This warm “embrace” metaphorically yet poignantly depicts the sweet tone of faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith echoes Calvin’s language, insisting that the “grace of faith” (WCF 14.1) attunes not only the mind of the believer to the Word of Christ, but also the heart of the believer to the Christ of the Word.

Blessed with the gift of saving faith, the believer is now able to hear what he could not hear before, to believe sincerely what he rejected outrightly. The sheep hear the voice of the One they now know as “my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). Because of the radical change, such active listening streams eagerly and earnestly from the heart.

That is, faith not only listens to the promises of God, it embraces them. John Calvin describes faith this way: “that we do not regard the promises of mercy that God offers as true only outside ourselves, but not at all in us; rather that we make them ours by inwardly embracing them.”[1]

This warm “embrace” metaphorically yet poignantly depicts the sweet tone of faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith echoes Calvin’s language, insisting that the “grace of faith” (WCF 14.1) attunes not only the mind of the believer to the Word of Christ, but also the heart of the believer to the Christ of the Word. As the melodies of grace inform the mind, they resonate sweetly in a willing heart. Faith’s grateful embrace fills the once empty soul with Christ’s unqualified goodness.

To be clear, this faith embrace is not syrupy emotionalism or fleeting emotion, but it can never be characterized by aloofness. Saving faith knows no unstirred sterility, distant respect, or cold appropriation. Saving faith captivates its recipients: “Religion is not limited to one single human faculty [mind, will, emotion] but embraces the human being as a whole.”[2] We are captured by Christ.

As Geerhardus Vos put it beautifully in his sermon on Hosea 14:8,[3] the gospel possesses a power of intimacy and transformation; faith draws the believer into covenant fellowship with God in Christ, so that knowing God is not only intellectual assent, but rather a “sympathetic absorption” into God himself. That is, the power of saving faith goes beyond relishing the benefits we enjoy. It moves us from happiness in the benefits to delight in the Benefactor. We embrace the triune God willingly, and relish his fellowship.

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