Faith Itself Is a Gift of God

So thoroughly did the apostles realize that everything which concerns salvation was given them by the Lord that they even asked for faith itself to be granted by the Lord, saying, “Add faith to us.” For they did not imagine that it could be gained by free will, but believed that it would be bestowed by the free gift of God. Finally, the Author of man’s salvation teaches us how feeble and weak and insufficient our faith would be unless it were strengthened by the Lord’s help, when he says to Peter: “Simon, Simon, see, Satan has desired to have you, so that he may sift you like wheat. But I have prayed to my Father that your faith may not fail.” And another, finding this happening in his own case, and seeing his faith driven by the waves of unbelief onto the rocks that would cause a fearful shipwreck, asks the same Lord for help for his faith, saying, “Lord, help my unbelief.” [a]

So thoroughly, then, did those apostles and the men in the gospel realize that everything good is brought to perfection by the help of the Lord, and so little did they imagine that they could keep their faith unharmed by their own strength or free will, that they prayed for it to be helped or granted to them by the Lord. And if in Peter’s case the Lord’s help was needed so that his faith might not fail, who will be so presumptuous and blind as to imagine that he needs no daily help from the Lord in order to keep it? Especially since the Lord himself has made this clear in the gospel, saying: “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me.” And again: “For without me you can do nothing.”

How foolish and wicked it is, then, to credit any good action to our own diligence and not to God’s grace and help is clearly shown by the Lord’s saying, which lays down that no one can show the fruits of the Spirit without his inspiration and his working together with us. For “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” And Zechariah too says: “For whatever is good is his, and what is excellent is from him.” And so the blessed apostle consistently says: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”