Faith Or Works?

Am I Saved? If there is a more important question a Christian can ask, I can’t think of it. Some people struggle with this issue because it’s really not that clear from the Bible who is saved or how you know if you are saved. While some passages make it sound so easy and faith-based (e.g. John 3:16) others make it sound so hard and works based (Matthew 25:31-46 The Sheep & Goats). We are also constantly bombarded with do’s and don’ts and moral obligations - how does it all work and fit together?

The fundamental confusion lies therein that the human mind cannot conceive of reward without effort. If we hear that salvation is free we naturally begin looking for a catch and presume that the moral standards of the Bible are exactly that catch. We have a deep sense of justice. In many churches we hear a mixed message: believers are saved but they had better do good in order to maintain that state. This is, I think, a distortion of the image of a tree used to explain the relationship between faith and works.

How Do Works Fit In?

The Bible says repeatedly that we are saved by faith, not by works, and that good works are like the fruit of a tree: they don’t give salvation but are the visible effects of salvation. Just as hanging apples on a dead tree does not make it a good living one, doing good works does not make a person saved but shows that they are saved. As Christians we should be working on our faith and letting the works spring forth from that instead of trying to live outside-in by putting works first. That way we can also be sure they are God’s works.

While works are a sign of salvation, they are not a sure sign. Essentially a person’s salvation is not something we can pronounce on with certainty. An evangelist once said we should stop telling people they are saved and start telling them how to be saved.

Encounters With God

I know two types of Christian: those who have encountered God and those who haven’t. Typically I would also draw the line here between “real” Christians and nominals but I’m no longer so sure. The Bible doesn’t seem to make this distinction, it talks about believing the Gospel, believing in Jesus and I think this belief is the key and far more weighty than we have perhaps been led to believe. It does however talk about being born-again and this gift of new life is something I at least experienced at conversion.

Easy Believism

At the end of a Joel O’Steen preaching there is a really cheap clip in which he asks the viewer to pray the sinner’s prayer and tells them they are saved. I suspect that most people who do this remain fundamentally unchanged and are therefore not saved. It’s like telling an Himalayan Sherper that this piece of cloth (a parachute) will save his life if he jumps off a cliff. He’ll still be a sceptic after hearing that. He will proceed from scepticism to intellectual assent once he’s seen it done. The real question comes when he has to jump. This is when it get’s personal, real, existential. Salvation is much harder to believe - what does it take to convince a person that a just God will forget all their sins and count them holy? If they really believe God is just and holy they will have a hard time with that and we can’t really illustrate it.

Hardcore Belief

As we all know, there is no shortage of good advice in this world. The shortage is of people who follow it. There is a sort of 3 step progression from 1) nodding to 2) mentally believing to 3) believing and practising and most of us stop at step 1 or 2. Yes, it is better to give than to receive we say, but we still grab, push and shove. It’s clear that we don’t really believe that proposition. Yes God will look after me we say but I’m still going to buy lots of insurance, stay in a nice neighbourhood, and secure my life as much as possible. Hardcore belief is when we practice principles and “Carry no purse, nor wallet, nor sandals” on our journey out “as lambs among wolves”.

Conclusion

I think that is the answer: belief is “harder” than we think and no amount of works will make up for it. However, when we really believe it will change how we behave and this is the evidence to ourselves and others. Because believing is a process, we believe more and more as we trust more and more, we should see improving behaviour, we should be constantly changing. Thus “I am saved” is not a past event but the beginning of a process called “I am being saved”. It’s both, as Paul tells us in Philippians 2:12-13 - God is working in us as we do works resulting from our salvation.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: Am I in this process of change whereby my increasing faith is manifesting itself in improved behaviour. Am I more loving and compassionate towards others? Is God at work in me?

Related Posts

• Faith Which Saves
• Defining Faith

Ken Samples asks the poignant question:

Is it more reasonable to believe that the universe came into existence from nothing by nothing or that, as the Bible says, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’?

I would think the answer is obvious and the supposed reasons for rejecting this conclusion are:

1. Who created God?
2. Which God supposedly did it?

Before I address these questions I think we must make clear that the probability of a universe popping into existence from nothing and by nothing is exactly 0. Not, some-small-number which over eons of time made the improbable probable but zero and at heart we all know this, as do all scientists. Things have causes, even if we can’t find them.

