In this subject we are studying the matter of FAITH, a very important subject and a subject that has been done to death by various groups in America today in their efforts to get you to give them money. Faith is fundamental to Christian creed and conduct, for we are saved by faith (Eph. 2:8), we are kept by faith in the power of God unto salvation (1 Pet. 1:5), and we are to walk not by sight but by faith (2 Cor. 5:7).
In dealing with faith, Daniel manifested a daring faith (Dan. 6). Faith is so prominent in the Old Testament that a whole list of Old Testament saints is given in Hebrews chapter 11, where we are told that “by faith” they did this and “by faith” they did that and “by faith” they did so forth and so on.
“Faith” is confidence in God that leads us to believe His word, the Bible. You can have a misplaced faith. Some people have the FACTS of salvation without the FAITH in it. Some people have FAITH in salvation without any FEELING. Some people have the feeling without the faith. Some people have FEELING without fact. The Bible deals with fact, faith, and feeling. FAITH is not FACT. If your faith is placed in things that are not facts, you are deceived by Satan. To have merely faith in your feeling of faith in what you believe or faith in what you hope for is Satanic. The faith must be placed in facts. Now, it is a fact that Christ died for your sins, according to the Scriptures, and was buried and rose again the third day from the dead, according to the Scriptures. That is a FACT. Now, whether you have faith in that is immaterial. The point is, it is so. That is the point. In plainer words, if you trust Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you will be safe whether you know it or not.
The modern Charismatic is always confounding faith, fact, and feeling. Very often he places his faith in things that are not facts. For example, his faith is placed in the fact that Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Heb. 13:8), when the passage in which that occurs has no reference to healing within thirty-five verses in either direction. That is misplaced faith. Sometimes he is going by feeling when he thinks it is faith, and it is nothing but feeling, like something is going to happen when it isn’t.
Sometimes he is only dealing with the bare facts and not believing the facts. For example, it is a fact that if you receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you are born again and have eternal life and are in Jesus Christ. However, if you have misplaced faith in something else, you can believe that you fall in and out of Christ regularly and become born again and unborn again, and then reborn again and again and again. The people who are what we call “Christian nuts”—that is, those who are on neurotic kicks and psychotic kicks in Christianity—cannot distinguish between fact, faith, and feeling.
The facts are recorded in the Bible. The faith is believing what God said in the Bible, as He said it, where He said it, without taking it out of the context. Feeling is the satisfaction you get from living for the Lord and obeying Him. Don’t ever get them confused.
Faith is belief, trust, fidelity, or loyalty to a creed or religion, according to the dictionary, but according to the Bible, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). That is a definition of faith found in the word of God.
Faith can be illustrated very easily. We relax and, without looking, we place our whole weight on a chair. Faith tells us we will not fall. You believe the chair will hold you up, and you sit down in it. You prove you have faith in it by the fact that you sit in it. You are counting on it holding you up. Now, to “exercise faith in the Gospel” means that from the moment you trust Jesus Christ you never trust in your own righteousness again for five seconds. You trust Him. To do what? To hold you up. There we have the substance of it.
Where a man is trusting his own righteousness, he has NOT exercised faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is not going by Acts 2:38 to prove that you are good enough to earn salvation by works. Faith in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with taking a passage aimed at Israel in Acts 2:38 and pretending it belongs to you. That is not faith. That is what we call “infidelity” or “wresting the Scriptures to your own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16).
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is simple enough for a child to fulfill, but too sublime for the wisest man to comprehend or explain satisfactorily. That is, every child every day in his life exercises faith. A child gets up in the morning and believes he is going to get fed. He might not. He believes he will. A child, by nature, believes Mommy and Daddy will take care of him. They may not, but “by faith” he believes they will and expects it and looks forward to it. THAT is faith. The Bible speaks about faith as a grain of a mustard seed and having faith as a little child. You exercise faith when you go out to your car and get in and turn the ignition on. You think it will start. If you didn’t think that, you wouldn’t have turned the key. Do you see what I mean?
Faith is acting on what you believe. And in the case of “believing on Christ,” faith is acting on what God said and taking Jesus Christ as your Saviour, taking Him by an act of faith and trusting His shed blood for the remission of your sins and trusting nothing else. As the song writer said, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Blood and righteousness. On Christ, the solid Rock I stand: all other ground [even Scriptural alibis] is sinking sand.”
Faith is not the blind act of the soul. “Faith in God” rests upon the best of evidence: the infallible word of the living God.
“Faith” is trust in the God of the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ whom He sent. This faith receives Him as “Saviour and Lord” and impels our loving obedience and good works, not to get saved but because we are saved. No Christian works to get saved. No Christian works to stay saved. A Christian works because he is saved. The faith that saves is a personal trust in the Lord Jesus Christ that abandons works. Romans 4:5, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith [that kind of faith] is counted for righteousness.
