Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Does John 5:45-47 teach that there is a difference between trusting and believing? Well, this question might be a FAQ, frequently asked question for us, the difference between belief and trust, but we will have a discussion today on it and we’re glad you’ve joined us. This is Grace in Focus, a radio broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. You can learn a lot about us at our website, be sure to visit faithalone.org. We have a free online seminary with an MDiv degree, a first-class magazine, also called Grace in Focus, published six times per year, a bookstore, hundreds of free articles, and information about our national annual conference coming up May 18th through the 21st. All you want to know about us at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin, along with Ken Yates.

KEN: Bob, we got a question from HB that he’s written in and I know you’re like me, you get asked this occasionally, and so it’s a great question. The question is, is there a difference between trusting in someone and believing in them? And that’s the question that we get fairly regularly, but he mentioned specifically John chapter five verses 45 through 47. Let me read those verses and it will go from there. 

Jesus is speaking at the end of chapter five of John and he goes, “Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you,” and I’m reading from the New King James Version, “Moses in whom you trust.” Okay, so the English translation, the New King James Version is trust. But then in verse 46 Jesus says, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me,” and then verse 47, “but if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My word?” So in verses 46 and 47, we have the word believe four times, but in verse 45, we got trust. 

And so HB is asking the question, then why is a different word being used here between trust and believe. Now, I want to say that a lot of times when you hear people, I’ll say it this way, attack free grace theology, they’ll say, believing is not enough, believing in Jesus for eternal life is not enough. 

BOB: Right, you have to trust it. 

KEN: You’ve got to trust. And so I think HB is saying, are these verses teaching that there is a difference? And normally my experiences, tell me what yours are, it would be something like this. Okay, you grace people say you just have to believe John 3:16, you have to be convinced that you have eternal life in Jesus alone, but that’s an intellectual thing. You need to personally trust in Him that in some sense, believing is not enough, you need to, and they word it differently, you need to, okay, I know that this is true for me, and you know, I’ve got to put my trust in Him as my Savior, they might say trust in Him as Lord or something like that, but they do see a distinction between believing John 3:16 and then trusting that Jesus will do that for you. 

BOB: Okay, so let me first say, doesn’t it drive you nuts when people say believing in Jesus is not enough? When Jesus says over and over and over again, that if you believe in Him, you have everlasting life, you’ll never hunger, you’ll never thirst, you’ll never die, you’ll never perish. To say that believing is not enough is to reject the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s to reject what he says. People do this, I know they mean well. Now that’s not what HB is doing, HB is just asking this question. So let me come to his question. 

The answer is absolutely yes, there’s a difference between the word translated trust in verse 45 and the words translated believe in 46 and 47 of John 5. 

KEN: And let me just say that as in English, the words are different, and in Greek, the words are different. 

BOB: Yeah, so for example, you remember Elvis Presley, right? Well, Elvis is E-L-V-I-S. Well, there’s a Greek word E-L-P-I-S, elpis, and the verb form is elpizo, and it means hope. And this word should be translated “Moses, in whom you have set your hope.” 

KEN: The word that’s trust here. 

BOB: Yeah, it should be hope. There’s two senses of hope in the New Testament. One is the way we use it in English, like Paul says, I hope to come to you soon. He doesn’t say, I’m sure I’m going to do it, but I would like to do that. That’s my desire. But then often in Scripture, the word hope means something which is certain, but the timing is uncertain. Can you give an example of that? 

KEN: Sure, when Paul says the blessed hope about the return of Christ.

BOB: The blessed hope of His appearing. And we don’t know when the Rapture is going to be, but we know for sure it will be. So often, hope in the New Testament is something which is certain, but the timing is uncertain. That doesn’t fit here. What basically the Lord is saying is they’re hoping the Torah, which Moses wrote’ the first five books of the Old Testament. 

KEN: The law. 

BOB: What you see over and over again is that Moses is giving the new nation of Israel it’s marching orders. Now within that is a lot of discussion of Messiah, right? Jesus said, Moses wrote about me, Genesis 3:15. 

KEN: And then in verse 46, it goes, you don’t believe what he wrote about. You’re not convinced of what he wrote about me. 

BOB: Right. They’re not convinced that he’s the one in 3:15, or in 15:6, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And the context is talking about believing God about the Messiah. And of course, Moses met with Messiah face to face at the burning bush. He met with Him face to face on the mountain when he got the Ten Commandments. He met with Him in the tabernacle. Remember, Moses face would shine because he was meeting with the Lord God face to face. 

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BOB: So they were hoping that by keeping the commandments that Moses talks about, they were going to get into the kingdom. And what Jesus is saying is, no, it’s not about the commandments. Remember, they kept asking, what are the greatest commandments? The reason they were asking that is they were trying to check and say, well, that’s what we’re hoping in, is that we’re good enough. They had a “hope so” faith, not a “know so” faith. You ever been to a dentist? 

KEN: Oh, yeah. 

