A Firm and Certain Knowledge

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. HEBREWS 11:1

If union with Christ is the way His benefits reach us, faith is the hand by which we receive Him. So Calvin devotes one of the longest chapters of the Institutes (3.2) to the question of what faith is. It is a chapter every Christian would profit from reading, because Calvin clears away a great deal of confusion that still clouds the subject.

What faith is not

He begins by saying what faith is not. It is not mere assent to the teachings of the church. In his day many people were told that it was enough to believe whatever the church believed, even if they did not know what that was. Calvin calls this implicit faith and dismisses it. Faith, he says, does not rest on ignorance but on knowledge — knowledge not only of God but of God’s will towards us.

Nor is faith simply believing that God exists, or that the Bible is true, or that Christ died. The devils believe all of that, and tremble. A person may know the whole history of the gospel and still not have faith in the biblical sense.

Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. JAMES 2:19

Calvin’s definition

Then comes the definition, one of the most carefully built sentences in the Institutes (3.2.7). Faith, Calvin says in substance, is a firm and certain knowledge of God’s kindness towards us, founded on the truth of the free promise in Christ, revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Every part of that definition matters.

Faith is knowledge. It has content. It knows something true. But Calvin quickly adds that this is not the kind of knowledge we have of things we can see and measure. It is more like being persuaded than comprehending. We are sure of what we cannot fully grasp.

It is firm and certain. Calvin will have nothing of a faith that always hovers in doubt. God wants His children to be sure of His love.

Its object is God’s kindness, His benevolence, towards us. Faith is not only believing that God is, but believing that He is for us. It is knowing Him as a Father.

It is founded on the free promise in Christ. Faith does not rest on our feelings, our experiences or our goodness. It rests on what God has said, and above all on the promise of mercy in His Son. Faith and the Word belong together, Calvin says, as a building belongs to its foundation.

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

And it is revealed to the mind and sealed on the heart by the Spirit. Faith is not merely a matter of the head. The Spirit must enlighten the mind to understand the promise, and then confirm it in the heart so that we trust it. Calvin says that it is harder for the heart to be assured than for the mind to be instructed.

Assurance and doubt

One of the most pastorally important things Calvin teaches here concerns assurance. He believed that faith, by its nature, includes a certain confidence that God is gracious to me. He did not think of assurance as a rare privilege reserved for a few advanced saints.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ROMANS 8:38–39

But — and this is what makes him wise rather than naive — he also insists that faith in this life is always mixed with doubt (Institutes 3.2.17–18). Believers are never wholly free from unbelief. They are tossed about, shaken and troubled. The flesh fights against the spirit. What distinguishes true faith is not the absence of doubt but that faith, however hard pressed, always rises again. Like the psalmist, the believer argues with his own soul and hopes in God again.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. PSALM 42:11

Calvin compares faith to a man in a dark prison who sees the sun only through a narrow window, slanting and partial. He sees little of it, but he is not deceived: it is really the sun, and its light is real. So the weakest believer truly sees God’s kindness in Christ, however dimly.

Faith that is always about Christ

The deepest point in Calvin’s teaching on faith is that it always looks to Christ. We cannot trust God’s general goodness in the abstract; our sins would make us afraid of Him. We can trust Him only where He has shown Himself gracious, and that is in His Son. Christ is the mirror in which we see the Father’s love.

In his sermon on Enduring Persecution for Christ, Calvin insists that the firmness a believer needs in suffering cannot come from anything else. “The firmness necessary we can not possess, unless it be founded on certainty of faith.” To hazard our life on a guess, he says, would be rashness, not Christian courage. The martyrs could go to the fire because they knew whom they had believed.

For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. 2 TIMOTHY 1:12

Faith and love

Calvin did not deny that true faith always works by love. But he was careful not to make love part of the definition of faith, as the medieval theologians had done, because he feared it would turn faith back into a kind of work. Faith receives; it does not pay. Love, holiness and good works flow from it, as fruit from a tree, but they are not the root of our acceptance.

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. GALATIANS 5:6

A caution

Calvin’s high view of assurance has sometimes been heard, by tender consciences, as a demand: if you are not perfectly sure, you have no faith at all. That is not what he meant, and his own teaching on the conflict of faith and doubt should prevent it. Later Reformed writers spent many pages helping troubled believers who lacked assurance. Calvin’s point is that assurance belongs to faith’s nature, not that every believer feels it equally at every moment. The one who clings to Christ in the dark still has the sun, though only through a narrow window.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write out Calvin’s definition of faith in your own words, and pray through each part of it.

2. Ask what your faith rests on at present: feelings, experiences, your own progress, or God’s promise in Christ.

3. Find one promise of God in Scripture that speaks directly to your present need, and resolve to stand on it.

4. If doubt is troubling you, do not be ashamed. Read Psalm 42 aloud, and let faith argue with your soul.

5. Thank God for the certainty the martyrs had, and ask Him to root your own faith as deeply.

A PRAYER

Father, I cannot trust You by looking at myself; I can trust You only where You have shown Yourself gracious, in Jesus Christ.

Open my mind to understand Your promise, and seal it on my heart by Your Spirit, so that I know You are for me.

When doubt shakes me, lift me again. Let me see Your kindness, even if only through a narrow window.

Root my faith in Your Word, so that I may be firm in trouble and not ashamed of Your name. Amen.