Faith: What It Is and What It Is Not

People tell each other to have faith. They say it at hospital bedsides and at gravesides and before examinations, and they almost never say what to have faith in. The word floats free, meaning something like optimism, or resolve, or a refusal to give up. And because Scripture uses the same word for something entirely different, a great many people believe they have faith when they have nothing of the kind, and a great many others believe they lack it when in fact they have it.

So it is worth being exact. This article sets out what faith is not, what it is, where it comes from, and why the thing you are trusting matters infinitely more than how strongly you feel about it.

1. Faith is not a feeling

Begin with the commonest confusion of all.

Many people assess their faith by the temperature of their emotions. On a Sunday when the singing moved them, they judge their faith strong. On a grey Tuesday when God seems distant and prayer feels like talking to the ceiling, they conclude their faith is failing.

But feelings rise and fall with sleep, health, weather, and circumstance. If faith were a feeling, then a believer's standing before God would change with his blood sugar, and no serious person could rest for a day.

Faith is not what you feel. It is what you are relying on. A man crossing a frozen river may be terrified the whole way over and still be trusting the ice with every step — and the ice, not his composure, is what carries him.

2. Faith is not a leap in the dark

The second confusion is more respectable and does more damage, because unbelievers and believers both repeat it.

It is often said that faith begins where evidence ends — that to believe is to shut one's eyes and jump, and that the less reason a man has, the more admirable his faith. On that definition faith is a kind of noble recklessness, and the honest reply to it is that nobody should be asked for such a thing.

Scripture never once commends that. It appeals constantly to evidence: to the witness of creation, to fulfilled prophecy, to named eyewitnesses, to signs done openly. The apostle Paul, defending himself before a king, said the things concerning Christ were not done in a corner. When men doubted the resurrection, the answer given was not believe harder but a list of people who had seen Him, most of whom were still alive and could be asked.

Biblical faith is not belief without evidence. It is trust that goes beyond what we can see, grounded on what we have been shown. The step is real, but it is taken onto something, not into nothing.

3. Faith is not positive thinking

A third counterfeit is popular in our own time. It treats faith as a force — as though believing hard enough could bend circumstances, produce healing, or summon prosperity. Here faith is essentially aimed at an outcome, and the strength of one's believing is what makes it happen.

Notice what this does. It puts the believer at the centre and makes God the mechanism. And it is unspeakably cruel to sufferers, because when the outcome does not come, the sufferer is told he did not believe enough — a burden laid on a person already crushed.

Scripture knows nothing of it. The great chapter on faith honours a long list of people who trusted God and were not delivered — who were tortured, mocked, imprisoned, sawn asunder, and who died still waiting.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." (Hebrews 11:13)

Died in faith, not having received. Whatever faith is, it plainly is not a technique for getting what we want.

4. Faith is not mere agreement

The last and most dangerous counterfeit is the one that feels most like the real thing.

A person may hold every Christian doctrine to be true. He may be certain God exists, that Christ died and rose, that the Bible is God's Word — and remain entirely unsaved. Scripture says so bluntly: the devils believe there is one God, and they tremble. Their theology is impeccable. Their doctrine is more orthodox than most people's. And they are lost.

So intellectual agreement, however complete, is not saving faith. There is a difference between believing that a surgeon is competent and lying down on his table. The first is an opinion. The second commits you.

5. What faith actually is

Now the definition Scripture gives, which is the most compact in the Bible:

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1)

Two words carry it.

Substance — the word means what stands under something, a foundation; it was also the ordinary term for a title deed, a document guaranteeing property a man owned but had not yet taken possession of. Faith gives present solidity to a future promise. The believer does not yet see heaven, but he holds the deed.

Evidence — the word is a legal one, meaning proof or conviction, the demonstration that settles a case. Faith is not the absence of proof; it is a settled persuasion produced by the trustworthiness of the One who spoke.

Put together, faith is a confident reliance on God and on what He has said, so firm that the unseen is treated as real — because He said it, and He does not lie.

6. The three parts of faith

It helps to separate what is usually run together, because most people who are unsure whether they have faith have stopped at the second stage.

Knowledge. You must know something before you can believe it. Faith has content. A man cannot trust a Saviour he has never heard of, which is precisely why the gospel must be preached.

Agreement. You must accept that the content is true — that these are not merely interesting claims but facts. This is where many stop, and stopping here is the condition of the devils.

Trust. You must commit yourself to the Person the facts concern — rest your whole weight on Him, with nothing kept back as an alternative.

The old illustration is still the clearest. Sitting in a chair involves all three. You know the chair is there. You judge it strong enough to hold you. But you are not sitting until you take your weight off your own legs and let it hold you. Many people spend years admiring the chair.

