Faith that Works (Part 1)

Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. (II Corinthians 13:5 NLT). 

When I first became a Christian, I remember thinking: “You mean all I have to do to be saved is believe? Wow, this is easier than I thought.” The preacher had labored to explain that there was nothing I could do to earn salvation because Jesus had already paid the penalty my sins deserved. I just needed to believe and receive the free gift. Poof. I was in. Piece of cake. 

It wasn’t long, however, until I began to realize that following Jesus and living the life of faith was harder than I anticipated – a lot harder. In fact, there were times when I felt I had been snookered by those who led me to Christ. It almost felt like God’s free gift of salvation had come with strings attached, as if God’s covenant of grace had lots of fine print.

As I look back on those first years of discipleship, I realize now that most of my struggles were rooted in the fact that I did not understand faith. I had been told that faith was of supreme importance, but no one took the time to explain what it meant. To be honest, I’m not sure those who introduced me to the gospel understood it either! 

I know my story is not unique. The church is full of people who believe in Jesus without a clear understanding of what that means! In other words, their problem is not that they don’t have faith, but precisely that they do! Their struggle is not with unbelief, but with misbelief. 

In this blog post and the next, I want to examine what it means to believe in Jesus. Here, I want to look at four erroneous ways we understand faith today. 

Error #1. Faith is understood as mental assent to certain doctrinal truths.

When I first stepped out in Christian discipleship, I understood that I was committing myself to the theological truth that Jesus died for my sins and reconciled me to God so that I could go to heaven when I die. This was a huge step in the right direction. But I soon realized that being able to recite the creeds of the church didn’t make me a child of God any more than being able to sing the National Anthem made me an American. I remember the shock I experienced when I first discovered James 2:19. “You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror.” I too began to tremble when I realized that there will be many in hell who are orthodox in their faith and biblical in their creed. 

Error #2. Faith is understood as sincerity.

In our postmodern world, many pretend that it doesn’t matter what you believe, only that you believe. What counts is the authenticity of one’s faith, not the contents. While being sincere about what one believes is obviously a good thing, it must never be a substitute for rational thinking. I may be sincere and authentic in the belief that I can fly. But if I jump from a ten-story building to make my point, I will only demonstrate the law of gravity, not the law of faith. In other words, those people who think of faith in terms of sincerity are not promoting faith in God, but faith in faith! The Bible does not teach that we are saved by faith. It says, rather, that we are saved by grace, through faith (see Eph. 2:8). Faith is the link, the channel through which God’s grace flows into our lives. It is like an electric cord. There is no power in the cord itself, but when it is plugged into the electrical outlet, it becomes a conduit of energy that can light up a house. It would be silly to say one believed in the cord. Don’t trust in the cord! Trust in the power that flows through it. 

Error #3. Faith is understood as optimism.

Many people think of faith in terms of a cheery disposition or a positive outlook on life. Like the children’s story The Little Engine that Could, this understanding of faith lives by the motto, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…” This is how faith is typically portrayed in those syrupy movies where the main character overcomes some great obstacle by believing it can be overcome by believing it can be overcome. (You might want to reread that sentence.) This resembles the faith in faith position mentioned above. God has nothing to do with it. It’s all about having a positive mental attitude in the face of great opposition. 

Error #4. Faith is understood as a leap in the dark.

This understanding of faith gets closer to the truth but is a dangerous counterfeit because it is partly right and partly wrong. Faith is a leap. It takes great courage and total commitment to leave a place that is solid and step out into the unknown. But it is not a leap in the dark. Jumping into the darkness is never a good idea! When our daughters were infants, I would sometimes stand them on the kitchen counter, step back, open my arms, and say, “Jump to Daddy!” It took only a moment for them to learn that they could jump because Daddy would catch them. For the girls, the leap was a strange mixture of fun and fear, all at the same time. But they loved it and wanted to do it again and again. Biblical faith is like that. It is a leap, but not into darkness. It is falling headlong into the open-armed promises of our heavenly Father. 

Conclusion

The church today is full of people who have a distorted understanding of what it means to believe in Jesus. Their error is not unbelief, but misbelief. This is serious. To be mistaken about faith strikes at the very root of Christian discipleship and can have tragic, even eternal, consequences. This is why Paul urges the members of the church in Corinth to examine themselves. He does not tell them to examine their theology, their worship, or their behaviors. Rather, he pleads with them to examine their faith. “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine.” (II Cor. 13:5 NLT). This blog has sought to help us understand faith by describing what it is not. In the next post, I will focus on describing what faith is. 

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