This means, however improbable we think He might be (usually based on the misguided assumption that God evolved or was created by something even more complex) God is infinitely more probable than the fat zero probability we have for a causeless universe.

The question “Who made God” is perhaps an honest one coming from a child but anyone who has bothered to consider what is meant by “God” will quickly realise that the question is nonsense - on par with “who made Tuesday” or “how many cabbages make a sunset?”. These questions exhibit a fundamental ignorance of what the concept of God is supposed to represent. Among other things, God is eternal. This means having no beginning or end and thus no prior cause. This does not prove that God exists but it does mean that the question “Who made the eternal” is nonsensical.

The question “is anything eternal” is universally answered “Yes” by atheists and theist thinkers for the simple reason that from nothing comes nothing. While atheists have always maintained the natural universe is this eternal recent cosmological discoveries have rendered this untenable - our universe is finite in age and began with the Big Bang which science can describe but not explain because of the breakdown of physical laws at the singularity.

It therefore appears reasonable and natural to conclude that the “something” which is eternal cannot be natural since nature cannot cause itself if it does not yet exist to do it.

We simply cannot avoid a transcendent reality in order to explain our universe. However this argument alone does not necessarily point to one God or another except to indicate that God must be outside of time and space, transcendent and eternal. Any creator God not matching this description must be rejected.

Related Posts:

• The Cosmological Argument
• A Brief Comparison of World-Views
• The Naturalist Fallacy

Although we all seek simple truths, reality turns out to be not so simple and we learn to be suspicious of fast, sweeping generalisations. Questions like “Are humans good or bad?” may be answered simply by rhetoricians but upon closer analysis we begin to recognise that all humans are both good and bad. “Is nature our friend or enemy?” - well it feeds us and sustains us but it can also cause death and pain. The more we search, the more we discover that life, history indeed reality is paradoxical.

Pascal noted that humans are constantly wondering if they are great or wretched and that religions generally take either one of these views. Christianity however explains the paradox that we are “neither angel nor beast” - that we were made in the image of a perfect God and fell from grace and glory. Our only hope at greatness is to recognise our fallenness:

Man’s greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness….but there is a greatness in knowing one is wretched.

Further paradoxes which Christianity embraces:

• Loving our enemies
• Giving is better than receiving
• God is unreachable but reaches down to us
• The God who judges is the God who pays the penalty

A paradox is something which appears counter-intuitive and thus, we feel, wrong but upon closer inspection proves true. Motorcyclists know that you must counter steer in order to negotiate a corner, a fact which no non-biker would believe: you have to steer left to go right. Further examples from science are the Wave-particle duality of light or the fact that “solid” matter is mostly empty space (99.99..% nothingness). A paradox is not a contradiction but an apparent contradiction. According to logic 2 contrary claims cannot both be true at the same time in the same way.

We therefore have grounds for avoiding simplistic explanations and crediting theories which appear contradictory but best explain the evidence especially given the fact that life and our universe remains in a fine balance between static death and chaos.

If there’s one thing in this world which is in no short supply it’s good advice. Long ago, I assume, good advice was something precious and rare and accessible only to those with wise parents, grandparents or gurus and carefully preserved. Nowadays we can all, fairly easily, subscribe to famous quotes via RSS or get forwarded chain letters with all manner of tips and motivation, buy self-help books and even read wise sayings from ancient or distant religious teachers…

…and yet, somehow we are unaffected. We read a wise saying, think “that is so true”, nod meaningfully and click or page on to the next news story. Which brings me to the next item in apparently endless supply today: Bad News. This week has been particularly full of natural disaster (China, Burma), xenophobic violence (South Africa), general mayhem (Iraq) and hunger (Somalia, Zimbabew, Haiti etc.). But this is business as usual and even local papers are filled with stories of accidents, rapes, murders and hooliganism. No News may be Bad News but apparently so is All News. But even bad news, really bad news, fails to affect us. We page on to the adverts and look for stuff to buy…

As far as I can tell, good advice does not change the world, and neither does bad news because it fails to move the heart, the center of a persons being. What I do know is that good news has and does change people and lives because of the power of hope which it brings. The word “Gospel” is just a synonym for “Good News” and if you understand the difference betwen Good News and Good Advice you understand the difference between Christianity and all other religions.

