Isn’t Faith Just Invisible Fantasy?

For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about an alternative Gospel: the Gospel of transformation.

The idea that you can become someone good enough, and then see that you’re acceptable.

It’s attractive — because it’s visible.

And it feels instinctively true to sinners like us, because it feels obvious that my assurance should rest in something I can see, feel or work out.

My atheist friends say: The only things I can trust are what I can see and reason.

But even religious people feel this way. Standing on University Green, with our flyer—”You have nothing to prove.”—Some young people walk past and say: “Oh, I’m ok—I’m born again.”

They point to something inside themselves, as the reason they think they are ok with God.

The heart of the issue is this:

Am I righteous because God declares me righteous?
Or am I righteous because God has turned me righteous?

Is the Good News that we’re forgiven?
Or is the Good News that God makes us forgivable?

The Book of Hebrews tells us that the reason we want assurance in things that we can see, is because: We want assurance from ourselves by doing something.

Verses 9 and 10 just before our reading say this:

According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

The Old Covenant was visible, external, religion. It had sacrifices, rituals, repeated actions.

But Hebrews says none of these external things can give a clean conscience.

They don’t give forgiveness—and so you don’t receive assurance.

That’s why external religion has to be repeated again and again and again—because it never actually works.

The tragedy with ancient Israel was, many of them missed the point. This external covenant was given to drive us all to the promise of the Messiah, to Christ. But instead, they trusted in the visible things themselves.

We do exactly the same: and we need to be careful, because Christians have repeated this mistake over and over again in history.

The Medieval Catholic church taught that I can only be sure God is positive toward me, when I see the love that he’s infused into me.

If I sin too much, I fall from his grace, so need to restore myself by confession and repentance.

So people looked at something visible, inside themselves, and kept repeatedly doing things to try and be good enough.

After the Reformation, the Westminster Confession of Faith said your assurance partly depends on: “the inward evidence of” God’s “graces” inside you.

And if you sin too much you may “fall under God’s fatherly displeasure,”

He won’t think about you positively again until you humble yourself, confess sin, beg pardon, and renew your faith and repentance.

Before and after the Reformation, the Catholics and the Reformed, point you for assurance, at least partly, at things you can see about yourself (even if they’re invisible to others).

So you have to keep going through this visible cycle of being in God’s favour, then out, then in, then out.

People say these things, because we naturally want to hear them: We want assurance from ourselves by doing something.

God is in a good mood with you. God is pleased with you: But why? How would you answer that if asked in the street? How do you answer that when your conscience challenges you in your heart?

Because all of us are tempted, all the time, to answer that question with something we can see about ourselves.

God is pleased with me because I go to church.
God is pleased with me because I pray.
God is pleased with me because I’m a good family person.
God is pleased with me because I have faith.
God is pleased with me because I’m born again.

No he isn’t.

If God’s attitude to you depended on you: then why did Jesus have to die, enter the heavenly places, and bring an invisible sacrifice?

Our passage addresses this temptation by saying three things:

1) Christ has already redeemed everyone
2) Only this can give us assurance, because it’s already true
3) So assurance only comes through hearing this Word

First, Christ has already redeemed everyone, look at vv. 11-12:

¹¹ But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) ¹² he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Jesus’ work is not visible, because it is eternal and complete. He doesn’t pop back into the heaven every time you make a mistake. God doesn’t wait until you meet a certain standard before redeeming you, forgiving you, declaring you just.

This redemption doesn’t depend on the blood of physical things you can see: on the blood of bulls or goats, or on your blood, or even on your own sweat and tears. It depends on Jesus’ blood: the blood of God himself.

And that’s why this redemption doesn’t depend on anything in time. It is eternal. Jesus used his divine nature through his human nature to offer a sacrifice that is eternally effective from the beginning of time to the end of time.

Justification doesn’t depend on your obedience, response or faith. It only depends on Jesus. It is objective and complete.

Every time you look at Jesus on the cross—did he forgive you? The answer is “Yes! Because he forgave everyone… …and I’m part of that everyone.”Christ has already redeemed everyone.

and second: 2) Only this can give us assurance, because it’s already true

Please look at vv. 13-14:

¹³ For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, ¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

The Old Covenant was external religion that purified the flesh.