7. The object matters, not the amount

Here is the point that relieves more anxious souls than any other in this article, so read it slowly.

Faith does not save. Christ saves. Faith is the empty hand that receives Him.

This means that the power is not in the strength of your believing but in the trustworthiness of the One believed. Weak faith in solid ice will carry a man across the river. Strong faith in thin ice will drown him. What matters is not the confidence of the traveller but the thickness of the ice.

The Lord Jesus Christ made this explicit when He spoke of faith as a grain of mustard seed — the smallest thing in the garden. He was not setting a minimum quantity; He was saying that quantity is not the issue at all.

So the question to ask is never do I believe enough? — a question with no possible answer, which will torment you for ever. The question is: whom am I trusting? A trembling hand may take a gift as truly as a steady one.

And Scripture gives us a model prayer for exactly this condition. A desperate father, asked whether he believed, cried out that he did believe — and in the same breath asked the Lord to help his unbelief. Both things were true of him at once. The Lord did not rebuke him or send him away to work up more conviction. He answered him.

That man is the patron of every honest doubter who has ever wanted to believe more than he does.

8. Where faith comes from

If faith is required, and we do not naturally have it, the obvious question is how anyone gets it. Scripture answers plainly:

"So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Romans 10:17)

This is enormously practical. Faith is not produced by concentrating, by trying to feel more certain, or by waiting for a mysterious experience. It comes by exposure to what God has said.

Which means that a person who wants to believe and cannot has a plain course of action available. Not try harder to believe, which is like trying to fall asleep by effort. Rather, read the Gospels. Read them slowly and honestly, asking whether the Person described there could have been invented. Faith grows the way a plant does — not by straining, but by being placed where the light is.

And this also explains why faith is not a work we perform to earn something. If faith were a meritorious act, we could boast of it, and Scripture is emphatic that no one will boast. Faith is the receiving, not the earning:

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

9. But what about faith without works?

Two passages of Scripture are often set against each other here, and the apparent conflict distresses sincere readers. One says a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Another says faith without works is dead, and that a man is justified by works and not by faith only.

The resolution is not difficult once the two questions are separated.

The apostle Paul is answering the question: how is a sinner made right with God? The answer is by faith alone, apart from any work — and his proof is Abraham, who was declared righteous before he had done anything at all.

James is answering a different question: how can we tell whether a professed faith is real? His answer is that a living faith produces something. He is not writing to men trusting Christ too much; he is writing to men who claimed belief and whose lives showed nothing.

The two agree perfectly. Faith alone saves — but the faith that saves is never alone. A living tree produces fruit. The fruit did not make the tree alive, and it cannot; but a tree that produces nothing, year after year, is reasonably suspected of being dead.

So works are not the root of salvation. They are the evidence of it. Nobody is saved by his fruit, and nobody is genuinely saved without any.

10. What faith brings

Scripture attaches several things to faith, and they are worth naming, since they are the ordinary inheritance of every believer.

It brings peace with God.

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:1)

Not merely peaceful feelings — an ended war. The hostility is over, and it was ended from God's side.

It is the only way to please Him.

"But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." (Hebrews 11:6)

Note how modest the requirement is: that He is, and that He rewards those who seek Him. Not a full system of theology. Enough to come.

And it gives a certainty that rests outside yourself. The apostle Paul, awaiting execution, did not write that he knew what he believed, nor how strongly. He wrote that he knew whom he had believed, and was persuaded that He was able to keep what had been committed to Him. The confidence was in a Person, and it held to the end.

11. How to exercise it now

If all this has been clear, then the last step is not complicated. Faith is not a mood to work up; it is a decision to rest on Someone.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

And then the plainest instruction ever given to a man who asked what he must do to be saved — one sentence, with no conditions attached beyond the one:

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts 16:31)

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)

Take your weight off your own legs

If you have been waiting until your faith feels strong enough, you will wait for ever, because that is not what makes it valid. If you have been waiting until every question is answered, you will wait for ever too, since no one has ever had every question answered about anything.

Faith is not certainty about everything. It is reliance on Someone who has proved trustworthy in the things that can be checked — and who has said He will not cast out any who come to Him.

You do not need more faith. You need to put the faith you have onto the right Person, and let Him hold you.

Let us Pray:

Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.

We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for **Him** who is the author and finisher of our faith. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God"** (Romans 10:17), and which cannot be broken.

We confess before Thee that we have often trusted our faith instead of trusting **Thee**. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.

Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to turn every reader from confidence in himself to confidence in **Thy Son**, for Thy glory and not for ours.

We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Most Important Prayer You Will Ever Pray

Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?

You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.

If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:

After You Have Prayed

1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).

2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).

3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.

4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.

5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).