What is Faith?

Faith is:

Belief in and commitment to something or someone.  Christian faith is specifically a complete trust in Christ and his work as the basis of one’s relationship to God.1

Biblically speaking, faith is to put one’s trust or confidence in the factuality of a person and his ideas.  It is to believe that what someone is saying is true.  To say “I believe something” is to say that “I acknowledge that it goes along with reality and I will go along with it.”  Unfortunately, when many people today think of the word “faith,” they do not have this idea in mind at all.  They think that the function of faith is to create reality, not to affirm it.  They think faith has magical, creative powers.  The role of faith to them is to manipulate reality, not to go along with it.  This idea comes from a system of beliefs commonly referred to as the “New Age Movement.”

According to one theological dictionary,

[New Age Religion] is a growing religion that has its roots in Eastern philosophy.  It sees sparks of the divine in all persons.2

Another book on the subject says that,

In the New Age way of seeing things there is a strong aversion to harsh dualisms that are common in the West: natural/supernatural; temporal/eternal; material/spiritual; mind/body.3

According to New Age thinking, it is wrong to give anything a label or put anything into a category because God is in everything and everything is in God.  There are no sinners and there are no saints.  There are no truths and there are no lies.  There is no Divine Law.  There is no Heaven and Hell.  There is no God and Satan.  Everything is just a blend.  God is everywhere and He is in everything,4 so there is nowhere that He cannot be found and there is no behavior that does not meet His approval.

In order for you to best enjoy life, you must find the God inside of you.  To do that, you can believe the Bible or you can disbelieve the Bible.  You can go to church or you can go to a synagogue.  You can go to a mosque or you can stay at home.  Since all of us have a little bit of God inside of us, it is up to us to find it however and wherever we want.  That is New Age Religion.  That is the New Age Movement.

Several years ago, my wife and I were studying at a college cafeteria in Kennesaw, Georgia when we overheard a lady watching the Oprah Winfrey show on her laptop.  We were trying to read but the volume on her computer was turned up so loudly that we could not help but listen and Oprah was saying that the best way to enjoy life was to avoid putting things into categories.  Just look up at the sky but do not think of it as a sky.  Just talk to God but do not give God a name or a title.  Just make Him out to be whatever you want Him to be and pray to Him.

And one lady during the show asked if she was a Christian, how could she believe all of this stuff that Oprah was teaching?  To which Oprah responded that she could believe it as long as she did not believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God.5

New Age Religion.  In the ancient world, it was called “Gnosticism.”6  It teaches that you can be open to anything unless it contradicts your views.  You can be open to any way to God except the one way to God.  You can agree with anything someone tells you until they tell you that you are wrong.

For another example of this, the popular website, www.faith.com, says this on its opening page:

Welcome to faith.com!

We’re here to serve as your spiritual resource on the Internet.  Whether you’re deeply committed to spiritual life or you’re a complete newcomer, Faith.com will provide you with a library of essays, sacred texts, and audio and video excerpts that will help you understand the history, rituals, and traditions of all religions and peoples.

But Faith.com is about more than information. You can connect here with other like-minded people.  You can debate, exchange ideas and seek solace in times of transition. Join us!  Your electronic community is waiting for you!7

The question that should be asked upon reading this is what “faith” are they referring to?  What “sacred text” are they talking about?  What do they mean when they mention a “spiritual resource?”  The website goes on to answer those questions:

Browse through our growing collection of texts and prayer lessons from spiritual teaching around the world . . . Learn about faith with author Jane Hope . . . Get some pointers on meditation . . . Discover the great world of religions with noted scholar Hudson Smith . . . Read the 100 best spiritual books of this century . . . Take in prayers and scriptures from the Bible . . . from the Quran . . . and the sacred texts of the east.”8

And the bottom of the cover page gives readers this invitation,

What does your personal path look like?  Where is it taking you?  Read the Faith journals of other seekers and post your own . . . Debate matters of belief and doubt with like-minded travelers in The Questions of Faith . . . Articles in our Words of Wisdom section include reflections by Sam Keep on why silence is the best policy when talking about God and Dorothy Bass on how Sunday can again become a special day for Christians . . . or encounter the way of nature with Zen master Shunyu Suzuki.”9

What does www.faith.com say someone should have faith in?

Anything.

