Devotional 74: The Degrees of Faith: Weak Yet True

The Confession Read

This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed, and weakened, and gets the victory: growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance, through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 14, Section 3

Introduction

The father had brought his demon-possessed boy to the disciples, and they could do nothing. The crowd had gathered, the scribes had begun to argue, and the whole scene had the smell of failure about it. When Jesus came down from the mountain of transfiguration and walked into the chaos, the father cried out: "If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us." Jesus seized on the word: "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." And the father, in what may be the most honest prayer ever uttered by human lips, answered: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." There, in seven English words, is the doctrine of this section compressed into a single cry. Faith and unbelief coexisting in the same heart: a man who believes enough to fall at Jesus' feet and yet disbelieves enough to preface his petition with an "if." A faith that is real and saving — faith Christ honors with a miracle — yet weak, wavering, full of the very doubt it confesses. The father brought the whole mixture of belief and unbelief, trust and terror, hope and hesitation, and laid it at Jesus' feet. And Jesus did not rebuke him for the poverty of his faith. Jesus healed his son. The Westminster Divines, having established in Section 1 that faith is the Spirit's sovereign work wrought ordinarily by the Word, and in Section 2 that its principal acts are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ in all His offices, now turn to a truth believers discover in the dark hours when faith seems to have deserted them entirely: faith is not a static possession. It has degrees. It is weak or strong. It can be assailed, weakened, battered by the world, the flesh, and the devil until the man who once stood firm on the promises now clings to them with desperate tenacity. And yet, by the grace of its divine Author, it gets the victory. It grows. It presses toward assurance. And through it all, the believer's eyes are directed not to the quality of his own believing but to Christ, the archēgos and teleiōtēs, the author and the finisher, of his faith. This is a pastoral doctrine, written for those who tremble, doubt, and feel bruised. The Confession bends down to the weak believer and says what the apostle said to the Thessalonians: we are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, because your faith groweth exceedingly. Not because it has always been strong. Not because it has never been shaken. But because, by the grace of its Author, it groweth. What follows, then, is an anatomy of weak and strong faith, an honest account of the enemies that seek its ruin, and a declaration of the victory that Christ has already secured for every soul in whom He has planted the seed of believing.

Scripture Foundation

The anchor text for this section is Hebrews 12:2: "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." The Greek archēgos — translated "author" — means originator, founder, pioneer: the one who blazes the trail for others to follow. Jesus is the archēgos of faith, not merely its object but its source. And He is the teleiōtēs — the perfecter, the one who brings faith to its appointed completion. What Christ begins, Christ finishes. The faith that seems so frail today is in the hands of the one who has never left a work incomplete. The apostle urges us to "look unto Jesus" — the Greek aphorōntes means to look away from every other object and fix the gaze exclusively upon one. The believer is counseled not to look at the waves, not to look at his own weakness, but to look at Jesus. And why? Because Jesus is the author and finisher of faith. The finishing is the ground of the looking. The Lord taught the same truth in Matthew 17:20 when the disciples, having failed to cast out a demon, asked why they had been powerless. His answer: "Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." The point is not that faith is a magical force. The point is that the smallest genuine faith is sufficient to accomplish what God wills, because the power resides not in the faith but in the God to whom faith clings. A mustard seed has no intrinsic power to move mountains; neither does faith. But faith connects the believer to the God who spoke mountains into existence. Jesus comforts those who have small faith by teaching that the size of faith is not the measure of its efficacy. The smallest faith that lays hold of Christ has laid hold of omnipotence. The Apostle Paul, in Romans 4:19-20, gives us the portrait of strong faith in Abraham: "And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God." The Greek word translated "staggered" is diekrithē, from diakrinō, which means to be divided in one's mind, to waver between two opinions. Abraham did not waver. He considered the impossibility and the promise, and he chose to believe the promise despite the impossibility. But Paul is careful to note that Abraham did not pretend the impossibility did not exist. He "considered" his own dead body and Sarah's dead womb. Faith is not the suppression of contrary evidence; it is the decision to trust God's word over and against contrary evidence. This is the strong faith the Confession describes, and it is held out as a goal toward which every believer ought to press. The Confession also acknowledges the reality of assault. Our Lord warned Peter on the night of His betrayal: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:31-32). Every clause is freighted with pastoral significance. Satan demands to sift Peter — and the sifting is granted. But Christ does not say, "I have prayed that thou shalt not be sifted." He says, "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." The sifting will happen. The fall into denial will happen. But the faith itself, the gift of the Spirit planted in Peter's heart, will not suffer total and final eclipse. It will flicker low, it will hide in shame, it will seem for a terrible interval to have been extinguished altogether — but it will not go out, because Christ has prayed for it, and the Son is always heard by the Father. Finally, the victory that faith achieves is declared by the Apostle John in 1 John 5:4: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." The Greek nikē — victory — is the word shouted by armies when the battle turned. Faith overcomes. It does not merely survive; it conquers. And John grounds this victory not in the strength of the believer but in the nature of the new birth: "whatsoever is born of God" overcomes. Because faith is born of God, it partakes of the overcoming life of God, and the world cannot stand against it.

