3 Essential Components of True Saving Faith

04/22/2023 pilgrim stranger Theology
Evidence of Salvation True Faith

The following is from Matthew Poole's commentary on John 2:23, edited and modernized.

True faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17). To make up true justifying, saving faith, which the apostle calls the faith of God's elect (Tit. 1:1), three things are required:

  1. A knowledge of the proposition of the word revealing Christ, which is acquired by reading, hearing, meditation, etc.
  2. Assent, which is the act of the understanding, agreeing in the truth of the word revealed. When such an assent is given to a proposition, if merely upon the Divine revelation of it, this is faith, a true faith in its kind.
  3. Upon this now (in those who savingly believe) the will closes with Christ as an adequate object; for it receives him, accepts him, relies on him as its Savior, and moves by the affections to love, desire, hope, and rejoice in him; and commands the outward man into an obedience to his law.