You should have faith in faith.  You should believe in belief.  What religion is www.faith.com referring to?  Any religion.  What sacred text are they talking about?  Any sacred text.  What does the website mean when it uses the term “spiritual?”  It means that any spirit is safe because all spirits are the same.

It is like the guy who goes to the doctor and says, “Help, Doc, I’ve swallowed poison!”  So the doctor takes him to the back of the clinic where all the medicine is stored and he tells the distressed man, “Here is all my medicine.  If you just believe that it will make you better, it will.”  “No matter which medicine you take, if you just have enough faith, it will heal you.”  “As long as you are sincere, just take a pill from any bottle and it will cure you from the effects of the poison that you swallowed.”

Only a fool would walk up to the shelf, grab a random bottle, and start taking pills.  And yet many people today choose their religion with the exact same approach.  In fact, for those who have bought into the New Age Movement, they are no better off, because that is exactly what it is offering.  “Just have faith in faith.”  “Just believe in belief.”  “Take whatever medicine you like.”

It is total and complete nonsense.  And yet many churches all across America have bought into this way of thinking.10

But what does the Word of God say about “faith?”  What are Christians supposed to “believe” in to have their sins forgiven?  Oprah Winfrey and www.faith.com say that you can trust in anything and go to Heaven but what does the Bible say?

Despite what New Agers may teach, the Bible says that there is a faith that sends people to Heaven and there is a faith that sends people to Hell.  To believe nothing about God is to be condemned but to believe the wrong thing about God is to be equally judged.  Contrary to what many today think, salvation is not a wide open free-for-all where you have your truth and I have my truth, so let’s just embrace each other and work out our differences when we get to Heaven.  There is a faith that saves us and there is a faith that damns us.

I. THE FAITH THAT SAVES US

1. Saving Faith has a Specific Function 

In John 3, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ have been baptizing in the Judean wilderness.  Jesus’ crowds are growing and John’s disciples come to him to complain about it.  In verse 26, they say,

Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him.

In other words, “John, this is all your fault.  You have been bragging about this guy and all the people have listened to you and they have left us!”

Verse 30 gives John’s response to their accusations, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”  The Baptist goes on to say in verses 31-35 that Jesus is from Heaven, He speaks the words of God, He has the Holy Spirit without limit, and the Father has placed everything into His hands.  In a sense, John tells his followers, “Don’t complain to me about Jesus’ success but instead rejoice with me.”  “This man is from God and He speaks the words of God.”  “His success is a triumph, not a defeat.  So praise God that people are going to Him.”  “Rejoice!”

And John the Baptist draws all of this to a conclusion in John 3:36,

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

The Greek word for “He who believes” is pisteuo.  It is used 98 times in the Gospel of John11 and the noun form of the word (pistis) is translated “faith” in the New Testament.  So it is a very common word.12  In fact, the main scholastic dictionary for the Greek New Testament contains 54 pages of information on this word.13

To “believe” in something in Greek was “to be convinced of it, to accept it to be true, to trust it.”14  The noun “faith” meant “trust, confidence, a conviction or certainty of belief.”15  In the Biblical usage, “faith” affirms the truth of something.  When the ancient Jews and Christians said that they had faith in something, they meant that they were persuaded of the truth of it.  To believe in God was to affirm that God was true.

That meaning is completely different from what many people today think of when they think of “faith.”  Most people on the street have a New Age conception of faith.  They think that if you believe in something, you actually cause it to be true.  As the thinking goes, you do not affirm something when you believe it; you create something when you believe it.  Whether it matches the plain facts of history or science or human experience does not matter.  If you believe it with all of your heart, it must be right.  It must be true.

If you believe in aliens, then there are aliens.  If you believe that your dog will be in Heaven, then your dog will be in Heaven.  If you believe that God will not judge you in Hell, then God will not judge you in Hell.  If you believe in the Bible, then the Bible is true for you.  If you believe in the Koran, then the Koran is true for you.  If you believe in Buddhism, then Buddhism is true for you.  If you believe in Christian Science or the Book of Mormon or the Jehovah’s Witness or Jim Jones or David Koresh or if you believe in all of them at the same time then it is all true for you.  As long as you have faith in something, it will become real.  It will become right.

After all, reality does not matter, sincerity matters.  The external truth does not matter, the internal truth matters because your belief determines reality.  The more sincere you are, the truer your faith is.  Your belief has “creative powers.”

