Faith (continued)

Big idea

Summary

Lewis warns readers at the outset that this chapter addresses an experience some will not yet recognize, and gives permission to skip it if it means nothing to them, since some Christian teaching only becomes intelligible farther along the road. He then resumes the thread from the previous chapter: a sincere, sustained attempt to live out Christian virtue eventually reveals not incremental progress but outright failure, a personal 'bankruptcy' that cannot be produced by merely repeating the idea but must be lived through.

He is careful to say this discovery cannot be manufactured by anxious self-examination; watching yourself for the moment of surrender is as counterproductive as watching yourself to see if you are falling asleep. The change he describes, from confidence in one's own effort to a settled reliance on Christ, may come suddenly or so gradually that no one could date it, and what matters is the direction of the change rather than any dramatic feeling accompanying it.

The heart of the chapter explains what 'leaving it to God' actually involves: trusting that Christ shares His own perfect obedience with the believer and makes good what is lacking, so that faith is not opposed to effort but redirects it, freeing a person from trying to be saved and instead responding to having already begun to be saved. Lewis illustrates the necessary partnership of faith and action with two caricatured extremes, one that turns good works into a purchase of heaven and one that turns faith into an excuse for sin, rejecting both as failing to be real faith at all.

Lewis closes by admitting that human language breaks down when trying to divide up what God does from what a person does, since God works both outside and within a person in ways no clean 'his part, my part' formula can capture. He ends with a wider claim: that Christianity, though it begins clothed in the language of duty and rule-keeping, ultimately leads somewhere past all of that, toward a state where goodness is no longer even named because attention has shifted entirely to its source.

Key points

• Explains that faith in the higher sense follows only from a real, sustained attempt to practice Christian virtue that ends in discovered failure.
• Insists this 'discovery of bankruptcy' cannot be produced by anxious self-monitoring; recognizing spiritual change often happens only in hindsight.
• Defines 'leaving it to God' as trusting Christ to share His obedience with us and to complete what we lack, not as ceasing to try.
• Uses the image of two blades of a pair of scissors to describe how moral effort and faith in Christ are both necessary and inseparable.
• Rejects two caricatures of Christian teaching: salvation bought through donated good works, and faith used as a license for sin.
• Cites Paul's paradox that we must work out our own salvation even though it is God who works in us, to show that dividing divine and human action cleanly is finally impossible.

Illustrations & analogies

• Lewis compares faith and good works to the two blades of a pair of scissors, neither of which is more essential than the other.
• He compares realizing a spiritual turning point to recognizing, only in hindsight, that one has 'grown up,' since watching for the moment as it happens tends to prevent it.
• He notes that a person anxiously trying to fall asleep by watching for it usually stays awake, as an analogy for why self-conscious searching for the moment of surrender backfires.
• He sketches two parody sects—one that turns charity into a literal cash transaction for salvation, another that treats professed faith as license to 'sin away'—to sharpen what real faith is not.

Notable lines

You must do this. I can't.

C. S. Lewis Book III, Ch. 12 — Faith (continued)

A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge.

C. S. Lewis Book III, Ch. 12 — Faith (continued)

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling

C. S. Lewis Book III, Ch. 12 — Faith (continued)

Related Scripture

• Philippians 2:12-13

For reflection and discussion

1. What does Lewis mean by 'discovering our bankruptcy,' and why does he think it can only come through real effort rather than simply being told about it?
2. How does the image of two scissor blades help you think about the relationship between faith and good actions in your own life?
3. Lewis suggests that real spiritual change is often noticed only in hindsight rather than in the moment. Have you experienced that kind of change?