‘UPON THIS ROCK’
‘And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’
This verse has played, and still plays, no inconsiderable part in the controversy between our own Church and that which depends upon the See of Rome. But we think rather now of St. Peter’s Confession of Faith. The story of St. Peter’s confession is a story of the utmost significance in the Life of our Lord. This is the root faith of Christendom according to its Founder—the faith that He is Divine.
I. The value of a creed.—With us, as with St. Peter, this faith must express itself in a confession. People nowadays are a little shy of creeds. They have got a habit of calling their creeds ‘dogmas’ and ‘formularies,’ which they consider bad names. But this very modern and common dislike of formularies and dogmas ought not to be pressed so far as to exclude an answer to our Lord’s own question, ‘Whom say ye that I am?’ It is on this rock of confessed faith that the Church is built.
II. The nature of religious faith.—But I am concerned rather with the nature of religious faith than with a creed. I trust that we all have a strong, passionate conviction for its own part assured upon testimony which for itself is sufficient and unanswerable, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It is faith of that sort that saves a man from failure in life, in whatever degree he attains to; and for this reason—because faith of that sort strengthens and fortifies his character. We are all what we are, and we all achieve in life what we achieve, by virtue of the religious faith that is personally ours. It does matter what we believe, and it also matters how we believe—whether we believe with our heart and mind and soul and strength; because right belief is not, in itself, faith. And this is, perhaps, what people sometimes have in mind when they protest against dogmas or call themselves Christians without dogma, as though dogmas were antagonistic to faith. They cannot be antagonistic to faith, because the faith of a rational being must be capable of expression in rational speech, and that is dogma. But it is true that assent to a dogma about Christ is not necessarily unclouded faith in Him. Right opinions are most valuable, but we may hold right opinions without the personal relation of love and trust between the soul and God, which is faith and the essence of religion.
III. The faith which saves.—‘Lord, to Whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life,’ and we believe that ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ To be able to say that to Christ is to have faith in Him; and that is the faith that saves the soul.
—Canon Beeching.