David asks:
Does one have to believe that faith is a conviction that something is true (be persuaded) to be saved? Can someone believe that faith is a choice or a trust (dependence) on Christ to give eternal life and still be saved?
The title of the second chapter of Zane Hodges’s book Absolutely Free is “Faith Means Just That—Faith.” He shows that in the Bible the words translated as faith or believe mean being convinced that something is true. He wrote:
What faith really is, in Biblical language, is receiving the testimony of God. It is the inward conviction that what God says to us in the gospel is true. That—and that alone—is saving faith (p. 30).
Was he right? The answer is simple when we look at John 11:25-27:
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
The Lord Jesus used the verb believe (pisteuō in Greek) three times, and Martha used it once. Four uses in three verses is certainly emphatic. All four uses refer to being persuaded that what the Lord Jesus said is true. None of them refers to something vague, such as trust or dependence. In fact, what would it mean if Jesus had asked, “Do you trust this?” or “Do you depend on this?”
Let’s use my relationship with my dentist as an example. For years I have trusted him to fill my teeth and put in crowns. However, some of those teeth have died. They had to be pulled even though I trusted my dentist. While I did not believe that my dentist guaranteed that the teeth he worked on would not die, I did trust him.
It is possible to trust that Jesus will do His best to get me to heaven, yet not believe that He guarantees I will be with Him forever.i
Why do we change the word that the Lord Jesus and His apostles used to a word they did not? Why change belief to trust? The reason is simple. Many people think that it takes more than faith in Christ to be saved from eternal condemnation.
If, when a person is evangelized, he thinks that faith in Christ involves more than being convinced that His promise of life is true, then he will not be born again at that time. To be born again, a person must believe in Christ.
But a believer can stop believing. A person might have adopted any number of false beliefs about what faith in Christ is (e.g., turning from sins, commitment of life, surrender, obedience) after he first believed, but he remains born again because once one is born again, he is born again forever.
Whether or not faith is a choice is a separate issue. A person might believe that faith is simply being persuaded while also believing that it is a choice. Believing that faith is a choice would not, therefore, keep one from being persuaded that the Lord Jesus guarantees everlasting life to all who believe in Him.
Thanks, David, for the great question.
Keep grace in focus and you’ll keep faith in focus too.
i Of course, it is possible to use trust in the sense of “being convinced.” Zane Hodges did that in Chapter 2 of Absolutely Free. But it is not a good practice. Several years after writing Absolutely Free, Hodges stopped using the word that way. I remember his telling me one day in the mid 90s that faith is a perfectly good word and that there is no reason to replace it with trust when the Lord Jesus Christ never did.
