What Is Saving Faith — Rolfe Barnard

Saving Faith Requires Total Surrender

One of the deepest thinkers, I think, living today, says that religion, and by that he means religion, man's response to God, not Christianity, but religion. This man says that religion has a meaning for men only if it can find in history a certain point to which it can absolutely surrender.

Christianity then, or a Christian, is real and his faith is authentic and his relationship is what God requires if and only if to whom he can totally surrender himself. I won't repeat what Reagan about I'm saying.

If not just by that, he expresses the fact that he's mad. He can answer grace in Christ. If I can't commit myself to do anything to save Jesus, I'll send you to hell. I'll send you to hell because you believe in America some more than others and every preacher and every individual.

Defining the Nature of Saving Faith

What's involved in saving faith, which is response to the revelation of God in Christ and his call through the spirit in the gospel, what's God calling men to and how? Can Ralph Barnett or anybody else properly and savingly respond to God's elective call?

I don't know of anything more important than that. God, if God Almighty could be pleased to use somebody in this congregation, come up with some good answers as to how we can start all over again nearly and rescue the word faith, make it meaningful again.

So we could stop this traffic in the souls of men going through the motion of profession and church membership and so forth, any dynamic change that keeps on changing the lives of men and women. We re-examine our message and our message better job of being true and the truth to get people converted.

Not what we call evangelism of the last 60 years, that is built on the proposition that the less truth, the more results. This is a serious proposition. I do not know about you. My father and mother are both gone.

Last Lord's Day was my mother's birthday, the 92 as she is living. Yesterday was my father's birthday, the 95 as he is living. I'm one of six remaining children, brothers and sisters. My older brother is gone.

I have five brothers and sisters, one of them in California, one's in Montana, two are in Alabama, one's in Georgia. So what's called Christianity today? Faithful, hard-working church people gives us the tiniest little bit of evidence.

We can't judge what it is. Oh, we look for just a little bit of evidence if they're your loved ones. So people are being butchered today. The fact that for the last hundred years we've been whittling down on what saving faith is, what God demands of men and women as a response to his dying on a cross in Jesus Christ.

My loved ones are as honest as you are, as sincere as you are, as kind-hearted, humane, good neighbors, all of that you are. But they are the product of what passes for salvation, the gospel and Christianity in cross-section of America.

Salvation as Belonging to Christ

My soul, I wish something could take place where churches all over the country are making Christians, men and women, who are faced up to the fact that the last word that God Almighty says to a man is not, I save you.

The last word he says to an individual is, I claim you are mine, you belong to me. Well, the chief sign of salvation is not a sense of freedom, but it's an experience of being mastered by somebody. And I look you in the face and tell you now that you are not fixing to become a Christian unless you are willing to be the Lord.

And nobody's trying to wish anything off on anybody. Nobody's trying to get you to accept anybody. And if you are determined to split hell wide open in spite of everything, nobody can keep you from it.

But I'm telling you, if you want to be saved, you have to be willing to be utterly mastered, utterly conquered, utterly possessed by God. By the Lord Jesus Christ. I wish we'd quit trying to talk people into accepting Jesus.

I don't know what good that'll do anyhow, for men don't need to accept Him. They need to surrender to Him, for that's exactly what He demands. Saving lyrics to the Holy God who in Christ Jesus fought.

Faith as God's Gift and Human Response

The scripture's divided up by a second. We could say three things quickly first. Saving faith, saving literary spawn to God's claim upon you in Jesus Christ dying on a cross in your behalf. Saving faith.

That faith that'll do to ride the river with since ever got faith. That faith that is man's act and God's gift. That faith that is the method through which God works salvation in a human being. That faith requires very simply a response of Roth Barnard.

Not of my soul, but of me. He didn't come down here to save your soul, honey. He came down here to possess you. You. And if we'll cut out that silly stuff that all of us talk about. He saved people. He's after men and women.

And the only way we can respond and demand upon Him in this call from a cross is to do exactly toward Him that He did toward us. He didn't give us some advice. Bless God. He gave us Himself. You will not give yourself to Him.

If you want nice little salvation, you can put up and refer to it now and then. Talking about He saved me, so praise the Lord. But no, if you want Him to have your lock, stock and barrel. You. You. You.

Not part of it, but you. Not some of your time, but you. Not this damn little good stuff about you ought to give your talents to the Lord. You ain't got nothing to start with. He is a fellow of my goodness of life.

Isn't that silly? But He wants you. And He's not going to trade for anything beside you. He's not going to accept anything short of you. Here I am, Lord. I surrender. He gave. He gave. You will not give yourself to Him.

The Necessity of Present-Tense Faith

God bless you. That's reading. Bless God. Scripture don't know nothing about one act of faith saving anybody. Hell going to be full of that just talking about what God did thirty years ago. Every reference to faith, belief, saving belief in the New Testament.

This is the God's truth. It's in the present tense. He that believeth, just keeps on. We are capped for the power. Somebody says we'll lose my faith. Will I go to heaven? No, sir. That's a silly question.

But the only way God keeps you is how? Through faith. I sold anybody on earth that's willing to trust yesterday. Silly. It's got to be today. If salvation were a transaction that I could settle, Brother Paul, and lock it up in the safe, and refer to it now, and then be a white horse of different color.

