The Faith of Jesus by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jan 14, 1904

The Faith of Jesus

By L. A. S.

Of those whom God recognizes as his people in this closing period of time, it is written, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. They have not merely faith in Jesus, but the faith of Jesus.

Jesus, as the son of Joseph and Mary, lived by faith. Through the sorrows and trials of his earthly life he was sustained by the joy that was set before him. He perceived this joy by faith. He knew what the reward would be at the end of the race in no other way than we know it,—by faith in the word of God.

But Jesus passed through hours of darkness, when temptations assailed him. Even to him, perfect as he was in character, there came a time when to his view the outcome of his great contest with the powers of evil was shrouded in obscurity. It was his faith that held him to God in the hour of trial. The following description from “Desire of Ages,” chapter “Calvary,” presents before us the occasion when “the faith of Jesus” was put to the severest test:—

Satan with his fierce temptations wrung the heart of Jesus. The Saviour could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to him his coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell him of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God, that their separation was to be eternal. . . .

At the ninth hour the darkness lifted from the people, but still enveloped the Saviour. It was a symbol of the agony and horror that weighed upon his heart. No eye could pierce the gloom that surrounded the cross, and none could penetrate the deeper gloom that enshrouded the suffering soul of Christ. The angry lightnings seemed to be hurled at him as he hung upon the cross. Then “Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, . . . My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” As the outer gloom settled about the Saviour, many voices exclaimed, “The vengeance of heaven is upon him. The bolts of God’s wrath are hurled at him, because he claimed to be the Son of God.” Many who believed on him heard his despairing cry. Hope left them. If God had forsaken Jesus, in what could his followers trust? . . .

Amid the awful darkness, apparently forsaken of God, Christ had drained the last dregs in the cup of human woe. In those dreadful hours he had relied upon the evidence of his Father’s acceptance heretofore given him. He was acquainted with the character of his Father; he understood his justice, his mercy, and his great love. By faith he rested in him whom it had ever been his joy to obey. And as in submission he committed himself to God, the sense of the loss of his Father’s favor was withdrawn. By faith, Christ was victor.

“The faith of Jesus” is faith that holds the soul to the right in the hour of darkness. And that hour will come to the followers of Christ, as it did to him. The tempter and enemy of souls will not allow our faith to go untested. We need not expect to escape by keeping in the Christian pathway; it is when we are in it, that the devil assails us most fiercely. The hosts of evil will press in darkness upon the mind, darkness that comes from the very depths of the bottomless pit; and with that darkness will come the temptation to doubt, perhaps to doubt the very things we have believed most, and then to distrust God and murmur against him. And in that hour the faith of Jesus, if we have it, will save us from falling; and that alone will be the anchor of the soul. We are human, and “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

In the climax of the great controversy that has now come, in the hour of temptation that shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth; in the time when the great adversary shall work with “all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness,” we shall be kept only by the faith of Jesus, which held on to God when all was darkness, and his Father appeared to have forsaken him. Let us be sure that we have indeed “the faith of Jesus.” L. A. S.