That is—the priest offered a sacrifice, and the worshippers looked at the sacrifice and because of it were assured that within that external religious, purely earthly, system they were now clean, included and right.

The sacrifice had to be made and take effect first before it can give that assurance.

The system was a brilliant picture of Jesus on the cross.

The only problem with it was it was just that—a picture— so it didn’t really forgive real sins. And because it didn’t really forgive sins, it couldn’t give real assurance.

And so because of these verses, we simply cannot agree with the Westminster Confession of Faith (7.5) when it says:

[the] promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances… were for that time sufficient and efficacious… to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah

The Confession has confused and conflated two things: God’s promises, which do give faith; and God’s pictures, which in themselves do not give faith.

It falsely calls things like circumcision and sacrifices “sacraments of the Old Testament” (27.5).

But these things weren’t sacraments, because they did not have the promise of forgiveness attached to them.

Today we have two Sacraments: Baptism in water, and the Lord’s Supper by eating bread and wine. These actually give you forgiveness of sins.

Not because of the water, or the bread and wine, but because of God’s Word—his promises—attached to them.

Peter says (Acts 2:38) that with God’s Word Baptism is “for the forgiveness of sins”

Jesus says (Matthew 26:26-28) that the bread and wine are “my body” and “my blood… poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins”

This promise did exist in the Old Testament—and people were given faith through it: the promise to crush the serpent; the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the promise to David and Isaiah and Jeremiah.

But outward things like circumcision, sacrifices and ceremonies did not have this promise attached—so they themselves did not give assurance.

But the reason why God’s promises really do give faith, is because they really do give forgiveness, because on the cross Christ made an eternal redemption:

Only Christ’s work on the cross can give us assurance, because it’s already true

So don’t look at things you can see in or about yourself in any way for assurance—because if you do you only get false assurance; false faith.

Am I forgiven?

Don’t look at a past decision you made for Christ, or how ordered you think your life is,—just look up at Jesus: “Did he die for me? Yes, because he died for everyone—ok then, he died for me.”

Am I elect? Chosen by God?

Don’t look at your own faith, or your self-perception that you are supposedly “born again”,—just look up at Jesus: “Did he redeem me eternally? Yes, because he redeemed everyone eternally—ok then, I’m redeemed eternally.”

That is what faith is. Faith is this assurance.

And to have your conscience purified, means to look at what Christ did for everyone, and receive assurance that therefore he did it for you.

It means looking up at Jesus, and being assured that his work is true for you precisely because his work is already true for all.

So, finally, 3) Assurance only comes through hearing this Word

Please look at v. 15:

¹⁵ Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

In this one verse is the whole Bible, all of Law and Gospel.

The Old Covenant is not the same as the New, it highlights our sins and points us to the New. That’s why I use the Law every day: to show myself I need Jesus.

A death has occurred that objectively redeems everyone from these sins that the Law tells us about.

I am called through the external Word—the message telling me that my sins have already been forgiven eternally.

And so, as I see that objective work of Jesus, done for everyone, I am therefore assured that because it was done for everyone it must have been done for me. And that assurance is me receiving the start of God’s promised eternal inheritance.

This is Hebrews showing us that faith comes through hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.

So, Isn’t Faith Just Invisible Fantasy?

There is no cycle of being in God’s favour and out God’s favour, in God’s favour and out God’s favour.

Both the Catholics and the Presbyterians are wrong about that. And all they’ve done is recreate the external, earthly, visible cycle of the Old Covenant.

It’s understandable why they’ve done that, because: We want assurance from ourselves by doing something.

But Christ has already redeemed everyone.
Only this can give us assurance, because it’s already true.
So, assurance only comes through hearing this Word.

So, today, put down your visible reasons for why God loves you; don’t look at anything visible, in you, to give you assurance: neither “faith”, “being born again”, or “being a good person.”

Just come to the Sacrament with nothing but need, and receive assurance because forgiveness is already yours in Christ.