Faith must be one of the most important concepts in Christianity. After all, salvation is by faith alone as Paul repeatedly tells us. Jesus himself brings the good news that we can know God by faith in Him (Jesus) without doing anything difficult. But what is faith? Is it “blind belief” in things we can’t see or test? How do we get this faith which brings eternal life?

More Than Belief

The kind of faith Jesus speaks of is more than just accepting a proposition, it’s about accepting a person, Jesus, on his terms. Ken Boa explains:

But faith is more than intellectual assent; it is personal reception. God does not call us merely to believe a set of doctrines but to trust in a person.

Ken has also said elsewhere: Christianity is a relationship not a religion and it’s personal not philosophical.

Faith, Fidelity, Marriage

We speak of a spouse being unfaithful or betraying trust to their partner. Peter Kreeft echos Paul when he says that Faith in Jesus is like a marriage to God:

No religion outside Judaism and Christianity ever knew of such an intimate relationship with God as “faith.” Faith means not just belief but fidelity to the covenant, like a marriage covenant. Sin is the opposite of faith, for sin means not just vice but divorce, breaking the covenant.  In Judaism, as in Christianity, sin is not just moral and faith is not just intellectual; both are spiritual, i.e., from the heart.

Faith Which Stands

We may all believe that parachutes bring a person safely to earth but the real test of this faith comes when we have to jump. Similarly Jesus calls us to believe in Him and His message not just when the sun is shining but when we are tested and persecuted or when God seems far off.

Reasonable Faith

The idea that faith is blind is bad rhetoric. This idea is not found in the Bible except in verses which describe how we hope for that (God, heaven) which we have not yet seen. Yet the Bible assumes that believers know God personally and have experienced Him. In fact the Bible is written as evidence of what happened so that we might believe. The Bible does not say “believe this” but “here is the evidence, we saw it happen, believe us, we’d die for this truth”. The “we” are the eye-witnesses who did, in most cases, die for their belief.