Good advice is information about something good and beneficial you should do but have not yet done. Telling a ship’s captain to “mind the icebergs” would be good advice. Good news is information about something good and beneficial which has already happened like “the ship arrived safely”. The tragedy is that many have turned the Gospel (Good News) into a religion (Good Advice) and modern people know good advice is cheap and easily available without sitting through a sermon on Sunday and have given up seeking true good news as a dream, some sort of wish-fulfillment.

But Jesus of Nazareth proved once and for all that ultimate Goodness (Love) is also ultimate reality (God) and thus we have reason to hope. This is not some warm, fuzzy, feel-good hope but a real, evidence based, experiential hope in a person who said he was God’s Son and the solution to all our problems and whose miraculous ressurection provided the final proof of these outrageous claims.

If you think you need to make a huge leap of faith to believe that Jesus existed and is accurately reflected in the New Testament then think again. Don’t let a TV mini-series or popular pseudo-wisdom hide the real facts of the matter from you. The historical evidence is reliable and undeniable - Jesus was not just a sage but the Son of God and the future King of all who died to pay your debt and save you from destruction. He’s done it all (that’s the Good News) and all you have to do is accept the gift he offers today.

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
—Michael Crichton

Have you ever noticed how few western people today profess concrete beliefs about reality? Theories of our origins and purpose are discussed and we call them “interesting”, “innovative” or “dangerous” without caring too much about their truth value. “Truth” has become politically incorrect - even seen as divisive and dangerous. Uncertainty is equated with humility - “One cannot really know anyway”.

Whilst modern thinkers (products of the Enlightenment) embraced truth, reason and certainty, we now live in the backlash of this age of certainty. The post-modern mind repels all forms of certainty and prefers a safe sceptical vantage point from which to criticise travellers. We are in an age where uncertainty and confusion are the order of the day fuelled by a flood of conflicting messages, theories and information.

To survive, most people have become practical and try to live comfortably without rocking the boat (docility). Truth has become unimportant, paling in comparison to things like comfort and pleasure - sometimes rhetorically called “peace”. Although humans need and desire certainty we have concluded that it’s easier to doubt or scoff than to affirm and be criticised.

Ironically this Post-Modern mindset is paradoxical:

1. It is certain that nothing is certain
2. It holds as true that nothing is true
3. It criticises world views as if it were not also a world view
4. It holds all views as products of culture except it’s own

One could sum up this relativist thinking in the following terms:

1. Confused - Self contradictory
2. Hypocritical - Employing a double standard
3. Unreasonable - Employing reason selectively
4. Pragmatic - If it works, do it

I see the pendulum has swung again: where humanity has in the past raced after false truths and absolutes (to the right) we are now far back on the left denying all truths and absolutes. Both extremes fail the Truth Test:

• Coherence - Does it make logical sense?
• Correspondence - Does it accurately describe reality?

However, we all live as though some things are true: even the relativist looks both ways before crossing the street. To know something is illusory or untrue we must have some idea of what is true or at least acknowledge that truth does exist. Otherwise, the claim of “untrue” makes no sense - without real truth there can be no lies.

Ultimately, reality does not have to be nice to be true (just look at nature), nor do we have the right to affirm as true that which brings the most pleasure as if we could equate “truth” with “utility”. One does hope that absolute reality is good and indeed the Christian vision affirms this. The world is a corruption with glimses and hints of the ultimate glorious and good purpose. The final judgement and seperation of the good from the bad is the ultimate mercy and righteous act.

The word judgement is very unpopular and most people agree with Jesus that it is wrong to judge. However the idea of judgement is intimately tied to the concept of “justice” which we all agree is a good thing. Indeed many have seen that the way to the “world peace” we all crave is first “world justice”.

Plato spends an entire book analysing what is and what is not justice and comes to the conclusion that it is to “mind your own business”. I would say justice is the appropriate response and relation to the world and people. When Goodness is sought after and admired and Evil is abhorred and fought then we are acting justly.

The Good - When we approve of a good action, admire a beautiful sunset or prize clean water we are responding appropriately and rightly and thus doing the object justice. The Bad - Likewise when we condemn evil actions, avoid corruption and disorder we respond rightly. The Ugly - The problems start when we assume our judgement is objective and proceed to condemnation. Because we are fallible and cannot know all the facts and motivation we would always be mistaken to condemn a person for an action.

To think or form an opinion about someone or something is to judge (evaluate) them and this is not necessarily bad for it enables us to relate to them. Wayne Dyer says

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

But we cannot help judging and we canot help doing it according to appearances because that is all we have and we cannot suspend judgement indefinitely. Reason and society compells us to analyse and make a best guess but we should be charitable and hold our judgements as tentative because of the limits of our knowledge.

