A friend named Tom does not like the expression saving faith. I understand why he feels that way. There is no special kind of faith that is “saving.” The issue in salvation is believing the right content, not having some special type of faith in it.
I still use the expression because it saves a lot of space. However, I agree that what makes saving faith saving is its object, not its type. All faith is of the same type. All faith is persuasion, being convinced that something is true. Saving faith is being convinced that the saving message is true.
But not everyone in Evangelicalism agrees that there is a saving message that must be believed.
Most Evangelicals understand the expression “whoever believes in Him” in John 3:16 to mean whoever turns from his sins, commits his life to Christ, and follows Him to the end of his life. There is no saving message to be believed in that understanding. Saving faith becomes obedience and good works.
I found an article suggesting that faith is simply persuasion, but with no essential message that must be believed. The author wrote, “Jesus … never made salvation depend upon believing in Him ‘for’… ‘eternal life.’” Instead of explaining what Jesus said one must believe about Him to be born again, he wrote that it is wrong to assume “the existence of a ‘minimum’ or ‘essential’ content of saving faith. There is no minimum.”
What does that mean? The author never explained what one must believe in order to be born again. How could he? If there is no essential content to saving faith, then there is nothing that one must believe to be saved. The word essential means “absolutely necessary, indispensable.”
To be fair, the author did say elsewhere in the article that one must believe in Jesus Christ to be saved. But he never said what it means to believe in Jesus. If there is no essential content to believing in Jesus Christ, then how could anyone know he believes in Jesus Christ in the Biblical sense? For example, if someone believes that Jesus was a good moral teacher, does that mean they believe in Jesus? If someone believes that Jesus is a god, does he believe in Jesus? If someone believes that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, does he believe in Jesus? Remember that in this view, there is no essential content of saving faith.i
But that is impossible. All belief is propositional. You can’t believe something unless you are convinced it is true. If there is no proposition, there is nothing to be believed.ii
The essential content, according to John 3:16, is that Jesus Christ guarantees everlasting life to all who believe in Him for that life. Whoever believes in Jesus has everlasting life and will never perish. If I believe John 3:16, then I know I am secure forever in Jesus.
If you don’t think there is essential content to saving faith, I urge you to read the Gospel of John carefully and prayerfully. Ask God, “Is there something I can believe that will result in my being certain that I have everlasting life that can never be lost? If so, please show me as I read Your Word.” God will answer that prayer (Matt 7:7-11; Heb 11:6).
Keep grace in focus, and you’ll continue to accurately explain John 3:16 to friends and loved ones.
i In 2008, I read a book that said just the opposite. Instead of “no essentials,” the author said that there are “five core essentials of saving faith” (Hixson, Getting the Gospel Wrong, p. 100). While I don’t agree that there are five essential truths that must be believed to be saved, I do agree that there is some essential truth that must be believed. The gift of God, everlasting life, is given by Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him for it (John 4:10). The three key elements are 1) believing, 2) in Jesus Christ, 3) for everlasting life. To say that there is no essential truth is to eviscerate the message of John’s Gospel.
ii For example, the word rock, by itself, is not a proposition. You can’t believe rock. You can believe that a rock is an inanimate object. You can believe that the Rock of Gibraltar is huge. But you must say something about rock to have a proposition that is either true or false. The expression whoever believes in Jesus is not a proposition. There is nothing to be believed there. If you said, “Jim believes in Jesus,” that would be a proposition that is either true or false. But whoever believes in Jesus lacks the verbal idea of a proposition.
