Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/77

 that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."

Faith is not simply giving mental assent to facts, it is primarily surrendering to a Person. This is what it means to believe on Christ, and anything short of this will neither give us knowledge of the truth nor make us free.

Then following this attitude toward Christ, the believer evidences his faith by continuing in His Word, by which he comes into experiential knowledge of its truth and its meaning.

Then coming to know the truth by experiencing it through faith, he is where the Son of God Himself becomes his freedom. And there is no other freedom. It is in the experience of Himself, not in an intellectual assent to facts about Him, that He makes us free by becoming the way to God for us, the truth about God to us, and the life of God in us.

It is therefore only he whom the Son sets free who is free indeed, for freedom from the curse of sin by the experience of Christ as Saviour, and freedom from the blindness of error by the experience of Christ as Truth incarnate, is the only freedom there is.

When the Word says, therefore, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin," it contemplates both the object of faith and the cause of forfeited freedom. For the Holy Spirit came to convict men of sin because they believe not on Christ. Unfaith in Christ is therefore the essence of sin. And sin is bondage, not freedom. Scripture describes the unbeliever in Christ as the bondslave of sin, held in chains of darkness and error. This is why it is impossible either to know even natural truth in any adequate way, or to be able to untangle