What is Faith?

Salvation by grace through faith is something that Christians have believed since the conception of the church. However, I think there may be a problem with our understanding of the word ‘faith.’ What does it mean to put faith in God? What were the New Testament writers getting at when they used the term? How did the readers understand the concept? How is that different from the way the term is understood today?

I was talking with my friend Matt about this idea. He was pointing out to me that the way that ‘faith’ (Greek: pistis) is used in the New Testament seems to be vastly different than the way we understand faith today.

We tend to define ‘faith’ as an intellectual assent to facts. If someone is asked if they have faith, they may say, “Yes. I believe in God.” What they mean by this is that they believe that the world was created by God. They may believe that Jesus is God. They may even believe that Jesus died and rose again for their sins.

This is not an incorrect understanding of ‘faith.’ However, it is helplessly incomplete. Faith includes believing certain truths. However, faith is most often used to describe loyal devotion or commitment to a person or cause. This is how the word was most often understood in Greek literature.

We have overemphasized the intellectual aspect of faith to the point that we have ignored the idea of loyalty and commitment to God. In my opinion, this has led to two fatal errors.

First, there are many people who profess faith in God because they intellectually assent to the things that are written in the bible. They say, “I believe in God,” and yet they show no loyal devotion to his purposes on this earth. To the readers and writers of the New Testament, this was not faith at all. To profess faith without complete, unswerving devotion would be like professing to be a square circle. This is why James tells us “faith without works is dead.”

Second, there are many others who are continually wondering where the line between doubt and unbelief should be drawn. An overemphasis on the intellectual aspect of faith has led people (like myself) to continually question if they ‘believe strongly enough.’ The truth is, faith will always involve doubt. By definition, faith includes uncertainty. Any faithful person who is honest with herself will say that there are times when she wonders if she is wrong. Continual battles of trying to make herself believe stronger are unhelpful. Instead, she needs to focus on being completely committed with an unswerving devotion. This involves belief, but does not stop there.

We must learn to define faith in a more complete way. While the intellectual aspect of faith is important, it is not all that Christian faith entails. Christian Faith entails unswerving commitment to the purposes of God in the world.