Summary:

1. Justice is important
2. Justice requires judgement
3. We all judge
4. Our judgements are subjective
5. Only an omniscient being can judge objectively

 

Christianity, as the name reveals, is about Christ at it’s core. If you understand Christ you get it. Christ is important because he sheds light on the most important questions a person can ask: namely, as to identity, value and purpose. Christ is unique because he does not just shed light and point to truth but embodies it - the message is the messenger.

Wise men debated identity, value and purpose for centuries but it was only with Jesus that their came an answer which was not from men and which was personal. Jesus says if you know who you are (identity) you will understand why you exist (purpose) and thus be in a position to perceive your own value.

Jesus’ life, death and resurrection confirm unambiguously that we were created by God, like God and for God. Each of us is thus valuable to God in terms of how we meet our individual purpose. Although the world will value people impersonally with a performance-based rating, God made the diversity we see and each person has a specific purpose. We cannot compare a handicapped person to a football star: each may be missing or fulfilling their purpose and only God can know this. Jesus says we are mistaken to judge the worth of others and calls us only to love them and help them find and fulfil their purpose (inter-dependence).

Yet how shall we discover our identity and personal purpose? By personally knowing the One who made us and can tell us. But God is distant and inaccessible in our natural state. Yet Jesus explains that he himself is ”The Way”. With Jesus we can be (re-)united with our Creator who can give us identity and purpose.

How does this work? God is spirit, our natural state can only see his natural creation. We must have a spirit breathed into us in order to communicate and experience God - we have to become new, spiritual creatures - a new kind of life. Jesus said he himself is ”The Life” which means that we must receive him in order to receive this spiritual life.

How do you receive Jesus, a person? Well, we receive guests by welcoming them into our homes, friends by welcoming them into our personal lives, our spouse by welcoming them into our beds and Jesus by welcoming him into our inner most being - our heart. We have to find our most sacred place, our control-centre where decisions are made and our will resides and say to Jesus: come in, you are welcome and wanted here.

What happens next? We are born into a new kind of life because Jesus, the Life, is in us. This life is spiritual and eternal and changes us radically on the inside. We are no longer enemies and strangers to God but like his own children because his Son is united with us. We are like his daughter in law and the image of marriage is used to describe the bond which cannot be broken.

Now, equipped with new life, unrestricted access to God we remain only to discover more and more who God is, who we are and what we are to do. We find our life consists not in obeying laws or meeting people’s expectations but in listening to the God who is there, in us, teach us individually how to live and love successfully. This personal coaching reveals our true self and calling and leads to peace and fulfilment in life which no impersonal philosophy or religion can give.

How liberating that ultimate Truth is a person and not a principle! Christianity is about Christ connecting us personally to God who comes to be with us and in us to help us live life to the fullest and show us who and why we are. The adventure begins!

1. Because of science

The majority of wealthy modern people are practical atheists - living as though God did not exist - perhaps without actively considering why they do this. Here are some common reasons people give for being atheists or agnostics:

Many people have some vague idea that Science has disproved and replaced God. Because we now understand the world we don’t need to invoke God to explain things. This assumes that God was in fact invented to explain the world and science has made Him redundant. History tells a different tale and the fall of religion with the progress of science has yet to materialise.

Christians believe that the universe is God’s creation in the same way a painting is the work of an artist. We marvel at the strokes and, with analysis, understand more about how it was done. However, even with a perfect understanding and lots of scratching around we won’t find the painter under the paint. We may learn something about the artist’s character and motive but He’s not part of the painting.

Science points to God in it’s most fundamental laws and it’s most complex processes - watch out for pseudo-science: the painting did not pop into existence for no reason and beautifully paint itself.

2. Because it appears intellectual and modern

We like to believe that new ideas are better ones and God belongs to old-school thinking. However new ideas are often published and broadcast because they are innovative not because they are good whilst old ideas survive because they’ve stood the test of time.  New ideas come and go. The bright future promised by modern atheism’s Founding Fathers (e.g. Marx, Nietzche) has failed to materialise. People today are atheists not because of conviction but from indifference, distraction and confusion accelerated by mass media. Truth is not a democracy. Test the message.

