‘To Believe’ Is Necessary, But Not Sufficient – Part 1
In the previous post I wrote that the word ‘believe’ has two meanings in the New Testament. Most commonly when an author uses ‘believe’ in a passage of Scripture, the author means ‘to have faith’. John 3: 16 is a good example. You can replace ‘believe’ with ‘has faith’ and it means the same thing. But ‘believe’ can also mean “agreement with something or someone as truth” – which is mental assent. Here is the problem: suppose I read John 3: 16 and think that the word ‘believe’ means mental assent instead of faith (that is, true faith). Then I am left with “whoever thinks that Jesus is the ‘holy One of God’ (mental assent) shall not perish but have eternal life”. As I said in the previous post, even the demons believe this. How many of us ‘believe’ but don’t have true faith? And therefore, are not living in the Kingdom of God and don’t have salvation.
In his book ‘Renovation of the Heart’, Dallas Willard disagrees with what I am suggesting in these posts: “Indeed, no one can actually believe the truth about Him (Jesus) without trusting (have faith in) Him. It is a mental impossibility” (pg. 87).
Wow! Maybe he is correct. But I don’t think so. In this post I will support my ideas with an interesting example from Scripture. These are Kingdom ideas with eternal Kingdom implications.
In John 12: 42, 43 we see a great example of where I think the word ‘believe’ means to ‘accept someone or something as true’, can be misinterpreted to mean ‘true faith’, and helps us understand the difference between true and false faith. This passage also illustrates how men can ‘believe’ as intellectual assent, but still not have true faith. I will use two different translations because – well, you will see. It is very interesting (at least to me).
Let’s begin with this passage from the New King James version (NKJV).
“Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12: 42, 43 NKJV).
The rulers John is writing about are important men who have some authority in the Jewish community, but are not the Pharisees. One thing is clear – they were secret ‘believers’, afraid of excommunication. How can we tell whether John used ‘believe’ to mean true faith or intellectual assent? We have two clues. The first is the word ‘confess’, and the second is what they loved.
The Greek word for ‘confess’ in this passage is homologeo. It means, “to assent, to admit, to agree or acknowledge, to agree with the statement of another” (from Souter Pocket Lexicon, NASB Exhaustive Concordance, and Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance). The word ‘confess’ does not mean “to have faith”. It means that the rulers acknowledged Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah – they assented to and agreed with this truth, but in secret, not in public. But this belief is not the same thing as putting their faith in Jesus. How do we know this?
Before I answer this question, let us review. Everyone has faith. You either have faith in self, which means you find your value, acceptance, belonging, and significance in the things of the world – idols; or, you find your value, acceptance, belonging, and significance in serving, obeying, trusting Jesus and committing and surrendering your life to Him. He is your value. The former is false faith, the latter is true faith. Every person has one faith or the other. No exceptions. In this sense, faith is about an ultimate thing – the one thing you have chosen to give your life meaning, and purpose – it is about what you worship, the thing you trust to fulfill you. Tillich calls it our “ultimate concern” and everyone has an ultimate concern, everyone worships something. And whatever you choose, faith is about risk because all faith is about things hoped for and not seen.
As I said before, faith is intimately connected with kingdom life. In a sense, faith is the key that opens the door into kingdom life. There are two kingdoms – the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world (or self). Everyone lives in one or the other. True faith is the key that opens the door to the Kingdom of God; false faith is the indication that I am living in the kingdom of the world. We cannot live in both kingdoms at the same time – no dual citizenship – and we cannot carry around in our hearts two faiths at the same time. This is because faith is about ultimate things. And there can only be one ‘ultimate’ at the same time, otherwise it isn’t ultimate. Although faith is a gift, you must choose and receive one or the other. But, no one has perfect true faith. So, while we might have chosen or received Jesus as our ultimate concern, we still have to continuously repent of idols (false faith) remaining in our lives from “the bad old days”.
