Faith's Object (Col. 1:3-4a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/18/2016 9:50 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                         Focus:  Faith’s Object

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                Reference:  Colossians 1:3-4a

            Message of the verses:  “3 We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus”

            Now we have been looking at the main point of “The Gospel Truth is Received by Faith” for three days now and we have one more sub-point from this main point entitled “Faith’s Object.” 

            Now we mentioned in one of these SD’s in this section about faith in driving your car on a road that you have never driven on before, trusting that the road will not lead you to fall off of it into a pit of something like that and so the faith that you have is in those who built and designed the road, but when we talk about Biblical faith we also have to have an object that we are trusting in and that is what we will be looking at this evening.

            I am sure that you have figured out that the object of our saving faith has to be Jesus Christ.  MacArthur writes “The relationship of faith to Jesus Christ is expressed in the New Testament by various Greek prepositions.  Acts 16:31 (‘They said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household."’) uses the word eis, which suggests resting on a foundation.  In Acts 20:21, etis is used, with the meaning of ‘to find a dwelling place in,’ ‘to go into,’ ‘to abide in,’ or ‘to find a home.’  Here ‘in’ translates en and has the connotation of coming to a place of security and anchor.  With Christ as its object, are faith is as secure as a house on a solid foundation, or a boat safely at anchor.”  As stated in our last SD these things may be elementary but it is good to look back at them to reinforce our trust in what the Bible has to say about our salvation, and the security of it.

            John MacArthur in his sermon on this subject and also in his commentary retells a story that Charles H. Spurgeon told about two men that were in a boat which was caught in some very dangerous rapids that were heading for a waterfalls. There were some men on shore who saw their peril and threw some ropes to the men.  One man decided to grab onto the rope, the other decided to grab onto a large floating log that was going down the river.  The man who had the rope was pulled to shore safely; the man on the log went over the falls and was never seen again.  The man with the rope represents saving faith, while the man on the log represents good works.  MacArthur concludes “Good works apart from true faith, represented in the story by the log, leads only to ruin.”

12/18/2016 10:15 PM