There is only one means of atoning for sin, and that is the blood of Christ. Faith is like a hand that receives that blood and all its benefits, but the hand itself does not do any saving. It is only instrumental, and Scripture bears that out:
being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith [διὰ πίστεως]. (Romans 3:24-25a, NASB, emphasis added)
When the Greek preposition dia is followed by the genitive case (as in the bracketed Greek words at the end of the quote), it indicates instrumentality, the means through which something happens.
Faith cannot appease God’s wrath for sin. Only the blood of Christ can do that. It’s the difference between a cause and an agent. To use an analogy, if you are underwater and breathe air through a straw, what is the thing your body needs to remain alive—the air or the straw? It needs the air. It needs the straw, too, but only as an agent through which the air is breathed in. The straw, in and of itself, cannot directly keep your body alive because the straw does not keep your lungs going. It is the air coming through the straw that does that. If you were in outer space and you had a hose to connect you to an oxygen tank, but the tank were floating out of reach of the hose, trying to breathe through the hose would do you no good at all. It’s similar when we talk of faith and the blood of Christ. Faith—like the straw and the hose—is the conduit through which the benefits of Christ’s saving blood come to us, but that precious blood—like the air—is what actually saves.
It should be pointed out, though, that like all analogies, these ones eventually break down and can be easily misunderstood. They do not mean that faith is some kind of work that earns salvation. Faith is merely passive; it simply receives. Another analogy is that of an eye: The eye does not create the light or deserve the light; it simply receives it. In addition, faith is not something that a person can do on his or her own. Scripture clearly says that faith is a gift from God; it is not something that one can create inside oneself.
2 Responses to What saves the soul?
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About the Author
The author of this blog, Jeremy (Jehanne), is a Catholic who strives to think God's thoughts after Him and obey Christ's exhortation to take up the cross daily and follow Him on the way to Golgotha. He likes reading theology, evangelizing, and, of course, writing.
I’m not sure I follow your faith/hand analogy. If the hand is connected to a dead person (i.e. someone whom is lost – one whom the Bible declares to be spiritually dead) then what good is the hand? How is it to receive the blood? The air/straw analogy does not address the issue either, since it is not referring to a dead person – a person who is incapable of holding or using a straw to breathe through.
Ray,
What you’re talking about is regeneration. That’s what makes the “hand” alive. The analogy’s purpose, though, is not to describe regeneration but faith. Regeneration precedes faith, so the analogy assumes that the new birth has already happened.