The Reality of Faith and Choices

Although what is commonly believed is that faith can move mountains, no one has seen a mountain move by faith. What if the reason for this is because God has to give the faith to move the mountain in order for the mountain to move at all. The focus thus is not upon faith as a choice, but instead faith as a gift.

Consider the concept of an apple branch being grafted into a different apple tree, so that the new apple tree produces a few types of apples instead of just one. Let us suppose that the old apple tree that the branch came from was Adam, and the old branch drew poison from the ground and formed the apples with the poison (the poison is sin). In order for the old branch to produce good fruit it must be cut off and grafted into a tree that is not poisonous (this is Christ). In this example the faith in Christ is a result of the gardener cutting the branch off of one tree and grafting it into another in order to save the branch.

When people transition from the nature of Adam to the Nature of Christ, what they produce has nothing to do with their choices. God makes the transition, and this changes the will that a person would express. Faith is thus not a result of human decision, but instead it is God's gift.

Faith in Christ is like a new branch grafted into Christ that receives nutrition from him. We can either surrender everything to Christ and believe that we have really accomplished salvation, or we can draw from Christ more and more like drinking in the sap until all the poison (sin) is gone. In the case of transformation by faith surrender is not needed because Christ is doing the work through faith to transform a person. The transformation happens not because a choice is made in judgment of God but because God acted graciously to do what he chooses to do.

Many people think that faith is a result of efforts, choices, and the human will. The problem is that people do not chose what an evangelist will say or do, and the results of what a evangelist says or does either has a saving impact on a person or not. The saving impact is the result of the work of the Holy Ghost, and when God does a work he cannot fail unless he intends to fail prior to starting because he is God.

The point is that if a person is already in Christ, then total surrender to Christ would not harm them at all unless the view of Christ that they surrender to is contrary to what they are already in. If a person surrenders to Christ without any divine influence, then they are just simply expressing the sinful nature of man. The point is that real transformation comes from Christ giving the free gift of faith for salvation.