That is New Age Faith but that is not Biblical faith.  That is not pistis.  Faith has a specific function in the Bible and that function is to affirm the truth of something, not to manufacture it.  Only God has the power to create.  Only God has the ability to make something real.  In the Biblical sense, if you believe in a lie then it does not change the lie, it only makes you a fool.  Your faith does not change reality, it just shows whether you agree with it or not.  Reality stays the same whatever you may or may not think about it.  And if you do not affirm truth, then it does not change the truth, it just shows that you are wrong.

Saving faith has a specific function and that function is to affirm truth, not to create it.

2. Saving Faith has a Specific Object

John 3:36 goes on to say, “He who believes in the Son . . .”  “The Son” is a title here just like it is in 3:35, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.”  In Greek, if you put “the” in front of a noun it makes the noun a title.16  That is why “Son” is capitalized in most English Bibles.  John the Baptist is not referring to any “Son” but to a particular “Son.”  “He who believes in the Son . . .”

And, looking at all that precedes verse 36, it is obvious that “the Son” that John is referring to is Jesus Christ.  In verse 28, John calls Jesus “the Christ” or “the Annointed One.”17  In verse 29, Jesus is called the bridegroom.  In verse 31, He is “He who comes from above.”  In verse 32, Jesus is the One Who testifies to “what He has seen and heard.”  Jesus tells of Heaven with a first-hand testimony because He has been there.  Verse 34 says that Jesus has been sent from God and that He speaks the words of God and He gives the Holy Spirit without limit.  And, finally in verse 35, it says that the Father loves the Son and has placed everything into His hands.

The point in bringing all of this up is that the object of a Christian’s faith is not faith.  We do not believe in belief.  We do not trust in whatever we want to and that makes it true.

In verse 36, John the Baptist says that we should believe in the One that he has been describing for the last seven verses.  We should believe in the Christ of God.  We should believe in the One Who came down from heaven speaking the words of God and baptizing men in the Holy Spirit.  We should believe in the Savior Who was crucified18 and resurrected19 for sinners.

Saving faith is not a free-for-all.  It does not allow us to believe whatever and however we want to.  It has a specific function and it has a specific object.  The specific function is to affirm the truth of something and the truth to be affirmed is Jesus Christ.  To be saved by faith, you must affirm / be persuaded of Who Jesus Christ is and of what He did to save you from the wrath of God.

Saving faith has a specific object and that object is Jesus Christ.

3. Saving Faith has a Specific Reward 

John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life . . .”  Whoever believes in the Son has life without end.  Whoever is persuaded of the truth of Jesus Christ possesses life that will always be.  He will enjoy ceaseless living.

And John the Baptist says that those who believe in the Son will have that forever.  Those who put their faith in Jesus Christ will experience the joys of God in Heaven for all of eternity.  They will take pleasure in this description of Heaven from Revelation 21:1-4; 22:5,

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away . . .”

And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.

If you have this specific faith in this specific object, you can enjoy this specific reward.  If you believe in Jesus Christ and only in Jesus Christ to save you, you can live in this place.  No more death.  No more mourning.  No more danger.  No more night.  Just unending joy with your Creator in a new heaven and a new earth.  And you can be there with Him forever and forever and forever.  You will never be separated from the love of Christ and from His salvation for all of eternity.20

To be saved from the consequences of your sin and to avoid Hell, you must believe in Jesus.  And, if you do, you will experience a ceaseless sinless life with the God Who made you.  Saving faith has a specific reward and that reward is Heaven.

II. THE FAITH THAT CONDEMNS US21

1. Condemning Faith has a Specific Function 

If the first part of John 3:36 shows you how to get into Heaven, the second part of John 3:36 shows you how to get into Hell.  Despite what New Age doctrine teaches, there is a faith that damns you.  There is a faith that leads you into eternal destruction.  John the Baptist goes on to say in verse 36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son . . .”  The word for “does not obey” in Greek is one word: apeitheo.  It simply means “to disobey, to be disobedient.”22   If belief saves you, disobedience condemns you.

