“Faith is the condition of our reception of life (Gal. 3:22). No person can quicken themselves; this is a thing the law is incapable of, and hence no good deed can obtain it for us (Gal. 3:21). It is the Holy Spirit who does the work in us.”
B B Warfield (Selected Shorter Writings)
Unbelief vs. Belief
“Unbelief will destroy the best of us; Faith will save the worst of us”
C H Spurgeon
Only Jesus
Calvin points out in his work on justification in the Institutes that, Scripture affirms that “Christ is both righteousness and life, and that the blessing of justification is possessed by faith alone.”
(Inst. 3.14.17)
Faith & Hope
Accordingly, in brief, hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God. Thus, faith believes God to be true, hope awaits the time when his truth shall be manifested; faith believes that he is our Father, hope anticipates that he will ever show himself to be a Father toward us; faith believes that eternal life has been given to us, hope anticipates that it will sometime be revealed; faith is the foundation upon which hope rests, hope nourishes and sustains faith.
(Calvin, Inst. 3.2.42)
The Knowledge of Faith
Calvin says in his Institutes that “the knowledge of faith consists in assurance rather than in comprehension.” Faith, of course, must also comprehend, for it is not a blind faith that we have. What Calvin means, is that faith grasps that which cannot be seen. He says in the same section that, “faith is so far above sense that man’s mind has to go beyond and rise above itself in order to attain it. Even where the mind has attained, it does not comprehend what it feels.” He uses Paul in Ephesians 3:18, 19 to say that faith “is the power to comprehend…what is the breadth and length… and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge”. This knowledge, he says, is lofty and we are “more strengthened by the persuasion of divine truth than instructed by rational proof.” We thus, acknowledge that we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:6, 7), and in this we are assured. (See Institutes III.2.14)