BOB: Okay. So I have like, I think five or six implants. I’ve lost five or six teeth. I had to have implants put in. I’ve had lots of crowns. I don’t know. Crown them with many crowns. That’s my dentist’s favorite song. And I’ve had root canals. So every time I go, do I trust my dentist? 

KEN: Sure. 

BOB: But am I sure that the tooth is going to be saved? 

KEN: No. 

BOB: I’ve lost six of them. 

KEN: Right. 

BOB: But I trusted the dentist. Didn’t I? 

KEN: Sure. 

BOB: To trust someone is not the same as to believe in someone. And let me give you another example. When I was at Victor Street Bible Chapel in Dallas, we brought in an evangelist who was supposed to be very clear on the saving message. And he gave this message in which he talked about the bad news is we’re sinners and the good news is Jesus died for us. He said, you need to believe that Jesus died for you and you need to believe in Jesus, but that’s not enough. You also need to trust him. 

KEN: See, that drives me crazy. I don’t know what that means. 

BOB: Well, he didn’t either. He didn’t either. He told us an example. And here’s the example he gave. He said, imagine that you’ve got three men who are on a sinking luxury liner. It’s going down. Let’s say it’s the Titanic. But this one has plenty of lifeboats. So everybody can get on the lifeboats, right? And one of the guys doesn’t even understand what a lifeboat is about. So he doesn’t get on and he drowns. 

KEN: So he’s somebody who doesn’t believe? 

BOB: He doesn’t believe and he doesn’t trust. The second guy believes in the lifeboat. He believes if he got in the lifeboat, he would be saved, but he doesn’t trust it. He doesn’t get in it. And so he dies. So that’s an example of someone who believes, but doesn’t trust. The third guy both believes and trust, that is, he gets in the boat. And so the evangelist says, you need to get into the boat that is Jesus. Well how do you do that? He didn’t tell us. 

KEN: Yeah. So the trusting there, and this is where it gets all crazy when I hear because I mean, we hear evangelistic messages all the time, right? Trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. But they don’t explain what that means. So in that, in that analogy that you gave of the boats, the second guy, he believes, he’s convinced that if he gets in the boat, that he’ll be saved. He believes that. 

BOB: But he just chooses not to. 

KEN: But he chooses not to. So he doesn’t make that. What would they say—that they don’t make it personal for them? So yeah, the boat’s able to save me, but I’m not going to do it. 

BOB: So what if he’s the captain of the ship? And he believes that it’s his responsibility to go down with the ship.

KEN: Right, women and children go first.

BOB: Right. So what if you’re on that Titanic, and you know there aren’t enough places for everybody, so you believe this lifeboat would save you, but you don’t get on. In fact, John Harper—read the book—that’s Titanic’s last hero, John Harper was a Scottish evangelist on his way to Moody Church to give a series of evangelistic lectures. And when the ship went down, he not only didn’t get in a lifeboat, he gave up his life jacket, because he said, I don’t need it, and you do. And then when he was in the water, he evangelized people. 

KEN: I heard about that guy. Yeah, He swam around. 

BOB: He led someone to faith in Christ before he drowned. And that guy got rescued by the Carpathia. And he later went to the United States and told people all over the country that he was John Harper’s last convert. The point is, we’re not saved by getting on the boat. We’re saved by believing in Jesus. And once you say you’ve got to, not only believe but trust, you’ve now introduced a level of confusion that’s massive. 

KEN: Right. And the other thing about it is in the Gospel of John, a hundred times it says believe, why do we have to add this trust? Why do we have to say, well, no, believing is not enough. We’ve also got to trust, which no one knows what you mean when you use that word. 

BOB: Exactly. And so what we need to do is use Biblical language to teach Biblical truths, right?

KEN: And the bottom line for this question is, is there a difference between trusting in someone and believing in them in John 5:45-47? We could say, yes, but it’s not talking about eternal life. 

BOB: It wasn’t trusting in—

KEN: They were hoping in the law putting their hope—

BOB: To get into the kingdom. By the way, let me mention real quick, John 5:39-40, which hits this exact question, which is earlier in the same passage, right? He says, “You search the Scriptures for in them, you think you have eternal life. But these are they which testify of Me, but you’re not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” And coming to Jesus in John’s Gospel is equivalent to believing in Him, John 6:35. 

So yes, there’s a difference there between hoping and believing. They’re not the same. They were not to hope that by keeping the commandments they were getting into the kingdom, they were to believe in the person Moses wrote about, the Lord Jesus Christ. and believe what He said that he who believes in Me has everlasting life, or he who comes to Me shall never hunger. He who believes in Me shall never thirst. John 6:35.

KEN: And when you preach the gospel of eternal life, use the word believe. That’s what Jesus did. And that’s what the gospel is. 

BOB: Amen. 

KEN: Until next time, keep grace in focus.

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On our next episode: when was Abraham counted righteous? When was he born again? Come back and join us. We will look for you in the meantime. Let’s keep grace in focus.