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3 Ways to Nullify Faith

 

How do you neutralize something? You have to take away some feature of its energizing nature. For instance, if you want to neutralize a fire you have to take away one of three things: oxygen, fuel, or heat. If any one of those elements is gone, fire can no longer exist. So how do you nullify faith? You have to take away a feature that energizes it. So what are the energizing features of faith? What are the key components of faith? Biblical faith is simply this: trust in God’s promises of grace. Trust, Scriptural promise, and grace are the three elements that make faith faith. If any of one of those are taken away, your faith is nullified and sin is the result. Let’s take a closer look.

1) Faith is nullified when grace is removed

The law had a specific purpose, and it was not to save you. The law condemns you (Roman3:20). The law shows you your sin and works as a tutor to lead you to Christ (Gal. 3:24). This is the purpose of the Law. God graciously gave us the law, but the law does not give us grace. God alone gives grace. In Romans 3:31 Paul said that he was seeking to establish the law by keeping both grace and law in their proper place. But if you step away from grace-given righteousness and toward a law-keeping righteousness, faith is nullified. In Romans 4:14 Paul says “For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified.” You don’t need to trust in God for righteousness if you are going to handle it by yourself. Faith is voided. The problem is that will never work for you.

The other way to nullify faith by the removal of grace is through faulty application. You may believe the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, but the way you actually live demonstrates the opposite. This is what Peter fell into in the account of Galatians chapter 2. Peter had withdrawn from eating with the Gentiles and Paul called him out by saying “when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas…” Peter was living in a way that contradicted what he said about the gospel. Paul could not let that happen. He explained why in verse 21, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” Peter had forgotten the gospel! Peter fell back into law-keeping by not touching defiled food eaten with Gentiles. This was a practical denial that grace had fulfilled all the law’s requirements and there was now no clean or unclean food or people. Grace had changed everything. But Peter had nullified faith and grace by actions that said, “I must maintain my clean status.” So if you remove grace, either from your stated beliefs about how you are justified, or how you live out the implications of the gospel, you will nullify faith. If you are not trusting in what God gives, you are trusting in what you think you can do.

2) Faith is nullified when obedience-driven trust is in something else.

Everyone trusts something. You are trusting something every moment of your life. The only question is “What are you trusting?” How can you determine what you trust? All you have to do is look at how you live. Your daily living is the concrete evidence of where your trust rests. Do you trust God? Then you will obey what He says. Do you trust something other than God? Then you will not obey what He says. This is why James says, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”(James 2:26) There must be a real transformation that happens in the new birth. A person actually sees the glory of Christ. They hear authoritative truth in the Bible. They have a true love for a God who would die for them. Because all these things are true, they trust in God. They trust in His love for them. They trust in his saving grace. They trust in his promises to lead them. They trust in His willingness to provide for them. They trust in His perfect wisdom for what needs to happen. All of this works itself out in real decisions in the home, at work, and in every relationship and every situation of life. Even when we sin, we trust what God says about it and we repent. So if a person’s life does not demonstrate trust in God, if they don’t obey in real words and deeds, then faith is dead. Faith is nullified. They still have faith, but it is in something else. Biblical, saving faith is nullified.

3) Faith is nullified when Scriptural testimony is not the basis for faith

This point is the one that rescues faith from a dangerous subjectivity that can lead to painful and deadly consequences. A person may claim that they love God and trust him and will follow Him in everything. But in reality, they are following their gut feelings. They take their cues from a patchwork of impressions, coincidences, and random Bible verses. When decision time comes they are simply guessing at what God is calling them to. This is a decision filled with doubt.

Paul says that decisions made in doubt are sin. Romans 14:23 says, “But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” In this particular context, the issue was a violated conscience. A person was simply not sure if a particular action was right or wrong, but they participated anyway. Paul is saying your actions have to be rooted into the actual words of God. You need to know what God says and act from that knowledge. If you do not do that, you are in sin. Faith has been nullified, because you are not acting upon what God says, but on an ignorance that leaves your conscience violated. You have just removed Scripture from your decision making and thereby nullified faith.

All of this is important because “without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6) If we are going to please God, we must make sure that we are not nullifying what alone will please him.

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