What the Divines Meant

Unlike the earlier sections of this chapter, which were shaped by polemical pressures — against Rome's confusion of faith and charity, against Arminian synergism, against Enthusiast immediatism — Section 3 is predominantly pastoral. The Divines had drawn the theological lines with precision. Now they turned to the care of souls, and what they wrote is one of the tenderest passages in the Confession. The first clause establishes a principle believers know from experience: faith is not a monolith. It "is different in degrees, weak or strong." The Divines were resisting two opposing errors. On one hand, perfectionists, from certain strands of Puritan piety to the more radical sects of the Continent, taught that all true faith is perfect faith, that any admixture of doubt invalidates the whole, that the true believer never wavers or questions. This crushes the tender conscience by setting a standard no fallen sinner can meet. Against this, the Divines insist that the strong believer and the weak believer are both believers, because saving faith is defined not by its intensity but by its object. The father who cries, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief," and the apostle who declares, "I know whom I have believed," are both exercising saving faith. On the other hand, there were those who used the doctrine of degrees to excuse spiritual sloth. If weak faith is true faith, why strive after strength? If Christ receives the doubter, why labor to overcome doubt? The Confession will not permit this abuse. The second clause teaches that faith "may be often and many ways assailed, and weakened" — the verb implies an enemy and a battle: "and gets the victory." Faith is not passive in the face of its own weakness. It fights and struggles. It lays hold of the promises with a grip that is weaker than it was yesterday and yet refuses to let go entirely. The language is military: assailed, weakened, victory. The Christian life is warfare, and faith is both the shield with which the believer defends himself and the weapon with which he presses the attack. Faith may be battered by seasons of spiritual dryness, intellectual doubts, and suffering that cries out against the goodness of God, by temptation that overcomes the will with irresistible force — but it is never finally defeated. It gets the victory. The third clause speaks of growth: "growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance." Here the Divines deliberately distinguish between faith and assurance, a distinction that required considerable pastoral wisdom to articulate. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent had declared that "no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God." Doubt was not a problem to be solved but a permanent condition. The early Reformers, by contrast, had taught that assurance is of the essence of faith — that to believe in Christ is implicitly to be assured of salvation. But this created its own pastoral problem: what of the believer who, in a season of darkness, cannot find that assurance? The English Puritans worked out a more nuanced position. Faith and assurance, they argued, are distinct. Faith is the direct act of trusting Christ; assurance is the reflex act of perceiving that one trusts Christ. A man may possess the treasure without always feeling its weight. The Confession codifies this wisdom: assurance is the fruit of faith, the settled confidence that comes when faith has weathered enough storms to know the Captain of its salvation. But it is not identical with faith itself, and the Confession is careful to say "in many," not "in all." Some die with a faith that trembles and clings, never having tasted full confidence. Their salvation depends not on the attainment of assurance but on the object of faith, which is Christ. The final clause is the destination: "through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith." The Confession does not end with the believer's effort but with Christ's work. The One who gave the first spark will fan it into flame. The One who planted the seed will harvest it. This is the ultimate ground of confidence — not the believer's grip upon Christ, but Christ's grip upon the believer. Shaw observes that this section is a pastoral application of the doctrine of perseverance taught in Chapter 17. The same Christ who keeps the believer keeps the believer's faith. The assaults that weaken faith are permitted by the same providence that uses them to drive the believer back to Christ. Hodge notes that the progression from weak faith through assault and victory to full assurance is the ordinary path of the Christian life, not the exceptional one. The believer who experiences the ebb and flow of faith is not abnormal; he is walking the very road the Confession maps.

