IS FAITH A GIFT?

Hugo McCord

A Presbyterian elder in Belize, in talking with a gospel preacher, said that Ephesians 2:8-9 shows that faith is a gift of God:

By grace you have been saved through faith, but this is not of yourselves! It is God’s gift, not of works, lest someone might boast (Ephesians 2:8.

“God’s gift” (Ephesians 2:8) to the Ephesians could not have been their “faith,” for, biblically, faith is never a given, but always it is self-developed by hearing “the word of God” (Romans 10:17). “It is written in the prophets, ‘Everyone shall be taught of God’“ (John 6:45). If faith is given miraculously, then the apostle John made a mistake in saying that his twenty-one chapters were “written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in his name” (John 20:31). As a result of one midnight sermon the Philippian jailer developed faith (Acts 16:25-34).

If God miraculously puts faith in one sinner’s heart, he would do the same for all sinners, for he is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9). If faith is given miraculously, and since “God is no respecter of persons” (Romans 2:11; Acts 10:34), there could be no unbelievers. Yet Jesus said that “he who does not believe shall be condemned” (Mark 16:16).

But the Lord’s plan from the day of Pentecost, May 28, A.D., is to the end of the world, is what happened at Corinth after Paul’s preaching: “many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized” (Acts 18:8).

3-2-99