Salvation is a bringing into a relationship of two people. Every decision and every involvement has to be renewed. You're a day late if you're talking about what happened yesterday in your relationship with Jesus Christ.

I don't understand why Ralph Barnes has to repent every day. I have to put my faith again in Jesus Christ every day. Bless God. I need Him today just as badly and much as terribly and absolutely as ever I will or ever I dare.

I can't make it today without appropriating the blood and the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a living Christ. Heresyism that stalks us. The devil can't get us one way, he'll do it another, you know.

We're never safe from his attacks if we are headed in the right direction. Only this kind of response, the daily that the New Testament talks about, authentic or saving faith, is that response that's required which one surrenders himself utterly to the sovereignty of God in Christ.

Submission to God's Sovereign Will

You can put it down that unless God's claims, sovereign claims are bowed to, you'll never know peace. You can put it down that you can't keep your shotgun pointed in the direction of the heart of God and have His peace.

I'm telling you the truth, that the very heart of saving faith is a crisis and then a daily dealing with the claims of an all-sovereign God. That means He's simply God, very God. I'm saying to you that saving faith has to have one thing that it's got to face and it has to face it every day for every day for as thy days, so shall thy strength be.

And that is, we are bound. That's what it means. One thing, foremost in every day's experience, man's of God on a cross. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're talking about doing the will of God yesterday, you're a day late.

This thing's got to be faced every day. This is the biggest thing between the eternities. Anything else mounts to hill abatement. Whose will is to be done today. I tell you right now, you can't depend on past experience here.

This thing is vile. It's concerned with the relationship. Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but who will? Try to get your doctrine to throw this out. It's in the Bible, too, and it don't contradict anything else, but it just simply says the guy that will is the fellow that doeth.

Continuous what? The will of God, brother. That won't fix you, make you roll up your sleeves, spit on your hands, and get out of your nice little comfortable religious pew. Brother, this thing's a day-by-day proposition.

That's Lord. They're going to give a testimony and brag to all the Lord, but that ain't worth a hill of beans. Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, that's orthodoxy, but he that doeth the will of God.

God, help us. This thing's serious. As long as we keep preaching to men and women. Bless God of salvation. That doesn't rightly relate yourself to the doing of the will of God. Saving faith involves surrender of oneself.

Saving Faith and the Great Commission

God's program of redemption. To be a part of God's program of redemption. Something that if Satan had a heart that was as soft as a bunch of steel, it'd break his heart even. Women who've been led to believe they're rightly related to God and Jesus Christ.

They're not committed utterly. Redemptive program through them. What are you talking about, brother Barnum? I've mentioned it before, I mention it again before I leave you. The tragedy of what we call Christianity in America that's causing Christianity to die in America to rot is the fact that we've divorced salvation from accepting the great commission of the Lord Jesus Christ to be his instrument in his program of redemption.

And many of you believed that you were included when the Lord breathed on them. Said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, John chapter 20. And then he said what? As my Father has sent me, even so send I you. You in on that?

Who's that talking to? I tell you, you know that's pretty embarrassing. Let's adopt this. I've read this. It's pretty popular. That's just for the apostles. That all right? Can't take that? No? Well, who on earth is he talking about?

You in on it? Huh? God help me, I've got no business claiming to be a Christian unless I've gladly received this commission to represent Jesus Christ. Eyes off of little weak me, but I want to leave this with you.

The Cost of Redemptive Service

Going on over there, that blessed, white-haired, greatly used man of God who literally burned himself out in the cause of Jesus Christ. That's a good way to burn yourself out. He said to me, Brother Ralph, he said, I hear one mighty bad thing about you.

And the brethren have told it on you. And I began to tremble. I thought he found out I robbed a bank or something. He let that soak in a little while. He said, the brethren say you'll be dead by the time you're 30, that you won't be able to last very long.

The case you've set for yourself, that you'll burn yourself out by the time you're 30. And I was pretty much a stemwinder then. Therefore, my old body got to where it couldn't do it anymore. I really burned him up.

It was right now, but it did. And I said to him the truth. I said, well, Dr. Scarborough, I realize you're telling the truth, and I'm trying to correct myself of it, but I'm utterly unable to do it the way I know it.

And when I got through with my apology, he said, thank God. And then he said something that maybe isn't good theology, but it's pretty good theology. He'll think it through, and God bless you. He said, young man, I want you to learn, listen to me now, that it takes the blood of Jesus Christ and the blood of God's people to carry out the redemptive program of Almighty God.

He knew what he was talking about. Better stand. Without insinuating tonight, if I may be permitted, I'm going to ask you to go home. Is that all right, brother pastor? God help us. I preach to God's people.

Prayer for Revival and Total Surrender

How can we do a better job than we've been doing? Facing men with what it actually means to savingly respond to the call of God. Our Father in bloodstained Jesus' name, and we think if we know our hearts, we pray in His glory, we think we do at least.

These desperate hours, when so little of spiritual power, so little of faith. Oh God, come to the rescue of your people. Anoint us, garrison us, equip us. The spirit of the age is too much for us in our own strength, oh God.

Helplessly but hopefully we see as little children we come and say, oh God, come to our rescue, that we may come to the defense of the gospel in our day. We beg in Christ's name that you will speak as you see fit to people here tonight.

Demand of them nothing short of total surrender. In His name we pray.