Saving faith is not mere knowledge of Scripture or of Christ. Treating it like that is like treating a prescription as a medicine, or a signpost as a destination. It fails to see the difference between two types of knowledge: A detached “outward” knowledge and a personally involved “inward” knowledge.

C.S. Lewis found this distinction indispensable and illustrated it in his essay titled “Meditation in a Toolshed.” In this excerpt he wrote:

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What we see depends upon where we are standing. Any person can learn something about Christianity from the outside, e.g., by reading the Bible, studying what Christians believe, and examining the life of Christ. These are good things. It is important to remember, however, that a Christian is someone who has been born again, and knows God personally as Savior and Lord “from the inside.”