The Gaze of the Soul

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. ISAIAH 45:22

What is faith? Few words are used more often by Christians, and few are understood less. Tozer noticed that the Bible itself offers only one formal definition, in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, and that it describes what faith does rather than what it is. So in The Pursuit of God he went looking for the Scripture’s own picture of faith, and he found it in the language of sight. Faith, he concluded, is the soul looking to God — and keeping on looking.

The serpent on the pole

He took his starting point from a strange story in the wilderness. Israel had sinned and been bitten by fiery serpents, and many were dying. Moses was told to make a serpent of brass and set it on a pole, and the promise was attached to a single act.

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. NUMBERS 21:9

The dying Israelite was not asked to do anything difficult. He was not asked to understand the remedy, or to feel a certain way about it, or to prove himself worthy of it. He was asked to look. And the Lord Jesus took this very story and applied it to Himself.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. JOHN 3:14–15

Tozer drew the conclusion simply. Looking and believing are the same thing. Faith is not a complicated religious performance. It is the turning of the heart’s eye away from everything else and towards God in Christ.

Faith looks away from itself

This definition had an immediate practical consequence which Tozer pressed with great force. If faith is a gaze upon God, then faith is not occupied with itself. The anxious believer who keeps examining his own faith, wondering whether it is strong enough or real enough, has turned his eyes in exactly the wrong direction. He is looking at the look instead of at the One looked at. Faith, Tozer argued, is healthiest when it is least conscious of itself, as a man lost in admiration of a view is not thinking about his eyes.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. HEBREWS 12:2

This is a liberating truth for the introspective. The remedy for weak faith is not to stare harder at one’s faith but to look away to Christ. Strength of faith follows the clarity of the object, not the effort of the believer.

A habit of the heart

Tozer insisted that this gaze is not meant to be occasional. The Christian is not to glance at God in a crisis and then return his attention to other things. He is to set his heart’s eye upon God as a settled habit, so that the inward look continues beneath all his ordinary business. He did not pretend this was easy for people crowded with work and noise. But he believed it could be learned, and that the ordinary believer, not only the cloistered saint, was invited to learn it.

I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. PSALM 16:8

Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. PSALM 25:15

The first look saves. The continued looking transforms. Paul describes exactly this process: the believer, beholding the glory of the Lord, is gradually changed into the same image.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:18

Confidence in God

In a sermon now in the Ochorus library, Faith, as Confidence in God, Tozer came at faith from another side. Preaching on the promise of 1 John 5:14–15, he lamented the great quantity of prayer offered in the churches that seemed to bring nothing back, and he traced it to the absence of real confidence in God. He made two further points there that belong with the gaze of the soul. The first was that unbelief is not chiefly an intellectual difficulty but a moral one: the heart refuses to trust because it does not want to depend. The second was that faith does not contradict reason but rises above it, laying hold of things that reason could never have discovered for itself.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. 1 JOHN 5:14

A gaze upon God, in other words, is not vague. It is confidence in a Person who has made promises, and it expects Him to keep them.

Weighing it

Tozer’s picture of faith as the gaze of the soul is one of his most helpful contributions, and it is well grounded in Scripture. Two notes of balance may be added. First, the gaze of faith is not a contentless staring into mystery; it is directed to the God who has spoken, and it is fed by His Word. Faith comes by hearing as well as by looking, and the two belong together.

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. ROMANS 10:17

Second, in the confidence sermon Tozer spoke of a coming division in the church between those he called evangelical rationalists and evangelical mystics, and he placed himself firmly among the mystics. His concern was real: faith can be reduced to a set of arguments. But the word mystic carries a great deal of baggage, and a reader should take Tozer’s point without adopting his label. The faith of the New Testament is neither a system of proofs nor a private vision. It is trust in the crucified and risen Christ, grounded in the apostolic testimony, and lived out in the daily look of love.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read Numbers 21:4–9 and John 3:14–16 together. Notice how little the dying man was asked to do.

2. If you have been anxious about the strength of your faith, stop examining it this week. Each time the worry returns, deliberately look to Christ instead.

3. Choose a simple phrase of Scripture, such as Hebrews 12:2, and use it to turn your heart’s eye to God at set moments through the day.

4. Read Tozer’s sermon Faith, as Confidence in God in the Ochorus library. Ask where your prayer lacks real confidence.

5. Ask whether any unbelief in you is moral rather than intellectual — a refusal to depend rather than an honest doubt.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You were lifted up on the cross, and all who look to You live. I look to You now.

Forgive me for looking at myself so long — at my failures, my feelings, and even my faith — and so seldom at You.

Teach me the habit of the inward gaze. Let my eyes be ever toward You, through all the business and noise of the day.

As I behold Your glory, change me into Your image, from glory to glory, by Your Spirit. Amen.