Defining Faith

What is faith?

  1. Believing in things you can’t see or verify?
  2. Trust in a person’s integrity?
  3. Believing in things that are obviously wrong?

To have faith in an object, like a chair, is to apply experience, senses and reason in predicting future behaviour. We know chairs are mostly stable, this chair looks stable and reason that we can sit down in good faith.

Christian Faith

For a Christian, Faith is what you hold on to when you don’t understand God’s ways or plan for you. You know, from experience, that He’s good and faithful and has your best at heart, but you are facing difficulties. Like a rope, it matters awfully much what your Faith is attached to. It is not just important to have faith in anything say, this pencil, it’s critical what the object of your faith is. Good faith is faith in a good object.

Why We Need Faith

We all have faith because we live by constantly testing things and it is rational and reasonable to assume that the chair we sat on yesterday will hold today and the God which saved us and kept past promises will continue to be true.

Salvation by Faith

Christian’s believe that they are saved by faith and not by doing good deeds (works). It is not at first obvious why God would choose people for salvation who have faith in Him. Are not those people naive who have faith? However we must remember that it is the object of the faith which is important and God is the ultimate perfect being. Someone who needs saving is amply justified in saying: “If anything can save me, then God can!” This is known as “calling on the name of the lord” and is a recurrent theme in the Old Testament and a visible and central concept of the Good News in the New Testament.

Those who are spiritually bankrupt are those who realise that only God can save them and their faith is that he is Good and will do it. Believing this of God gives Him Glory and such a person is justified by their faith because they chose God over everything else.