The contrary to this is James chapter 2, so every unsaved preacher in your town will quote James in rebuttal. There isn’t an unsaved minister in America that isn’t trusting on getting to Heaven by his works according to James chapter 2 instead of by faith, Romans chapter 4. If you want to know the difference between saved ministers and lost ministers, that is the difference. The unsaved man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, “for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them” (1 Cor. 2:14), so he always picks the wrong place in the Bible to damn your soul because he has damned his own soul with it. You ought to be able to understand that. The unsaved man will go to James chapter 2 every time to disprove what I just quoted from Romans 4:5 because James is written to “the twelve tribes” of Israel. That is why he goes there. Because he can’t understand the Scriptures or get them straight.
The necessity of faith. In Hebrews 11:6 we read, “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.” That is, there can be no dealings with the invisible God without faith in His existence.
Along these lines, the Atheist is at a helpless and hopeless disadvantage. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14:1). A man can’t find God or deal with God unless he believes that He is there. If you don’t believe He is there, you are wasting your time and His time.
The Bible says, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.” (James 1:5–7).
The atheist has no hope of finding out anything about God at all, because he begins with a false assumption based entirely upon a depraved hallucination that God couldn’t be there. Once you begin with that false assumption, you are out of the race. If you begin with a phoney assumption (“He’s not there”), then you can’t deal with Him, and He isn’t going to bother to deal with you. That is why a dishonest skeptic can never find God and never find information about God. He begins with a false premise. If the premise is false, then the conclusion is false. That is a syllogism that goes without saying. You don’t have to prove that one. If the premise is false, the conclusion is false.
We must believe that God exists and that He rewards men: this confidence is called “faith.” Faith is absolutely necessary to salvation. You are told “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). God gives every man enough faith to believe in Jesus Christ. God gives every man enough faith to believe that He exists. If you don’t believe God exists, you have rejected what God put in you and gave you, because even faith is “not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).
There are two kinds of faith mentioned in the Bible in regards to salvation. The first is what we call a “head belief:” a knowledge of the historical Christ and a general acceptance of the Bible. This is the most common “faith” in America today. It is manifest by “plans of salvation” being taught from Acts 2:38, which has nothing to do with New Testament salvation in the sense of the grace of God and the Gospel of Christ or faith.
We find this “head belief” when an unsaved man comes to the Bible and tries to find a “plan of salvation” and set up a little format of repentance, belief, confession, and faith. He goes to Hell and takes his congregation with him, because he never believed in his heart to start with.
Paul when talking about obeying “that form of doctrine which was delivered you,” said “obeyed from the heart” (Rom. 6:17), not from the head. So, we have “head belief,” which is an insufficient faith, vs. “heart belief”—faith from the heart that causes a person to receive Jesus Christ. In Acts 16:31 they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Believe “on” Him, not just believe “in” Him. A sick man can believe in the medicine, but if he doesn’t believe on it, he won’t take it.
You must place your faith in Christ and not your faith in your faith. That is, there are people counting on their faith to get them to Heaven, and when you speak against their “faith,” they almost have a heart attack, because they are not counting on Christ’s blood atonement; they are counting on their “faith.” That is why they get so upset when you talk about anybody’s “faith.” They are counting on their faith to save them. Your faith can’t save you. YOU ARE SAVED BY JESUS CHRIST, OR YOU ARE NOT SAVED.
True faith in Jesus Christ is believing to the extent of receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, not getting baptized. John 1:12 says, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” The new birth is conditioned on receiving Jesus Christ. There is no place in the Bible anywhere where baptism is ever connected with the new birth. You will notice in John chapter 3 that water baptism is mentioned nowhere in the immediate (or far) context of the birth by water or the Spirit (John 3:5). There is no baptism within ten verses of the verse in either direction.
Salvation and the new birth are never connected with water baptism in either Testament. There is no water baptism in Galatians chapter 3. There is no water baptism in Romans chapter 6. The term “new birth” does not occur in Mark chapter 16. The new birth or regeneration is conditioned upon receiving Jesus Christ, not water baptism.
Neither knowledge nor “assent” is true faith. True faith involves appropriation. Faith is the soul leaping forth to embrace Jesus Christ in whom the soul believes.
What are the sources of faith? From the divine side, faith is the work of God. “God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3). Every man, therefore, has the inward potential of faith. In 1 Corinthians 12:9 we read that faith is one of the gifts. We look at the passage in Hebrews 12:2 and read, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” In Luke 17:5 the apostles said, “Lord, Increase our faith.” We all have faith, and as we exercise it and use it, it grows and increases. God the Holy Spirit said in Galatians 5:22, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith....”
Now, from the human side, “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). So, if you don’t hear the word of God, you cannot get faith. Have you got a copy? As we listen to God’s word preached and taught, our faith grows stronger. In Acts 4:4 the Bible said “many of them which heard the word believed”: the people heard the word of God, and they believed; they had faith. In Mark 9:24 a man said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” The disciples prayed, “Increase our faith:” (Luke 17:5).
