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That we have ‘faith’ is irrelevant; what we have faith in is everything
Faith means ‘trust’. If this is the case, then the words ‘faith / belief’ cover far more than ‘religious actions’, as we’ve touched on. It was not a religious term in the language of the time the New Testament was written.
In that sense, we all have beliefs we ‘consider to be true and, hence, worthy of being trusted’ (Louw & Nida Semantic Greek-NT Lexicon). Everyone has everyday beliefs from the great to the trivial, and because we consider them to be true we act accordingly: ‘I believe that political party x is better for this country, therefore I will vote for them’; ‘I believe it’s going to rain today, so I will take an umbrella.’ In either of those illustrations, the word ‘believe’ could just as easily be substituted with ‘have faith’, or ‘trust’ or ‘regard to be true’.
Further, if faith means ‘trust’, it renders nonsensical the claim people sometimes make to ‘be a person of faith’ or to be ‘a believer’. ‘I am a person of trust’ or ‘I am a truster’ makes no sense. Immediately we have to ask: ‘that’s great, but what is it you have trust in? What do you believe?’
This is because, finally, faith or trust is nothing in itself. It’s the object of our faith that counts. I can believe/trust all I want that a broken chair will hold me up when I sit on it; no amount of faith/trust in its reliability is going to stop me from falling to the ground, however! As I pick myself up off the floor, I realise that faith is nothing, but my faith in the wrong thing counted for a lot! I believed a lie rather than the truth. A trivial example, but you get the point!
Christians are people who have faith in something, just like everyone else in the world. Even atheism – the belief that there is no God – is a belief in something. It is the object of our faith that counts for everything. In our case, it’s that Jesus is King, and he offers complete, full, and total forgiveness. And rather than the fearful and enslaving and uncertain and bleak alternative beliefs out there, how liberating and good is that news when we trust it!
