By Zane C. Hodges

* This article is drawn from Chapter 3 of the book Absolutely Free.

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” (John 11:25-27).

Let there be no mistaking that indeed we are talking about “believing facts.” Jesus said, “Do you believe this?” And Martha replied, “I believe that You are…” John wants his readers to “believe that Jesus is…” The content of the faith under discussion is unmistakably factual.

But there is more than this to the exchange between Jesus and Martha. The facts the Lord presented to her are more than just great facts. They are saving facts. That is, they are divinely revealed facts that are to be believed for salvation. Thus, Jesus’ words to Martha are John’s way of telling us what it means to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

Naturally, there are many people in the modern world who would claim to believe that Jesus is God’s Son. To such people it goes almost without saying that He is also “the Christ.” “After all,” they might say, “isn’t that His name?” But if they were asked whether Jesus guarantees resurrection and eternal life to people on the simple basis of faith, their reply might very well be negative. “Of course not,” they might say. “You also have to live right to get eternal life!” And in so saying, they would plainly disclose that they did not believe what the Savior asked Martha to believe.

Not all facts about God are saving facts. To believe, for example, in the unity of God (that God is One) saves no one. Every orthodox Jew in the Roman world believed that. In fact, claims an opponent of James, so do the demons (Jas 2:19). To be sure, the unity of God is glorious Christian truth. But it does not contain within itself the truth of the gospel.

To believe that Jesus is the Christ—in John’s sense of that term—is to believe saving truth. It is, in fact, to believe the very truth that Martha of Bethany believed. To put it as simply as possible, Jesus was asking Martha whether she believed that He fully guaranteed the eternal destiny of every believer. That was the same as asking if this great truth applied to her as well! And Martha affirmed that it did by affirming her conviction about who He was. Therefore, by believing the amazing facts about the person of Christ, Martha was trusting Him. She was placing her eternal destiny in His hands. If she was wrong about who He was, then her faith was sadly misplaced. But if she was right about this—and she was—then resurrection and eternal life were a certainty for her. She had Jesus’ own word on it.

Everything depended on the truth of what she believed. It was not at all a question of what kind of faith she had. She either believed this or she didn’t. It was as simple as that.

In the closing chapter of his first epistle, the Apostle John wrote as follows: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5:1). This is as plain as it could possibly be. It is also completely harmonious with what we have just seen in John’s Gospel. The truth that Jesus is the Christ—the truth that He is the Giver of eternal life to every believer—is saving truth. Belief in this truth produces immediate—and permanent—new birth. It follows, therefore, that there is no such thing as believing the saving message without simultaneously possessing eternal life. “Everyone …”—not just some or many—“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” There are no exceptions at all. So states the Apostle. But the superb simplicity of all this is lost on many modern Evangelicals. Indeed, they are frightened by it, and they are tempted to evade it by invoking some special definition of saving faith. In the process, they cloud beyond hope the Biblical doctrine of faith and tragically distort the Biblical message of grace.

In fact, in a very real sense, they are trying to do God’s work for Him. Whenever we do that, it is always a serious mistake and most often it is also disastrous. In this case, it is certainly disastrous.

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Zane Hodges taught New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary for 27 years, authored over a dozen books, and was passionate about the grace of God.