Ask the Pastor 97

What is faith?

Many times, Christians will answer this question by quoting the verse in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This tells us that faith is its own proof or evidence; it gives substance to our hope and evidence to what cannot be seen or proven empirically. Therefore, a definition of faith can be “Believing in that which we cannot otherwise prove with the 5 senses”. In the New Testament Greek, the words, faith, believe and trust, all come from the same root word pistis which is to commit ourselves to something or someone as is the case with faith in Christ. Therefore, in the parameters of our great salvation, it means that we are committing ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ even though we cannot presently experience Him with our 5 senses or empirically. We want to be clear here, that faith must be attached to something, in this case it is attached to the person and work of Christ. When someone makes the statement, “I have faith” the logical question is, “faith in what?”; it must be attached, faith does not just float around in a void. This causes some people to jump to the conclusion that our faith is based on that which has no proof or evidence. That is a mistaken view and is not true. Even though we cannot physically see or feel the Lord Jesus, we have the testimony of those who did such as the Apostle John, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.” (I Jn. 1:1). Based upon the truth of the Word of God we can believe on the Lord Jesus and know for sure that we have ever lasting life.

Have questions about the Bible? Send them to Dr. Greg Koehn at gak4850@gmail.com and read the answer here in this article.