Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?” Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (Acts 8:36-37).
Today I was reading a booklet that used Acts 8:37 as a proof text. After quoting it, the author wrote, “Salvation is the exercise of the whole heart. It is a passionate thing. It is not half-hearted.”i
Anyone who has taken at least two years of NT Greek knows that Acts 8:37 is not found in most manuscripts. It is omitted by the Critical Text and the Majority Text. Only a few Greek manuscripts and some translations (Latin, Coptic, Georgian, Slavonic, and Ethiopic) include it. See this CARM article analyzing the evidence. The Textus Receptus (TR) was the first Greek NT. See here (https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/textus-receptus) for a two-minute discussion of the TR by Dr. Dan Wallace. Erasmus used three to five Greek manuscripts, some of which contained Acts 8:37. Since the KJV and NKJV are based on the TR and not the MT or CT, they include Acts 8:37, but most English translations do not.
None of the editions of the Majority Text have Acts 8:37 in their text.
After citing everything but Acts 8:37, F. F. Bruce wrote:
This is the account in the original text. But at quite an early date (probably in the second century) an editor felt that this was not adequate. Philip must surely have satisfied himself of the genuineness of the Ethiopian’s faith. (No doubt Philip was well satisfied, but there are some minds which cannot be content to leave such things to be inferred.) So some words were added in which Philip tests the man’s faith… (Acts, p. 178).
A concordance study reveals that the only verse in the entire Bible that speaks of believing with all your heart is Acts 8:37,ii which is not Scripture.iii
The word believe occurs 100 times in John’s Gospel, the only evangelistic book in the Bible (John 20:31). Not once did the Lord or the apostle John qualify it. They never spoke of wholehearted faith, true faith, genuine faith, or many of the qualifiers often used by preachers today.
Many people do not believe in justification by faith alone, apart from works. But they come from a tradition that gives lip service to it. So, they qualify what faith means. That is how they can say that the following are all conditions of everlasting life: turning from sins, surrender, commitment, obedience, and perseverance. If faith is all those things, then justification by faith alone, apart from works, is justification by repentance, surrender, commitment, obedience, and perseverance.
It is hard to believe that justification is by faith alone, apart from works. It certainly was for me, due to the influence of the sinless-perfection holiness group I grew up in. It is equally hard for people who grow up in most Evangelical churches today. It doesn’t match up with the common view of justice. How could God give everlasting life with no strings attached? Surely, one must live a godly life to gain entrance into His kingdom. If Scripture teaches something different, then Scripture must be made to conform to our understanding of what is right.
No. You do not need to believe in Jesus wholeheartedly in order to have everlasting life. No verse says that. There are no degrees of faith. Either you believe or you do not. Adding a qualifier like wholehearted confuses people. They wonder if they believe enough.
Do you have wholehearted faith that two plus two is four? What would that mean? Do you wholeheartedly believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? That He died on the cross for our sins? That He rose from the dead? No one asks if you wholeheartedly believe such things.
You either believe something or you do not. Don’t needlessly complicate the promise of everlasting life. The Lord and His apostles didn’t. Sola fide. By faith alone.
Keep grace in focus.
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i David W. Cloud, Does Salvation Make a Difference? p. 19. This booklet advocates for Lordship Salvation.
ii Two verses speak of believing “in your heart” (Rom 10:9) and “with the heart” (Rom 10:10). There is also one verse that speaks of being slow of heart to believe (Luke 24:25), though it is addressed to believers who were slow to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. Believing in or with the heart means believing internally (as opposed to confessing with the mouth, which is external). The heart does not refer to the literal heart, but to the inner self where belief occurs. Mind and heart are used interchangeably in the NT (e.g., Heb 8:10; 10:16; Jas 4:8).
iii It should be noted that even if Acts 8:37 were Scripture, the issue there is baptism, not salvation. Of course, a Lordship preacher could say, as Cloud does, that what Philip meant was that only born-again people can be baptized, and he could only be born again if he believed in Jesus with all his heart.
