All I could see dangling over the edge of our shed’s roof were his feet. My words ascended up to a boy obscured from view, “Son, slowly let yourself down. I will support you.”
His response was short and terse, “I’m afraid.”
In the most security inspiring tone I could muster came the words, “It’s OK. Just six more inches and I will be able to grab your feet. Trust me.”
I could have said, "Believe in me" or "Have faith in me." The message would have been the same.
In that moment, a young boy instinctively experienced something which has formally eluded many. Earlier that week he had exhibited faith in me by simply believing my promise: “I’ll be home on time so we can play soccer together.” Yet, now faith required different details in order to trust. He experientially learned that what is required in order to trust is situational.
As he lay on his stomach on a warm asphalt shingled roof, even he knew that to have faith in his dad would require moving another six inches off the roof. In this situation to merely believe would not constitute faith, although that had been the sum total of faith earlier.
On another occasion earlier that summer, a couple of bees had circled around his body. I had commanded, “Stand still.” It had taken a lot of faith in dad to remain motionless. However, to remain frozen while on the shed’s roof would not amount to trusting in his dad. No, in order for him in this moment to believe in his dad would require him to slowly back off of the roof until he could feel his dad’s secure hands supporting his tennis shoes.
What then is faith’s nature? It is this – how we trust, have faith or believe in someone or something is situationally determined.
Today, this is how we use the language of believing and faith. With her hand held out for the car keys, a teenager asks her dad, "Do you believe in me?" Will dad have faith?
Thus to declare that faith is necessary does not inform us how to trust. We must first know the scenario in order to know how to respond with faith or how to believe in someone or something. Hebrews 11 reveals scripture also uses faith in this same way. What constitutes faith is situationally determined.
So what is required to have faith in Jesus? The word "faith," by itself, cannot provide the details. We cannot know what is required in order to trust in Jesus until we have heard the story.
In brief, God’s love caused him to send Jesus as a gift to die for our sins in order that we might be redeemed and made right with God. Jesus’ death created the basis for a new relationship with God; it created the new covenant by which God promises to forgive and to claim us as his own. God then raised Jesus from the dead establishing him as Lord and Messiah!
The gospel not only announces what God has achieved for us in Christ, it also calls us to trust in Christ by being baptized. Paul explained that with baptism, God performs a surgery upon us that Christ made possible, a surgery taking us from being dead in sin to making us spiritually alive with Christ (Col. 2:11-13). In other words, the faith response of baptism is that point in which we enter into the new covenant relationship receiving God’s covenantal promises to forgive us and to claim us as his new born children.
Everyone who tells people to trust in Jesus must explain how to believe in, trust in, have faith in Jesus. Scripture reveals that to have faith in Christ requires baptism.
When Paul’s letters to Christians mention faith, Paul was not attempting to inform the lost how to enter salvation! The article "Jesus, PAUL And James on Salvation" identifies how this observation impacts interpretation.
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