It is very clear from Scripture that it is God who saves sinners. God the Father elects, God the Son redeems, and God the Holy Spirit applies. We are saved “by grace” but also “through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Faith is God’s sovereign and supernatural gift which works in sinners the will and ability to repent from their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation (Canons of Dort; Head 3/4. Art. 12). So, strictly speaking, we are not saved by faith but by Christ, the object of our faith. Faith is the means whereby we receive Him and His full salvation.

This is how we begin our life of faith, but it is also how we continue to live by faith in Him. Galatians 2:20 offers two main aspects of what it means to live by faith in our glorious Christ: His completed work for us and His ongoing work in us and by us.

To live by faith in our glorious Christ is to trust and rely exclusively on His completed work for us, which He promised from all eternity to do – and which He has done in time. “I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” I live because He lived for me. He loved me so much that He lived my life of perfect love toward God and my neighbor, keeping all the commandments which I was unwilling and unable to keep. Then, at the end of a perfect life on earth, He loved me so much that He died so I may live: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live.”

The moment God’s Spirit uses His Word to quicken me, all that Christ has done on my behalf is reckoned to me so perfectly that it is “as if I never had had, nor committed any sin; yes, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me, inas­much as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart” (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 23). Any believer can say that His lifelong obedience and His perfect sacrifice on the cross has become my own obedience and satisfac­tion to my Father in heaven. Is it yours?

To live by faith in our glorious Christ is also to trust exclusively in His ongoing work in us and by us. Believers know and believe that Christ dwells in us. We know that, since His body ascended into heaven to make intercession for us at His Father’s right hand, this indwelling is by His Holy Spirit who convicts us and draws us to see, follow, and imitate Him. Though I have begun to live by faith in Him, whatever I do right is only by means of His indwell­ing. Is this your hope, desire, and practice?

As always, the emphasis is not on our faith but on our glorious Christ. He does everything for you and in you, if your hope is indeed in Him. To live by faith in our glorious Christ is to joyously discover again and again that He will not leave us alone in our ongoing corruptions and failures. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform (perfect and complete) it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is1 John 3:2.