Disobedience here does not refer only to when a Christian sins.  If that were the meaning of the verse, then we would all go to Hell for “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”23  No, the idea of apeitheo in verse 36 is life-long disobedience.  It is the kind of disobedience that prompted Jesus to ask the question, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”24  The idea is also demonstrated in First John 5:3-5,

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.  For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.  Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

A Christian is one “who overcomes the world.”  He is obedient to God.  He fights sin.  A non-Christian does not.  He is disobedient to God.  He lives in sin.  Has not overcome the world.  He is of the world.

That is the idea of apeitheo here in John 3:36.  Total, complete, life-long disobedience to God.  That is why the New International Version translates apeitheo as “rejects.”  “But whoever rejects the Son will not see life . . .”  That is the idea of the word.  Whoever obeys the Son by believing in Him will be saved but whoever does not obey the Son and remains in unbelief will be punished.

2. Condemning Faith has a Specific Object

John the Baptist goes on to say, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son . . .”  “The Son” is mentioned twice in verse 36: once in regard to saving faith and once in regard to condemning faith.  The person who believes in the Son is saved and the person who rejects the Son is lost.

The frightening truth of John 3:36 is that condemning faith is a faith that believes in anything and everything but Jesus Christ.  Damning faith is when you put your confidence in something other than the Son of God for salvation.  It is to be persuaded that Jesus is not enough to save you, that you need something else.  How do you get to Heaven?  Through obeying the Son.  How do you get to Hell?  Through anything and everything else.

How are you saved from God’s wrath?  Look to Jesus’ death on the cross25 and His glorious resurrection.26  Believe on Him27 and turn from your life of sin28 that so infuriates a holy God and reject every other means of salvation29 and you will be saved.  How can you suffer God’s wrath?  Reject Jesus’ work on the cross and reject His glorious resurrection.  Continue in your life of sin.  Reject the idea that your wickedness makes God angry and believe anything else.

New Age Religion gets it all wrong.  It is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches.  New Agers say that Heaven is found any way you like: Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, the Dali Llama, Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, Mary Baker Eddy, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert Schuller, Oprah Winfrey, Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, Joyce Meyers, Benny Hinn, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, Al Mohler, John Piper,30 www.faith.com, whoever.  Good?  Bad?  It does not really matter.  It is all the same.  Atheism, agnosticism, polytheism, pantheism, henotheism, monotheism, whatever.  True?  False?  Nobody cares.  It will all get figured out in the end.  Works righteousness, grace alone, grace plus works, however.  It is all just different flavors of the same religion anyway, so just pick whichever one you like and it will save you.  That is what New Age Religion teaches.

It will all save you as long as you do not believe that your way to God is the only way to God.  It will all help you unless you put your faith in one thing and one thing alone.  Any kind of faith system can be tolerated except for an intolerable one.

But the Bible says just the opposite.  The Word of God says that there is only one way to Heaven.  There are no detours.  There are no side roads.  There are no flavors to religion.  There is only one way to God the Father and every other supposed “way” is wrong.  Buddhism is wrong.  Islam is wrong.  Ecumenical Christianity, which embraces Christianity along with all of the other religions in the world,31 is wrong.  Atheism is wrong.  Agnosticism is wrong.  Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Christian Science, and the Jehovah’s Witness, who say that you must earn your way into Heaven, are wrong.32

And they are wrong because the Bible says that there is only one object of saving faith and that one object is Jesus Christ.  Saving faith is faith in His substitutionary death33 on the cross and His rising from the dead to save us.  And it is faith that does not need to be added to.  We do not need pay God back for our salvation because Jesus paid it all.34  To teach anything else is to teach a different Gospel.35  And as Paul warns in Galatians 1:8-9,

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!  As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

A Gospel “contrary to what we have preached to you” must come from a contrary source.  A different message of salvation must come from a different author.  Let us be very plain here: New Age Religion is from Satan, not God.  It comes from a demonic source.  In regards to salvation, it accepts everything the Bible denies and it denies everything the Bible accepts.  It is a false peace that tries to unite everyone under the banner of ambiguity and fails.  It claims to accept everybody but, in the end, it saves no one.  It swallows every lie in the name of God and spits out the one essential truth about Him.  And therefore it is from Hell.

Condemning Faith has a specific object and that object is anything other than Jesus Christ alone.

3. Condemning Faith has a Specific Punishment

The rest of John 3:36 says,

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

This is the only time that the word “wrath” appears in the Gospel of John but the idea is repeated earlier in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus.  In John 3:18, it says,

He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

If you reject the Son and disobey Him and do not believe that He is who He says He is you will not see life.  You will not experience it or enjoy it.  As one commentator said, you will not “taste, enter, enjoy, or possess eternal life.”36

So what will happen to you?  If you will not experience eternal life, what will you experience?