3. Because everyone else is

Most practical atheists today are not bad folk and feel they are good enough to cover their bases in case God shows up. They assume God is congenial will accept at least 50% of his creatures into heaven and assure themselves (with sideways glances) that they’re doing OK - “At least I’m not like them!”. This whiter-than-thou thinking is sheep mentality which is comfortable but dangerous as they enjoy the social infrastructure laid down by believers oblivious to it’s erosion.

4. Because it’s liberating

It appears that atheism liberates in denying ultimate authority because that liberates humans to self rule. Is that a good thing? How are we doing at that? And who should rule - does might make right? Which ideas about society should be implemented (enforced) as policy? Atheism tends to breeds anarchy or despotism - twin evils in which some human or group of humans enslave the rest.

5. Because religion is …

Bad? Unnecessary? Boring? Incoherent? Violent? Oppresive? Repulsive? Well, so are many forms of atheism but this sort of argument is irrelevant because religion is not the issue. You can be a religious atheist or a child of God who shuns religion (like Jesus) - the issue is ultimately how you relate to your Creator by whom and for whom you were made because this relationship shapes your life here and your eternity.

6. Because it’s the default position

It’s debatable whether people are by nature atheists or theists. The fact that all societies recognise a god seems to point to the latter. Nevertheless, we need not remain atheists if we were born that way just as we grow from ignorance to understanding and progress from milk to solids. Our modern lifestyle feeds, distracts and desensitises us to our basic need for purpose and relation to our heavenly Father yet we must break these chains.

7. Because God is…

Bad? A bully? Unjust? Improbable? The God you don’t believe in you haven’t met yet. God is the perfect loving being knows you and who wants to spend eternity with you - He would and did die to catch your attention and give you a chance at accepting His offer. Forget the cliches and the presentations you have seen - seek Him alone and personally!

Miracles and Proof of God’s Existence

According to pop-Christianity, believing in God is the key to salvation and God wants all to be saved. You might ask, why doesn’t He show up and prove his existence? A couple of minor miracles captured on CNN would be all it takes and the whole televised world could be saved!
Essentially we have:

1. If we could see, we’d believe
2. If we believed, we’d be saved

This logic is fascinating because it’s basic and, in a sense, true but terribly misleading. Why?

1. Because the kind of belief which saves does not come by seeing
2. Because seeing is not always believing

Seeing is not Believing

In any experience which permits doubt, people will believe what they want to believe and not what they see. Any minor miracles would always be doubted and put down to trickery especially if they were only seen on TV. Each of us would personally need to see something amazing, like a dead relative rising up from the grave in order to be truly convinced that something supernatural has happened. However, even then, some of us would later consider the experience a kind of delusion and question our sanity or assumptions (was uncle Fred really dead?).

When Jesus healed a blind man (John 9) the man and his parents were interrogated by the religious authorities and various conspiracy theories were put forward. “The man was not truly blind”, they said. “It’s not the same man!”, “He’s a liar”. The consensus was that Jesus was a sinner and a charlatan and the authorities expelled the man and ultimately lynched Jesus. Seeing is not believing but even if one believes (in this sense) it’s simply not the key to salvation.

Pop-Gospel and Blind Belief

The pop-Gospel is “believe and you are saved” and is interpreted as: blindly believe these (crazy) things and you go to heaven instead of hell. Sounds ludicrous, as if God somehow prizes intellectual dishonesty above all other virtues. Surely God prizes people who question things (skeptics) and try to live a good life (moralists) above this cheap nonsense?

True Gospel and Personal Trust

True Gospel Christianity is radically different from other religions and worldviews. Christians are neither naive nor moralists and don’t only have belief in a set of propositions but uniquely and critically trust in a person. The oft quoted John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”. The preposition “in” (Greek eis) is not accidental and the word “belief” (Greek pisteuo) goes way beyond a mere nod of a head.

To believe in someone is to be convinced that they are something good and true and worthy of our faith. When a daughter says to her father “I believe in you” she is saying “I trust you, I know you are capable, faithful and reliable”. When we are called to believe in Jesus we are called to place our trust in Him - believing his words is part of that trust but this kind of personal trust goes beyond intellectual assent of his teachings. Thus Ghandi, who thought the Sermon on the Mount beautiful and true even if Jesus never lives, was emotionally and intellectually engaged by Jesus’ teaching and nature but not personally receptive to Jesus as a person.

