God’s blessings to us, through the Redemption of Christ, are a free gift.—This is the first and central idea of the whole. Man had done nothing to deserve them. How could he? It would be an absurdity to talk of man’s doing anything to deserve God’s gifts when you come to consider what the blessings of Christ’s Redemption really are. For the benefits of Christ’s Redemption consist in this—namely, redeeming us from the power of evil and of sin.
II. It is faith which is the means whereby we obtain the healing or salvation which God has wrought.—God heals us. God provides us the strength and power to become holy, just, and good, instead of sinful, corrupt, and wicked. But the reason that so few persons become what they should be—and what they might be—is, that in their common everyday life they forget God, that it is only by God’s constant help that they can remain good, and that the moment they go alone, as you may say, they are sure to go back. The fact is that they do not lead believing lives.
III. See how all this is practically set before us in those Sacraments of the Gospel which Christ has ordained for our soul’s life and health. To begin with, there is Baptism. Baptism teaches us that God has chosen to make us His children; and that what we have to do is—not to make ourselves His children, but—to live as His children. But how? How can we live as His children? Here again God’s mercy is with us—His free mercy, not of our deserving, but of His goodness. So long as we live in dependence upon His help, i.e. so long as we live by faith, so long He will find us the power to live as His children. The Holy Communion teaches us that God provides our souls with a food which shall keep up our spiritual life, i.e. that God feeds his children with a Divine food by which their relationship to their Divine Father is kept up and kept alive. We do not make the food which feeds our souls any more than we made ourselves God’s children. God makes it, and God gives it.