The object of our faith is, first of all, THE WORD OF GOD. Faith must never be faith in a nebulous thing called “faith.” The modern Christian has never learned the difference between fact, faith, and feeling. For example, there are people that have faith in Acts 2:38 getting them to Heaven. Nobody in this dispensation received the Holy Spirit by being baptized in water (Gal. 3:2). The Holy Spirit in this age is given by faith: “that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal, 3:14), not by Acts 2:38. Here is a misplaced faith. Here is somebody that is counting on a Jewish passage, given to Old Testament Jews under the Law by a Jewish apostle at Pentecost, before the Gospel of the Grace of God is revealed, and they are counting on this water baptism to get them the Holy Ghost and get them tongues, because they have rejected THE FACTS. The fact is there are NO CHRISTIANS in Acts chapter 2. The term “Christians” occurs nowhere in your Bible until Acts 11:26.
Faith must never be a faith in a nebulous thing. It must be faith in the facts. It must be faith in the word of God, faith to accept the statements of the Bible as the revealed word of God and the very word of God, true and genuine; unless, of course, you believe it is only the original manuscripts, and in that case you have nothing in your hand anyway that you can count on.
Faith accepts the Bible as the very word of God, true and genuine. Make sure you have a copy of it. The object of faith is the word of God, firstly, and the person of Christ, secondly. Faith, in itself, is not a saviour. Your faith cannot save you. The Saviour saves you. It is faith in a person, not a thing: the divine Person called “the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Faith, then, is not a meritorious thing by itself, and faith as it stands alone without faith in the facts of the person of Christ, can save nobody. This is the dead faith (James 2:20) that James speaks of when he says, “though a man say he hath faith...can faith save him?” (James 2:14). No, not just faith. It has to be faith in the FACTS, and the FACTS are the Lord Jesus Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose from the dead, and that is not preached in Acts chapter 2. There is not one mention of Christ dying for anybody’s sins anywhere in Acts chapter 2.
The Gospel of the Grace of God is that Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:1–4—read it), and that by receiving Him by faith, God will grant you the new birth (John 1:12), which is never connected with water baptism in either Testament. Any other faith is faith in a hallucination. The faith has to be in the FACTS, and the feeling is the fruit of salvation, not the root of salvation.
The principle of faith is the same as we act on in everyday life. We go to the wall and flip the switch and expect the light to turn on. All business is carried on with the principle of faith; especially farming, where the farmer plants by faith, not knowing the weather, and still expecting a crop. The taxi driver doesn’t ask to see your money first. He believes you are going to pay, and you get in and pay at the end of the route—he hopes.
Faith in God is putting confidence in Him and His word. It is resting on the testimony of what God said, as he said it, in the context in which He said it. It is not believing that the whole Bible is for everybody indiscriminately and stealing promises that do not belong to you and ramming them down somebody else’s throat for whom it was not intended.
What are the results of faith? Well, we are saved by faith (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3); we receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith (John 1:12); we are justified by faith (Rom. 5:1); we become children of God by faith (Gal. 3:26); we are sanctified by faith (Acts 26:18); we are kept by faith (1 Pet. 1:5); faith brings us rest (Heb. 4:3); and works has nothing to do with any of it. You are not saved by works; you do not receive Christ by works”; you are not justified by works; you do not become a child of God by works; you are not sanctified by works; you are not kept by works; works will not bring you rest. Abraham believed God, and “it was counted unto him for righteousness” even to them that “believe on His name.” “Therefore being justified by faith,” you are “the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,” which are “sanctified by faith, “ who are “kept by the power of God through faith”; for “we which have believed do enter into rest.”
You had better make certain your faith is rooted in Romans chapter 4 and not James chapter 2, because James was written to the twelve tribes of Israel (James 1:1). You couldn’t pick a worse passage to go to Hell on if you looked all the way through the Bible. You had better believe what God said, as He said it, in the context in which He intended it; noting what He said, how He said it; where He said it, and to whom He said it and if you are not that zealous for the truth, you are not looking for the truth.
Jesus attributes a kind of omnipotence to faith. The disciple “by faith” will do greater things than
his Master. Pray that the words we give in Sunday school lessons and sermons and on the radio and in conversation will be mixed with faith on the part of those that hear. Ask God to give them faith. The great question for the Christian to answer is not, “What can I do?”; but, “What can I believe that God said is so?” May we all pray, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
Source: Theological Studies Vol II - Faith - by Peter Ruckman
How to go to Heaven? Find out in the short video below
GOD's Simple Plan of Salvation
If you were to die today for any reason, are you 100% sure you will go to heaven?
This video explains the SIMPLE TRUTH according to the Scriptures. The only way to go to heaven is by:
(1) Admitting that you are a sinner
(2) Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior and Lord
(3) Repenting (meaning you are willing to turn away from your sins) of your sins then confessing your sins to God
Jesus Christ willingly sacrificed Himself and shed His precious blood on the cross as a substitute for you, so that you don't have to burn in hell for all eternity because of your sins, and have eternal life in heaven instead.
Watch the video to learn what Scripture says of God's great plan of salvation for you and how to receive His free gift. This is wonderful news. We pray you surrender to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and to know 100% for sure you will go to heaven when you die!
If you want to attend our local Church please see our address, phone numbers and social media below
Bible Believers Baptist Church International
2F Lakeview Manors Arcade, 11 Bagong Calzada St., Taguig City, 1634 Metro Manila
Globe: 09171926870 / Smart: 09201205400
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KJBTV
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KJBTV1611
“And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” (Luke 4:4)
Comments