The end of verse 36 says, “but the wrath of God abides on him.”  When you sin, it makes God angry.  When you lie, cheat, steal, dishonor your parents, gossip, lust, become angry with your brother, or covet, it makes the Lord furious.  He created the earth37 and He gave laws to the people He created38 and when those laws are broken, He requires justice.  The more laws that are broken, the angrier God becomes and the more justice He requires.

For those who have believed on Jesus Christ, God’s anger has already been poured out on the cross.  Christians do not need to suffer for their sins because the Son of God has already suffered in their place.  He has become their substitute and, when they die, they can enter into eternal life because God’s wrath has been appeased.  But for those who have rejected Jesus Christ and tried to find salvation some other way, John the Baptist says that “the wrath of God abides on [them].”

It is not going anywhere.  They will not be able to escape it.  God is angry at their law-breaking in this life and God will be angry with it in the next life.  His anger will abide with them.  His justice hangs over their head and waits for the Day of Judgment.  While they do not see His wrath while they are living, when they die, they will begin to experience it for all of eternity.  It will never go away.  There will be no end to their suffering.  It will remain on them now and it will remain on them then.  Revelation 21:11-15 describes that horrible day,

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.  And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  This is the second death, the lake of fire.  And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Condemning faith has a specific punishment and that punishment is Hell.

CONCLUSION

There is probably no word that is more abused in the 21st Century than the word “faith.”  It is used to mean all kinds of things to all kinds of people but to the authors of the Bible, faith had a specific function and a specific object and a specific reward / punishment.  Faith was not some vague hope but a specific trust that held tremendous consequences if it was misplaced.  If a man’s faith was in the right thing, it would be rewarded eternally.  If his faith was in the wrong thing, it would be punished eternally.  For the inspired Word of God, an individual’s eternal destination depended on what he put his confidence in.  His everlasting future hinged on what truth he was persuaded of and there was no excuse for trusting in the wrong thing.

In his book, He is There and He is Not Silent, Francis Schaeffer illustrates the difference between New Age faith and Biblical faith in a striking way.  He is worth quoting at length.

One must analyze the word faith and see that it can mean two completely opposite things.

Suppose we are climbing in the Alps and are very high on the bare rock, and suddenly the fog shuts down.  The guide turns to us and says that the ice is forming and that there is no hope; before morning we will all freeze to death here on the shoulder of the mountain.  Simply to keep warm the guide keeps us moving in the dense fog further out on the shoulder until none of us have any idea where we are.  After an hour or so, someone says to the guide, “Suppose I dropped and hit a ledge ten feet down in the fog. What would happen then?”  The guide would say that you might make it until the morning and thus live.  So, with absolutely no knowledge or any reason to support his action, one of the group hangs and drops into the fog.  This would be one kind of faith, a leap of faith.

Suppose, however, after we have worked out on the shoulder in the midst of the fog and the growing ice on the rock, we had stopped and we heard a voice which said, “You cannot see me, but I know exactly where you are from your voices.  I am on another ridge.  I have lived in these mountains, man and boy, for over sixty years and I know every foot of them.  I assure you that ten feet below you there is a ledge.  If you hang and drop, you can make it through the night and I will get you in the morning.”

I would not hang and drop at once, but would ask questions to try to ascertain if the man knew what he was talking about and if he was not my enemy.  In the Alps, for example, I would ask him his name.  If the name he gave me was the name of a family from that part of the mountains, it would count a great deal to me.  In the Swiss Alps there are certain family names that indicate mountain families of that area.  In my desperate situation, even though time would be running out, I would ask him what to me would be the adequate and sufficient questions, and when I became convinced by his answers, then I would hang and drop.

This is faith, but obviously it has no relationship to the other use of the word.  As a matter of fact, if one of these is called faith, the other should not be designated by the same word.39

I could not agree more.  There should be a different word for what many today call “faith” because it is often nothing more than placing one’s confidence in one’s own imagination.  It usually refers to the process of manufacturing some religious idea and convincing yourself that it is true.

