Saving Faith

Sometimes I get fed up with the southern church. I think it is pretty obvious that far too often our churches turn themselves from focusing on becoming the body of Christ to being a cultural country club. In the process of doing this, we all too often misunderstand exactly what happens at conversion. I submit that there are many people in the church visible today which really aren’t alive in Christ. What really goes on in the life of a convert when they see the beauty of Christ and turn from sin and sorrow? Now there is something to be said about “understanding” conversion, since when we look at the big picture, conversion is indeed a mystery. There are however, three activities of the soul that are completed during conversion (according to Wayne Grudem and R. C. Sproul). I encourage you to test yourselves to see that you are truly converted.

True saving faith, according to the Word, includes three very important things. The first of these things is simple knowledge of the facts concerning God and Jesus. In order to have true saving faith, we first have to know, intellectually speaking, something about Jesus. We have to know who He is, what He did, and how He loves. It’s hard to have a personal relationship with Jesus if you don’t know anything about Him. You might ask “what of those who have never heard of Jesus?” That is a subject for another blog. As it stands with you, you are perfectly aware of who He is. Calvinists like me can all too often be guilty of just knowing a lot about God and not really knowing Him. So saving faith includes knowing some factual content about God, but that is not enough by itself, for “even the demons believe—and shudder” (James 2:19).

Secondly, you must know the facts and agree that they are good. This is pretty simple. I can believe all the doctrines about Jesus, but I don’t have to agree that they are true, or even agree that they are good and right and beneficial. True saving faith not only knows the content but believes the content to be true, valuable, and good. But knowing and agreeing alone are not enough.

The final and most important part of saving faith is trusting in Jesus to be your personal savior from sin. We can believe all the facts and agree with them, but until we act on our belief and turn to the person of Christ to save us from sin, then we are just sitting on the sidelines and haven’t really experienced salvation. What is faith? Certainly it is belief. But a more accurate view of faith should be something along the lines of personal trust. We trust in Jesus and in Him alone for salvation, not in our own works or anything else. We receive Christ like we receive a guest into our homes. It is a trust similar to the everyday trust we have in other people in life. My friend told me he’d meet me at 5 o’clock, so I trust him and get ready by 5. God told us that He’d save us through Christ, so we trust him and act upon that faith we have in His Word. We affirm God’s Word that He saves us by faith, and then we act on that faith in hope, which is an assurance of things that are not yet. As Wayne Grudem says, “saving faith is trust in Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and for eternal life with God…that comes only when I make a decision of my will to depend on, or put my trust in, Christ as my Savior” (Systematic Theology 35.3). I’m finding myself short on analogies to explain faith and trust, but I trust that it is a simple enough concept to understand. If it were not so, then the children could not come into the Kingdom. We would do well to remember that.