On prayer, faith, and Jesus Christ

"Just as the bitten Israelites were healed by a look of faith, so the sinner may be saved by looking to Christ by faith. Saving faith is not some difficult and meritorious work which man must perform so as to give him a claim upon God for the blessing of salvation. It is not on account of our faith that God saves us, but it is through the means of our faith. It is in believing we are saved. It is like saying to a starving man, He that eats of this food shall be relieved from the pangs of hunger, and be refreshed and strengthened. Eating is no meritorious performance, but, from the nature of things, eating is the indispensable means of relieving hunger. To say that when a man believes he shall be saved, is just to say that the guiltiest of the guilty, and the vilest of the vile, is welcome to salvation, if he will but receive it in the only way in which, from the nature of the case, it can be received, namely, by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which means believing what God has recorded concerning His Son in the Holy Scriptures. The moment a sinner does that he is saved, just as God said to Moses, 'It shall come to past that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.'"

Arthur W. Pink, Exposition of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: ZondervanPublishing House, 1975), 133-34

Often times today in our Church the cross is diverted and distorted. The pastor, either willingly or not, has contrued the gospel into something else. Today, salvation is mainly the means of a prayer or by doing some type of good, or even negative work - such as viewing myself as evil. However, the truth is the gospel is the Cross, salvation is the means of the Cross. Christ righteousness is imputed by faith alone in His person and in His work done actively and passively. Arthur Pink has done a great job in ordering Soteriology rightly. As he says, "So the sinner is saved by looking to Christ by faith." Nothing less and nothing more.