Faith works this way: Everyone chooses an ultimate thing for value, acceptance, and belonging. It is in that ‘thing’ that you place your faith. You have only two choices: Jesus or things of the world. Lets say you choose something from the world, like money. Then, the spirit behind money (which is the ruler of the earth – satan) will say to you, “Bob, I will totally fulfill you, but you must totally surrender to me. Do you agree?” And you will say, “Yes, I can make that promise”. You have entered a contract – “If you do this, I will do that”. There are four elements embedded in this promise or contract: 1) ‘I believe’ as in “I think this spirit of money is truthful – it can deliver on the promise of total fulfillment”; this is intellectual assent; 2) “I trust that spirit of money will deliver on the promise”; this is faith; and 3) “I will surrender and commit to this spirit”. 4) There is one other element that I might not consciously acknowledge – there is risk because the promise is now, but the pay off, the fulfillment, is in the future. I am trusting that this spirit will deliver on the promise in the future. In other words, I have faith in the spirit of money.
But as we all know, or should know, this contract is a scam. Satan will take and in the end, for most people, deliver nothing but bitterness, frustration, fear, and anxiety. He is a liar! If he does deliver, it comes at a very high cost. Jesus tells us satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. This contract with you is one of the ways he accomplishes this purpose. Sadly, many people find this out when it is too late.
Faith in the spirit of money is called idolatry; it is what I call false (or idolatrous) faith. We have many idols to choose from. One of the most common is “man’s desire to be honored by men” or “the praise of men”.
True faith is finding all of my value in Jesus. He is my value. Jesus does not ask me to enter a contract with Him. Instead, He makes a covenant with me. By faith, I enter into this covenant. He says, “I will totally fulfill you . . . ”. That’s it! His love for me is independent of my performance or behavior. That is agape love — Kingdom love.
Back to John 12: 43, 44. I made the statement that “the rulers ‘believed’ Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah”. But their belief is not faith in Jesus. How do we know this?” First, we know it because of the meaning of the word ‘confess’ – they agreed that Jesus is the Messiah. Second, we know it because the passage tells us where their faith comes from. “They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” This is a classic statement of false faith – “man’s desire to be honored by men”. You cannot have two faiths – it is one or the other. Their faith, which is false, comes from “their love of men’s praises”; therefore, their faith is not in Jesus. It is not true faith. It is the world’s faith.
I said at the top of the post that I would use two translations. The first was from the NKJV. Now here is the same passage from the NIV.
“Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in Him. But because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue for they loved praise from men more than praise from God” (John 12: 43, 44 NIV).
I think the NIV translators assumed that ‘believe’ meant ‘to have faith’ in the sense of true faith. The Greek word for faith is pistis. If you can, check out the passage in Greek. Pistis is not in the sentence. The translators assumed that ‘believe’ meant faith, when, as I explained, I think it is much more likely that ‘believe’ in this passage means mental assent, which is much different from true faith.
To make matters more complicated, in the next verse, John 44, Jesus says, “When a man believes in Me, he does not believe in Me only, but in the One who sent Me”. In this passage the word ‘believe’ is obviously synonymous with ‘has faith’.
So what? I think I demonstrated using Scripture that it is possible to ‘believe’ the truth of who Jesus is and what He did and said, and have a type of faith that is false or ‘dead’ (James 2: 17). The rulers in this passage agreed or confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, but their faith was in the things of the world, not in Him. If they can do this, so can we. If the NIV translators can get it wrong, we can too. Are there Christians who ‘believe’ in Jesus Christ as mental assent, think that is ‘faith’, and therefore are convinced that they have eternal life, when in fact, they do not? And because they are not moving in true faith, they are not moving in power and authority, victory over darkness, and are not living the abundant life — and maybe wondering “why not?”. I know I am pounding on this point, but I think it is critical for the Church and the Kingdom.
But I cannot, at least not yet, walk continuously in true faith. Who can? There is great mystery here. No one can be completely faithful – all of us wrestle with some degree of false faith. And false faith is faith in something other than God, which God calls Sin. And God hates Sin (idolatry) and sins (disobedience) which arise from false faith. So where does that leave me? Good question. See my next post about a vision God gave me as a metaphor for faith and the Kingdom of God.
Seeking the Truth,
John