Believing What God Has Declared as True

The Doctrine of Faith

John’s Gospel, from start to finish, calls people to faith in Christ. At its simplest, faith is believing God and acting upon that belief. Biblical faith involves more than optimism, blind hope, or only intellectual agreement with facts. Even demons recognize undeniable truth but refuse to surrender to what they know.1

Saving faith requires three important elements. First, specific content—actual truth God has revealed about the gospel of salvation—must be believed. John the Baptist and Jesus’s first disciples embraced specific truth about Jesus.2 Secondly, conviction leads to personal trust in Jesus.3 Thirdly, commitment to repent and follow Christ brings willingness to surrender to Jesus’s right to control and direct one’s thoughts and actions.4 If I trust someone then I respond to what they say.

True faith involves more than a casual acknowledgement of Jesus with no bearing on daily life. Failure to recognize Jesus for who He really is comes with great cost. Without personally receiving Jesus as Savior, sin’s deserved judgment must be carried yourself.

However, faith in Jesus offers more than escape from judgment. Without Jesus and God’s unchanging truth as the anchor for life, this world’s fleeting pleasures and ever-changing voices place your feet on constantly shifting sand.

Knowing and believing what is true about Jesus changes your life forever. Through the Holy Spirit’s power, genuine faith yields a deepening understanding of salvation’s wonder, a growing love for Jesus, and an ongoing surrender to Him in the moments of life. Faith in Christ is not a benign influence but a transforming force in an individual’s life. Like Jesus’s disciples, how has Jesus called you to believe in and follow Him? How has following Jesus transformed your life?

1. Demons: James 2:19
2. Gospel truth: Matthew 16:16; Acts 4:12; 16:31
3. Personal faith in Christ: John 1:12; 3:16; 6:37; Acts 16:14
4. Commitment to Christ: Matthew 11:28-30; Luke 9:23; 14:25-27; Acts 3:19; 20:21; Romans 12:1-2

Resource: Bible Study Fellowship, People of Promise: Kingdom Divided, Lesson 2, The Gospel of John