This is a wonderful question to conclude the second part of the New City Catechism that has focused upon our redemption through Christ. Having affirmed that we are saved entirely by the grace of our Lord and through faith in Him, it is certainly worth asking where such saving faith comes from. The catechism’s answer is short and clear: “All the gifts we receive from Christ we receive through the Holy Spirit, including faith itself.”

Some Christians will disagree with that answer. They would likely argue that faith is only a gift in the sense that God has created us all with the ability to have faith, just as God has given each of us physical bodies, which we may use either to obey or disobey Him. As such all people have the same capacity for faith in responding to the gospel of the grace of Christ. Of course, we are still saved by God’s grace because we have no ability to save ourselves and placing our faith in Christ is not a work, only a belief.

However, I agree with the New City Catechism that such thinking does not capture the biblical reality of our salvation that even the faith through which we latch ourselves onto the grace of Christ is a gift from Him through the Holy Spirit as well. While it is true that all men express faith of some sort or another, saving faith is given through the Sprit alone. For all the different religions and belief systems, we believe that there are ultimately only two religions: worship of the Creator or of anything else (Romans 1:25). Jesus called them two paths, one broad and the other narrow. The broad road to destruction is wide enough to appear as those it is multiple paths, but they all have the same end. Atheism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are all variations of the same religion, the religion of worshiping anything other than Yahweh, the Creator Almighty. Thus, all expressions of such faith is ultimately still “following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience–among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:2-3).

That is our natural condition. We are capable of faith but not saving faith. Saving faith, like the grace itself, is a gift of God, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Benjamin Merkle gives a great snapshot of the Greek syntax within that verse:

Historically, there has been some debate as to the precise antecedent of “this”: What, precisely, is not from us but a gift of God? Is it faith, grace, or something else? Although faith is the closest antecedent, the grammatical gender of “faith” and “this” in Greek do not match, and thus “faith” should be ruled out as the antecedent. The same is true for grace. Thus, most scholars and commentators agree that “this” refers to the entire clause. That is, both the grace and the faith we receive that result in salvation are not of our own doing but are gifts from God.

Or as John Chrysostom said of this verse: “Even faith, [Paul] says, is not from us. For if the Lord had not come, if he had not called us, how should we have been able to believe? for how, he says, shall they believe if they have not heard? So even the act of faith is not self-initiated. It is, he says, the gift of God.”

Rather than a block of stumbling, let this truth propel us to marvel even more at our salvation in Christ. If He is the Giver of our saving faith, then He will also surely make our faith a sustaining faith as well. Further, this should add confidence to our proclamation of the gospel rather than hinder it. We should not limit our preaching to only those who seem to have faith. Since faith is a gift, we know that God can give to even the chiefest of sinners, “of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).

In light of this gift, Paul’s doxology is ours as well:

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.