Jesus makes it particularly clear in Matthew 7 when he speaks of judgement day and people being separated into heaven and hell based not on their belief but on whether He, Jesus, knew them personally (”I never knew you. Depart from me,”). He radically explains that,

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven

What has this all got to do with God’s hiding? We’ve said that God wants all people saved and that trust in His Son is the key. We’ve seen that miracles are not necessarily the best way to gain this trust. At best God could win our intellectual assent “Yes, you are powerful”, He could win our minds forcefully by proving his power and existence once and for all but is that the key to our salvation?

Salvation and do we want it?

Salvation is the point in a person’s life where they are rescued from the natural fate of death and brought into a new life which is from, in and for God with the promise of an eternity with Him. Imagine the person who has just seen proof of God’s existence: he’s seen the power but he’s also thought about the consequences of Christianity being true. God exists, He created me, He’s personal and just. Now, “How does God see me? I’m not such a bad person. Wait, God knows all I’ve done? He expects better of me? He demands my obedience? I must hand over my freedom to this sort of tyrant? Give me liberty or give me death!” It has been said that those who reject God would find heaven hell and not enter willingly.

Winning our Hearts

The point is that God may win our minds with miracles, perhaps even our approval with blessings but our hearts are trickier and require special treatment. His true aim is to win our hearts and as any lover knows, you can’t buy or force love because it is not love unless it’s given freely. No show of power will win our hearts as much as God patiently, progressively and lovingly revealing Himself to those who seek him whilst hiding his glory and power from those who do not seek him. God knows his face is terror to the proud and that people must first be humbled before they can look at Him. He knows that pride cannot break pride and that true humility humbles. He also knows that no love is greater than that which will die for a loved one.

The First Fruits

Thus the stage is set for God to descend to earth as a baby, to a poor family, in a backwards part of the world. A Nazarene man teaches, heals, serves, suffers and dies and the world goes on. The grave is empty and, for 40 days he is sighted. Many see, some believe. For the believers the world changes and life is never the same again. Their hearts are won. They are the first fruits. How can we moderns hear this and fail to be captivated and be left cold? Surely we are blinded! This picture of boundless love and self-sacrifice has the power to transform yet we pass on by.

Conclusion

God hides from those who are unwilling and unable to see him. He wants to woo us and win our affection. If we respond to the light we have, he progressively reveals Himself in a process only limited by our desire to know Him more. Our loving but shy God hides from those who do not wish to see Him. One day every eye will see and every knee will bow but not every heart will rejoice.

More Than Belief

Faith must be one of the most important concepts in Christianity. After all, salvation is by faith alone as Paul repeatedly tells us. Jesus himself brings the good news that we can know God by faith in Him (Jesus) without doing anything difficult. But what is faith? Is it “blind belief” in things we can’t see or test? How do we get this faith which brings eternal life?

The kind of faith Jesus speaks of is more than just accepting a proposition, it’s about accepting a person, Jesus, on his terms. Ken Boa explains:

But faith is more than intellectual assent; it is personal reception. God does not call us merely to believe a set of doctrines but to trust in a person.

Ken has also said elsewhere: Christianity is a relationship not a religion and it’s personal not philosophical.

Faith, Fidelity, Marriage

We speak of a spouse being unfaithful or betraying trust to their partner. Peter Kreeft echos Paul when he says that Faith in Jesus is like a marriage to God:

No religion outside Judaism and Christianity ever knew of such an intimate relationship with God as “faith.” Faith means not just belief but fidelity to the covenant, like a marriage covenant. Sin is the opposite of faith, for sin means not just vice but divorce, breaking the covenant.  In Judaism, as in Christianity, sin is not just moral and faith is not just intellectual; both are spiritual, i.e., from the heart.

Faith Which Stands

We may all believe that parachutes bring a person safely to earth but the real test of this faith comes when we have to jump. Similarly Jesus calls us to believe in Him and His message not just when the sun is shining but when we are tested and persecuted or when God seems far off.

Reasonable Faith

The idea that faith is blind is bad rhetoric. This idea is not found in the Bible except in verses which describe how we hope for that (God, heaven) which we have not yet seen. Yet the Bible assumes that believers know God personally and have experienced Him. In fact the Bible is written as evidence of what happened so that we might believe. The Bible does not say “believe this” but “here is the evidence, we saw it happen, believe us, we’d die for this truth”. The “we” are the eye-witnesses who did, in most cases, die for their belief.