Faith and Presumption: What's the difference?

A few weeks ago I started teaching Romans to our youth group. I am going verse by verse through the letter, trying to answer questions, and trying to explain in a way that is true to the text and understandable to teenagers. It's difficult.

I have studied this letter for years, but it is amazing how each time something different will catch my attention and demand special focus. Last week this happened with Romans 2:4. "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (ESV) When I read this, a thought came to my mind, and as it did I became a little nauseous. The thought was, "presumption mascarades as faith." I became sick because I began to sense the weight and horror of this thought. The line between faith and presumption is a line that divides life and death. For those who presume, Paul says, "But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." (Romans 2:5 ESV) So it is clear. To have faith is to live. To presume is to die. But presumption pretends to be faith. That's what is so scary.

Presumption can mascarade as faith because it talks like faith, it quotes scripture like faith, and it even lives like faith in some ways. After all, faith at it's core is trust. It is a specific kind of trust that believes that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is sufficient to satisfy God's wrath, bring forgiveness, and make possible our adoption as God's sons and daughters. We are called to a total abandonment of our own attempts to please God and to rest in the finished work of Jesus. Paul was so confident in the Grace of God in the Gospel that some even accused him of a kind of presumption (Romans 3:8). So the line between faith and presumption, though it is a line between life and death, is not an easy line to see.

However, there is a simple principle that will help us determine whether we are presuming upon God's grace or we are trusting in God's grace. Another look at verse 4 will be helpful. "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (ESV emphasis added) God's grace given to us in the Gospel is meant to lead us away from our sin. It is not meant to empower us in our sin. In other words, this is a primary difference between faith and presumption: Faith will lead us to repentance. Presumption will lead us to more sin. If I am going to take my faith seriously I must ask myself this question, "When I consider God's kindness toward me in the Gospel, does it lead me to repent of my sin, or does it make me more comfortable with my sin?" If I repent, then I have true faith. But if I become comfortable with sin, I can be sure that what I have is not faith, it is presumption.