Salvation Summaries

What is faith?  How is it different from a general belief in God?  

Faith is a very important concept to understand.  If you have faith in the Lord, you’re a believer, or a Christian, and can be assured of going to heaven when you die.  If you don’t, you’re an unbeliever, or not a Christian, and will not go to heaven when you die.

I’m afraid, though, that there are many people who think that they have faith, based upon their impression of what it means, but may not, in reality, have it. As a result, this blog is an in-depth review of this very important term using one book of the Bible (Hebrews) and a dictionary (a whole book could be written on faith using verses from other books in the Bible).  If you read through all of what I have to say, by the end of the blog you should know whether you have faith.

Dictionary

I’ll start with a dictionary’s definition of faith and belief, and then show you what the Bible says about these two concepts.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, belief and faith are synonyms, but they are different too:

• Belief is a feeling that something is true or that something exists.

• Faith is a strong belief or trust in someone or something; a belief in the existence of God.

Comparing these two definitions, we see that faith is a stronger form of belief, and that it moves into trusting in someone or something. In addition, faith seems to involve God, while belief does not necessarily.

Faith in Hebrews 11

According to chapter 11 in Hebrews, which is known by some as the “faith chapter” given its definition and examples of faith, faith is defined as follows (I’ve included three different translations to help us better understand the definition):

• Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (NAS)

• Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (NIV)

• Hebrews 11:1 What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. (NLT)

In verse 1, faith is defined in two different ways, with each having a similar meaning (essentially, the statement after the comma restates the meaning of the statement before the comma, but in a slightly different way).

Thus, faith is the assurance, or being certain, of something you hope will happen.  Faith is also having a conviction in something you can’t see.

Before I summarize these two parts of faith, let’s look at two more word definitions from the dictionary:

• Assurance is the state of being sure or certain about something; a strong and definite statement that something will happen or that something is true.
• Conviction is a strong belief or opinion; the feeling of being sure that what you say or believe is true.

Summary of Faith using Dictionary and Hebrews 11:1

OK, so now we’re in a good position to define faith using Hebrews 11:1-2 and Merriam-Webster’s dictionary.

Faith is a strong belief, or conviction, that God exists, and that His promises will come true.

There is one problem with my summary of faith though.  While it is true according to Hebrews 11:1 and using a dictionary, this summary definition does not take into account other aspects of faith that we find from reading other verses in chapter 11, and elsewhere in Hebrews.  In other words, the summary I’ve provided is true, but not complete.  There is more to faith.

Other aspects of Faith

• Faith involves an earnest desire to seek God, to go towards Him in the hope of receiving an award from Him.  We see this in Hebrews 11:6 which says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

• Faith enables one to understand things that those without faith cannot.  We see this in Hebrews 11:3 which says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”  Without faith, a person is unlikely to believe that the universe was created, or could have been created, by God.

• The conviction that is inherent within a person’s faith affects their behavior, and having faith may enable a person to do things that those without faith cannot.  We see multiple examples of this in chapter 11. By faith, Noah prepared an ark; by faith, Abraham went to a foreign place to live; by faith, Abraham offered up his son Isaac; by faith, Moses refused to be called the son of Pharoh’s daughter and chose to endure ill-treatment than the pleasures of sin; by faith, Moses passed through the Red Sea; by faith, David conquered kingdoms, etc…  These people all did something that they could not have otherwise done without faith.

Other Points about Faith

• Faith is required to please God (Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him).

• Faith is how one gains God’s approval (Hebrews 11:39 And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised).

• Faith is not simply in God the Father, it is also in God the Son, or Jesus, and by extension, in God the Holy Spirit.  This can be seen in Hebrews 1:3, where Jesus is “the radiance of His (God the Father’s) glory an the exact representation of His nature.”  It can also be seen in Hebrews 1:8, where God the Father refers to God’s Son, Jesus, as God (“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”).  As a result, and I know that this may sound harsh to some, but religions such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons who reduce Jesus to someone other than God, would not be preaching the same type of faith found in the Bible.

• As we will see from a review of other New Testament books, faith appears to be a gift from God, and thus is not something a person earns.  Belief, on the other hand, is not a gift and instead something a person does.

One final comment

According to the book of Hebrews, if you have faith in the Lord, you are to live your life by faith. This means your entire life – personal and private. In other words, there is no such thing as living your personal life – in secret and at home – with faith, but living your professional life  – at work – without faith.

Conclusion

So, what does it mean to have faith in the Lord, according to the book of Hebrews?

• You strongly believe, and thus have no doubt, that God exists even though you cannot see Him.
• You strongly believe, and thus have no doubt, that what the Bible says about God is true.
• You strongly believe, and thus have no doubt, that the Bible’s promises (of salvation, eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, prophecies, etc.) are true.
• You believe that God is not simply God the Father, but that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are also God.
• Because of your strong belief, or conviction, in God, you earnestly seek Him (this does mean that you earnestly seek Him every day, but that you did at least at one point in your life when you came to Him and became saved).
• Because of your conviction in God and the truth of His promises, you commit to live your life for Him (similarly, this does not mean that you do this every day, but that you did at least at one point in your life when you became saved).

If you meet all of the above criteria, you can have assurance that you have faith in the Lord. And by having faith, you are both approved by God and able to please Him (note, in a future book, I will talk about the source of faith, and how faith is a gift from God rather than something a person earns).

If you met all of the above at one time but are currently not meeting the last two, you still have faith, but your faith may be weak or weakening.

If you do not meet (or have not met) all of these criteria, you likely do not have the type of faith that is found in the Bible. Without real faith, a person is not approved by God, and unable to please Him.  The same would be true for a person who only has a general belief in God, since a general belief in God is not synonymous with faith.