Theological Depth

Calvin, in Book III of the Institutes, wrestles at length with weak faith, and his treatment is one of his most pastorally sensitive passages. "The faithful," he writes, "have a perpetual conflict with the distrust of their own mind, and far from placing their consciences in tranquil peace, they are often shaken and ready to fall." But Calvin distinguishes between the sensus (the feeling of faith) and the substantia (the substance of faith). The feeling may fluctuate; the substance, because it rests on God's promise, is unshakable. Calvin compares faith to a fire covered with ashes so that no flame is visible, yet it still burns. A breath of the Spirit, and the flame leaps up again. Calvin also addresses why God permits faith to be assailed. It is not because God takes pleasure in His children's distress, but because weakness is the school of humility and dependence. A faith that never faced a storm would become a faith that trusted itself rather than its God. "We are taught by our very weakness," he writes, "to flee to Christ, in whom alone our strength resides." The man who has never felt his faith nearly fail has never learned how entirely his faith depends upon the One who gave it. And the man who has felt it fail — who has tasted the bitterness of Peter's weeping after the cock crowed — has learned a lesson no sermon could teach: that the ground of his standing is not the firmness of his grip but the grip of the One who holds him. The very assaults that seem designed to destroy faith are, in the wisdom of God, the instruments by which faith is purified. Richard Sibbes, whose Bruised Reed has comforted saints for four centuries, takes up the question of weak faith with tenderness and care. "There is more mercy in Christ," Sibbes writes, "than sin in us. As a spark of fire is fire, so the least grain of faith is faith. And Christ values it not by the quantity but by the quality — that it is true faith, though weak." Sibbes urges the weak believer to consider that the very presence of spiritual conflict is evidence of spiritual life. A dead man does not struggle against unbelief; a dead man does not grieve over hardness of heart. The tears that fall because you cannot weep as you ought, the sorrow that rises because your heart seems frozen — these are the pulses of a living faith, not the death throes of an expiring one. Watson, in his Body of Divinity, distinguishes degrees of faith from the weakest (a mere willingness to receive Christ) to the strongest (full assurance). The weakest faith, Watson insists, is saving faith. "A weak hand can tie the knot in marriage as well as a strong one. A weak eye can behold the brazen serpent and be healed. So a weak faith can lay hold on Christ and be justified." But Watson does not leave the weak believer where he finds him: "Though the tender vine brings forth fruit, yet it must be pruned and manured, so the weak faith must be strengthened by the ordinances." The expectation of the New Testament is growth, and the believer content with a faith that never deepens has settled for less than God intends. Hodge draws attention to the military metaphor: assailed, weakened, victory. "The Christian life is a warfare, and faith is the chief point of attack. Satan cannot touch the believer's justification, which is in heaven, but he can shake his assurance, which is in his own heart." The enemy is threefold: the world, the flesh, and the devil. But the victory is certain, because Christ has already won the decisive battle. Every skirmish, however desperate, is only the mopping-up operation of an already-defeated enemy. Warfield addresses the objection that the Reformed doctrine of faith as a sovereign gift makes human effort irrelevant. He distinguishes between the origin of faith and its exercise. The origin is entirely of God; the exercise involves the whole soul. "We are not stocks and stones. We believe. It is we who believe. And the strengthening of our faith is accomplished through the diligent use of the means the Spirit has appointed." The believer reads the Word, not passively waiting but actively seeking. He prays as a man who knows his need. And in all of this, he trusts not in his own diligence but in the Spirit who works through the diligence He has commanded. The dependence is absolute — "without me ye can do nothing" — but the activity is genuine, and God has so ordered the Christian life that faith ordinarily grows through the very means He has commanded us to use.

