After preaching Sunday’s sermon, “Why Are Ye Fearful,” and editing it for HTML markup for the web site, I found myself wondering whether I had misspoken. In the third paragraph of the first part I stated: “Faith is not what we do but that which works in us and upon us to bring to effect the hearing and following of God’s Word.” As I pondered what I wrote and said in the next paragraph, at first I thought that I might have spoken a contradiction.
Understanding how God works faith in us is beyond our human reason to grasp on its own, and even when it is declared to us rightly, we are inclined to doubt its validity. Upon careful repeated examination I realized that what I had preached is correct and in keeping with what the Scriptures declare.
In the fourth paragraph I said what at first seems to contradict the statement of the third paragraph: “Hearing produces faith, not the other way around.” Without careful attention, this struck me as contradictory. But it is nonetheless true. Hearing produces faith, not the other way around. Likewise it is true that the true faith works in us and upon us to bring to effect the hearing and following of God’s Word. Hearing produces this faith in us and this faith that is generated in us brings to effect the hearing and following of God’s Word thereafter. Both the hearing and the faith are God’s work. The hearing must precede the faith, producing the faith in us by which we are made to be believers, so that forevermore this faith keeps us in the Word, hearing it and following it.
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