top of page
Writer's pictureBible Brian

Faith gets you no credit


Some Calvinists like to argue that if our faith is what saves us, we actually get some credit for our salvation. There is even one Calvinist website (I forget the name) that takes you through several 2 choice answers that ultimately force you to accept the TULIP acronym.


Is this a valid argument? Is it true that if our faith activates our salvation, somehow we are "helping" God? Let us apply a similar logic. I happen to be a Biblical Creationist. I believe that, based on the chronogenealogies found in Scripture, God created the human race roughly 6,000 years ago. Do I receive any credit for that creation just for having believed it? Of course not! Adam and Eve lived and died long before I was born. How, then, could my faith get me credit for their creation?


In the same way, the work of salvation was finished at the cross. There, Jesus became propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). My faith did not bring Jesus down from Heaven. My faith did not bring Him from Mary's womb. My faith did not raise Him to adulthood. My faith did not cause the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be cleansed, the deaf to hear, the dead to rise, or the poor to have the Gospel preached to them. My faith did not lead Jesus to the cross, did not drive the nails through His wrists, did not thrust a spear through His side, and did not cause Him to cry out "It is finished". And my faith surely did not lay Him in a rich man's tomb, nor did it fold the grave clothes, nor did it roll the stone away. My faith did none of that, nor can an unbeliever's lack of faith change any of it.


Faith gets you credit for nothing. At least, not deservedly. When you believe God, it is accounted to you for righteousness, but only because of everything He has done. If only one person ever went to Heaven, or only one person ever went to Hell, nothing would have been done differently. It's all Jesus! The argument that non-Calvinistic views of faith somehow detract from God's role and give any credit to Christians is utterly fallacious.

10 views
bottom of page