But the Bible means something else entirely when it refers to “faith.”  It means to be persuaded in the truth and in nothing but the truth.  It means to be convinced of the reality that God created, not the reality that I created.  It means to trust in the Son of God to pay for my sins and to be resurrected that I might live in Heaven with Him.  May this article help you to do that.

  1. Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001 ed.) 65. []
  2. Ibid., 135. []
  3. John Ankerberg & John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs (Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House Publishers, 1996) x. []
  4. Erickson, 148.  The idea that God is everywhere is known as pantheism.  Pantheism is “The belief that everything is divine.” []
  5. For a copy of a similar video, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwGLNbiw1gk as of 1/26/11.  Everything on this clip is not recommended, particularly the requests to donate to the Watchman Expositor on the left-hand side of the page, but the video itself is helpful. []
  6. Erickson, 77.  Gnosticism is “A movement in early Christianity, beginning already in the first century, that (1) emphasized a special higher truth that only the more enlightened receive from God, (2) taught that matter is evil, (3) denied the humanity of Jesus.”  For some books on how much ancient Gnosticism has impacted contemporary thought, see Peter R. Jones’ The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back (Philipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing, 1992) and Spirit Wars (Escondido, Cali.: Main Entry, 1997). []
  7. www.faith.com as of 1/26/11. []
  8. Ibid. []
  9. Ibid. []
  10. Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki, & Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999) 43.  This kind of thinking is often known as ecumenicalism.  Ecumenicalism is defined as “the attempt to seek a worldwide unity and cooperation among all churches that confess Jesus Christ as Lord . . . In the early twentieth century various international missionary conferences explored the need for Christian unity if world evangelism were to be accomplished.”  For some historical examples of how popular ecumenicalism is in the modern church, see Iaian H. Murray’s The Unresolved Controversy: Unity with Non-Evangelicals (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001) and George Marsden’s Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987). []
  11. Merrill C. Tenney, New Testament Survey (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1961) 190. []
  12. For instance, in the Book of Acts the word “faith” is used 13 times.  In the Book of Romans, it is used 39 times. []
  13. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume VI, ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006 ed.) 174-228. []
  14. Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, ed. by William D. Mounce (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006) 61-62. []
  15. Ibid., 232-233. []
  16. H. E. Dana & Julius R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1955) 142. []
  17. Mounce, 109.  Christos in Greek meant “Annointed One.” []
  18. Col 1:20; 1 Pet 2:24. []
  19. Rom 4:25. []
  20. Rom 8:28-39. []
  21. Erickson, 39.  Condemnation refers to “negative judgment upon sin.”  So “condemning faith” would then refer to faith that leads to a negative judgment upon sin.  It refers to the faith that leads one to Hell. []
  22. G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: T & T Clark, 2001 ed.) 45. []
  23. Rom 3:23. []
  24. Lk 6:46. []
  25. Gal 6:14; Eph 2:16; Col 2:14.  For more information on the cross, see our FAQ, “Why the Cross?” []
  26. Rom 6:5-11; 1 Cor 15:21.  For more information on the resurrection, see our FAQ, “Why the resurrection?” and “What was the Resurrection like?” []
  27. Jn 3:16; 6:35, 40; Acts 16:30-31. []
  28. Lk 15:7; Acts 2:38; 16:30-31; 2 Pet 3:9. []
  29. Jn 14:6; Acts 4:12. []
  30. This is not meant to imply that John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, Al Mohler, and John Piper belong in the same category as Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, and Joyce Meyers.   I would violently oppose the idea that they do just as much as I would violently oppose the idea that Jesus Christ should be placed in the same category as Mohammed and Buddha.  By lumping all of these names in one list, I am only trying to point out that New Age Religion accepts them all even when they do not belong together. []
  31. For more information on Ecumenicalism, see Footnote 9. []
  32. For more information about each of these cults, visit www.carm.org   []
  33. Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, & Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007) 21.  Substitution “states that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.” []
  34. Rom 6:10; Heb 10:11-13. []
  35. Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. by Ronald Youngblood (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996) 516.  The Gospel is “the joyous good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.”  For more information on the Gospel, see our FAQ, “What is the Gospel?” []
  36. J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John 1-6 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2007 ed.) 189. []
  37. Gen 1; Isa 40:26; 45:8 []
  38. Deuteronomy 5 is a good summary of those laws. []
  39. He is There and He is not Silent in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Volume One (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 1985) 352. []

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