Enthusiasm is a word that comes from the idea of being possessed by a God. Luther used the word to describe people who want Christ without the Word. He says they seek God where He does not want to be found, and refuse to find Him where He wants to found.
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God {of Christ]”. Romans 10
Here is an example of how the old preachers identified and outlined a text so it could be preached – that’s the hearing part.
I. Where it comes from. Ministry of Christ was not yelling, “Have faith, have faith,” from place to place (Mark2:2). “He preached the Word unto them” (Luke9:6), and Acts 8:4: “They departed, preaching the Gospel.” They brought something, not vague mouthings and empty phrases. With no Word of Christ, there is no Word of God, and vice versa. You cannot offer the two separately. No Word, no faith.
II. What comes first-faith or the Word? First comes what Paul invites the mind to think through in v. 14: How can anybody believe something he hasn’t even heard about? The Word comes first. Again, first the Word. This needs emphasis. The Word does not drop out of the sky (v. 14). It is not self-manufactured inner inspiration. Enthusiasm. It comes from outside yourself to your Inside. -“The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the Word of faith, which we preach” (v. 8). The Word produces faith. Not as though the Word were only a stimulator, a hypo that sends you into faith. Nor is the Word an aircraft carrier’s catapult that whips you off into the wide blue sky. Rather the catapulting power is built right in. The Word that transforms stays on for further forming, it never leaves. You do not switch depots. Faith comes from, and runs on, the same rail, which is the Word. Faith is a smooth express, with never so much as a click; an imperceivable weld in the silence of the heavenly foundry. Faith does not believe one thing and talk another. From the inside it moves to the Outside. -“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (v. 9). The Easter Christ is handled with the mouth in words. That is in summary the crucial fact, doctrine. The Word that converts is the same that talks. Faith has not brought God down to earth and up again (context); faith has but to accept the redemption as an accomplished fact.
F.A. Hertwig Jr.
