Have you ever felt dissatisfied with your faith? Have you ever thought that if only you had a better quality of faith then you could be sure of your salvation? This is dangerous thinking for we are never called to have faith in faith. Since when does the Bible say, "Being satisfied with our faith, we have peace with God”? (See Romans 5:1).
Satisfaction with Jesus, His person and work, not satisfaction with our faith, is what the Father is looking for. We are never called to be satisfied or even occupied with our faith. We are, however, called to be occupied with Christ and His objective, outside of us, finished work! As believers we should be careful to avoid backsliding into subjectivism but backslide we will if we continually focus on our experiences and level of faith.
Gospel faith takes a hold of Christ and His accomplishments on our behalf and causes us to set our affection on things above where Christ is (Col 3:2). Gospel faith takes us out of ourselves and away from dwelling on our experiences. The very essence of faith is to be satisfied with Christ and His substitutionary work done on our behalf. Christ is all (Colossians 3:11); faith sees and rests on this!
If your desire, however, is to be satisfied with your faith, you are evidently dissatisfied with Christ. You are not thinking like a gospel driven believer. Your thinking has somehow been re-arranged. The gospel driven believer, on the other hand, is learning to be dissatisfied with self, and to be satisfied with Christ. Remember, John the Baptist's words, "He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30)? For the gospel driven believer, growth can be explained with these three little words, “He must increase.” He, the Christ who has conquered, death, sin and the grave must increase in our understanding, appreciation and love. For Him to increase does not mean an increased inward self- occupation with our warm fuzzy subjective experiences, but rather it means enjoying being occupied with the risen and exalted Christ. When He, the risen Christ of the Cross, is increasing, everything else that vies for our attention is decreasing.
Near the pulpit, in an old church in the Highlands of Scotland there is a sign that says, “No man can give at once the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.” This is just another way of saying that he must increase but we must decrease.” With the Lord’s help may we learn to be thrilled with faith's glorious object, the Lord Jesus. May we learn to focus on Him, not on faith and certainly not on our experience of Him.
Faith, no matter how perfect, is nothing in and of itself. Faith, however, points us to Jesus. It commands us to look away from ourselves and even itself and look to Christ, the risen, exalted, crucified Lord. Faith agrees that, "Christ is all" (Col 3:11). Faith constantly urges us to look to the One who says, "Look unto me” (Isaiah 45:22).
And that’s the Gospel Truth!