Puritan Application

First, do not make the perfection of your faith the ground of your peace. The ground of your peace is Christ alone. You will never, in this life, attain a faith free from doubt, never wavering, never shaken by assault. If you wait until your faith is perfect to rest in Christ, you will never rest at all. The father in Mark's gospel did not say, "I will come to Jesus once I have sorted out my theological difficulties." He came with a faith shot through with unbelief, and Christ received him. The woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of His garment with a touch, however superstitious its outward form, that was the touch of faith. Christ did not rebuke her for its imperfection; He commended her for its presence. Your faith, believer, is weaker than you know and yet stronger than you fear — not because of anything in itself, but because its object is the Son of God. Stop examining your faith under a microscope when you should be looking through it as a telescope toward the cross. The measure of your faith is not the measure of your safety. The measure of Christ is. Second, do not be content with weak faith; press toward strength and assurance. The Confession teaches that faith grows, and the New Testament commands you to grow. The apostle writes, "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Weak faith is true faith, and you must not despair over it, but you must not settle into it as though it were the acceptable condition of the mature Christian. A child is loved no less than an adult, but a child is expected to grow. If your faith is the same size at sixty that it was at twenty — the same doubts, instability, and crippling uncertainty about the love of God — then something is wrong, not with your sonship but with your growth. Examine whether you are using the means God has appointed: saturating your mind in the Scriptures, approaching the Lord's Table as a feast at which Christ nourishes faith, praying persistently as Jacob wrestled at Peniel. The Spirit uses means, and the believer who neglects them should not wonder that his faith does not grow. Third, expect the assaults and learn to fight through them. The Confession does not present the weakening of faith as an anomaly; it presents it as the normal experience of the believer in a fallen world. Your faith will be assailed — by intellectual doubts that whisper, "Has God really said?"; by providential disappointments that cry, "If God loved you, would He have allowed this?"; by Satanic accusations that hiss, "A man with your sins cannot possibly be saved." These are not signs that you are not a Christian; they are signs that you are in a war. The question is not whether you are attacked but whether you fight. When doubt rises, do you surrender, or do you take up the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit and resist? The apostle's command to "resist the devil" implies that resistance is both possible and effectual. The promise is not that faith will never be weakened but that faith will get the victory. And the victory comes not to those who never feel the blow but to those who, feeling it, refuse to stay down. Get up, believer. Lift your eyes from your wounds to your Captain. The battle is the Lord's, and the victory is certain. Fourth, distinguish between the assault of faith and the destruction of faith. There is a difference between a ship battered by the storm and a ship that has sunk beneath the waves. The ship that is battered — timbers groaning, sails torn, crew clinging to the rails — is still afloat. The faith that is assailed and weakened is still faith. But there is a point at which what looks like weakened faith is actually no faith at all. The man who has ceased to struggle, who no longer prays because prayer feels empty, who no longer opens Scripture or gathers with the saints — that man is not experiencing an assault; he is experiencing the erosion of his soul. The distinguishing mark of true but weak faith is that it continues to look toward Christ, however feebly. If you have stopped looking, you are not weak; you are dead. Examine yourself honestly. Are you fighting, or have you surrendered? Are you clinging to Christ with weak fingers, or have you let go entirely? Fifth, look to Christ, not to your faith, and let Him be the finisher of what He has authored. The final clause of this section is the secret to everything that precedes it. Faith grows "through Christ." He is the author, the archēgos who blazed the trail from the manger to the cross to the empty tomb. He is the finisher, the teleiōtēs who will bring your faith to its appointed perfection. Your faith is not your project; it is His. He began it. He sustains it. He will complete it. Your part is to look to Him, to depend upon Him, to cry out with the apostles, "Lord, increase our faith," and then to use the means He has appointed with confidence that He who commands the means also blesses them. The weakest believer who looks to Christ is safer than the strongest believer who looks to himself. The most battered faith that keeps its grip on Christ is more secure than the most confident faith that rests on its own intensity. The ground of your confidence is not that you have believed strongly enough but that Christ has believed for you, obeyed for you, died for you, risen for you, and now lives to make intercession for you. Because Christ cannot fail, your faith will not finally fail. It will grow. It will overcome. And it will one day give way to sight, in that city where the Object of faith stands before the eyes of the redeemed, and they see Him as He is.

Prayer

O Lord Jesus Christ, who art the author and the finisher of our faith, we bless Thee that Thou dost not despise the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax. We come before Thee as men and women whose faith is weaker than we dare admit, mixed with unbelief, assailed by doubts, battered by the world, the flesh, and the devil. We are like the father who cried out, "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief." Look upon us with the same compassion with which Thou didst look upon him, and grant us the healing that only Thy word can bring. We thank Thee that Thou hast not made the perfection of our faith the ground of our acceptance with God. Our hope is not in the strength with which we cling to Thee but in the strength with which Thou holdest us, and Thou hast promised that none shall pluck us from Thy hand. Yet we would not be content with a faith that is always weak, always wavering. Open the Scriptures to us by Thy Spirit, that as we read we may meet Thee in the pages. Feed us at Thy table, that the bread and the cup may be a true means of grace, confirming our union with Thee. Teach us to pray without ceasing and to receive from Thy fullness grace upon grace. When our faith is assailed, grant us grace to fight rather than to surrender. When doubt whispers, remind us that Thou art the God who cannot lie. When suffering cries out that Thou hast forgotten us, bring to our minds the cross, where the greatest evil became the instrument of the greatest good. When Satan accuses us of sins too many and too dark to be forgiven, let us hear Thy voice speaking peace: "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more." And when the world presents its pleasures as substitutes for Thee, grant us the faith that sees through the glitter to the emptiness beneath. We pray for those among us whose faith is barely alive, whose prayers are only groans, whose hope has dwindled to a faint ember beneath the ashes. Breathe upon that ember, O Spirit of the living God, and fan it into flame. Let them know that the weakest faith that looks to Christ is saving faith, because it is not the strength of their faith that saves them but the strength of their Savior. And lead us all from strength to strength, from one degree of faith to another, until we attain to the full assurance of hope unto the end. We look forward to the day when faith shall be swallowed up in vision, when we shall see Thee face to face. Until that day, keep us in the faith once delivered to the saints. Let nothing separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In His most blessed name we pray. Amen.