Christians should desire a strong faith in Christ and his promises; it is biblical for God’s people to pray and strive for robust faith in the Lord.  However, our faith is imperfect since we are not yet fully sanctified.  We struggle with doubts, fears, questions, and sometimes we lack assurance.  Thankfully, the Bible doesn’t teach that we need perfectly strong faith in Christ to be justified and saved.  Thankfully, even an imperfect and weak faith saves because it trusts in a perfect and strong Savior.  Thomas Brooks said it this way:

1) A weak faith doth as much justify and as much unite a man to Christ as a strong faith.  It gives a man as much title to and interest in Christ as the strongest faith in the world.  A weak hand may receive a pearl as well as the strong hand of a giant.  Faith is a receiving of Christ (John 1.12).

2) The promises of eternal happiness and blessedness are not made over to the strength of faith, but to the truth of faith; not to the degrees of faith, but the reality of faith.  No man that is saved is saved on account of the strength of his faith, but on account of the truth of his faith.

3) The weakest faith shall grow stronger and stronger.  A weak believer shall go on from faith to faith.  Christ is the finisher as well as the author of our faith (Rom. 1:17; Heb. 12.2).  He that hath begun a good work will perfect it (Phil. 1:6).

4) A little faith is faith, as a spark of fire is fire, a drop of water is water, a little star is a star, a little pearl is a pearl.  Remember this, that the least measure of true faith will bring thee to salvation as well as the greatest measure of faith.  A great faith will yield a man a heaven here, a little faith will yield him a heaven hereafter.

Those are encouraging words that remind us that Jesus saves anyone who believes in him – people like the woman who sneaked up on him to just touch his robe and like the man who said, “Lord I believe; help my unbelief!”  It would be a distortion of the gospel to say that only a strong faith is saving faith.  The truth of the gospel is that because Christ is a strong Savior, even a weak faith saves.

The above quotes (edited and summarized) can be found in Brooks’ Heaven on Earth,215-216.

Rev. Shane Lems is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and services as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hammond, Wis. This article appeared on his bog and is used with permission.