Faith is an essential element of the Christian experience. According to Hebrews 11:6, without faith it is impossible to please God. Indeed, salvation comes to us by grace through faith, as made explicit in Ephesians 2:8-9. As important as faith is to the Christian experience, it is also, strangely, one of the most misunderstood concepts in the Bible. Having a Biblically informed understanding of this essential element of the Christian experience is not only important, but required, for anyone who truly wants to live a life committed to Jesus.
How important is faith? As already noted, it it the method by which salvation arrives to us. Salvation comes to us by grace through faith. It it is the conduit through which grace flows to us, so knowing what faith is seems to be extremely important. How can you get something if you don’t know how to access it? I like to think of grace coming to us through faith this way: Imagine a lamp sitting on a table, unplugged. It has no light emanating from it because it is not plugged into a power source. It has, literally, no power flowing to it and no signs of connection to power. In this illustration, we are the lamp. Grace is the power source by which salvation arrives to us. Faith is the power cord that gets the grace to us resulting in salvation and, yes, light. Perhaps this is a crude way of understanding faith, but I believe it is helpful to understand the importance of faith. Grace comes to us through faith. Faith is the connection we must have to grace in order to enjoy the light of salvation. Faith is, therefore, essential for salvation as it is the way in which grace arrives to us . . . that means that we’d better make it our business to understand this “connection” to grace!
Faith has become, unfortunately, distorted by modern minds. Many celebrity pastors have used their own understanding faith to lead many Christians astray. Faith has become equal to “believing really hard” or “hoping” or something else undefined that most people don’t seem to be able to conjure up. A multitude of TV preachers have told millions that if they just have enough “faith” they can get rich, stay healthy, and live lavish lifestyles. Strangely enough, the kind of “faith” peddled by these false teachers is a faith that usually requires you to send them money in order for you to obtain what you want from God. Faith is, in their definition, a way of making God giving you want you want, according to your own will, at your command. God becomes an invisible “cash dispensary” in the sky that you can force to bend to your will if you only have the “faith” of a mustard seed. Indeed, those who distort faith usually make those who listen to them feel badly and inadequate because of their lack of “faith”. They point to Scriptures like Matthew 17:20 and Mark 11:22-24 as “evidence” that God has to do what you tell Him to do. This is, of course, absurd, but many theologically illiterate Christians have believed the lies and distortions of Scripture particularly because they do not have a Biblically informed understanding of what faith really is and what faith is most certainly not.
There is only one way of gaining a Biblical understanding of what faith really is: By consulting the entirety of Scripture and allowing the full counsel of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, to inform our definition and understanding of the concept. Unfortunately, there is no “definitions” section in the Bible that we can go to for a “simple definition”. We are required, as it were, to dig into the whole of God’s word and seek out a definition of terms so that we can come to a full understanding. I don’t believe God has made it this way to be “difficult” but rather so that those who earnestly seek Him might be rewarded in finding Him (see Hebrews 11:6). The closest we find to a standalone definition of faith in the Bible is Hebrews 11:1, which reads as follows:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen.”
While we will use this verse as a starting point for understanding what faith really is–and also, what it is not–this “definition” is not a traditional definition as we think of definitions. There is much more we will need to fully understand the Biblical concept of faith. Indeed, this “definition” almost requires that you have some kind of “other” knowledge in order to make sense of it. The writer of Hebrews would likely have assumed that his readers, as early Jewish Christians, would have had knowledge from the Old Testament that would inform them as they read. Immediately following this “definition” is the rest of Hebrews 11, known as the “Faith Hall of Fame”, which has multiple examples of how faith was lived out in the lives of those who followed God, from the dawn of time to the present time when Hebrews was written. In other words, I am not sure the writer of Hebrews meant for his statement in Hebrews 11:1 to be taken as the compete “definition” of faith, but rather as a description of what faith looks like and is equal to when present. I really do not like thinking of Hebrews 11:1 as a definition, in the traditional sense, but rather as a “description” of faith.
So, let’s start with the “description” of faith provided for us in Hebrews 11:1 and see what we can learn about faith from it. Here’s what the first part of verse eleven says: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for . . .” This, while not completely helpful to us for defining faith in the traditional sense, is helpful for understanding what faith results in, or equals, when present. In other words, faith can be described as the substance of things hoped for. When we see that Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, we know something about what faith, when present, looks like or does. In Hebrews 11:1, faith is described as what it equals. And what it equals is something of substance.
Let’s focus on the word “substance.” It is key to understanding faith. The writer of Hebrews is telling us that faith is substantive. What does substantive mean? What is “substance”? In English, the word “substance” has several meanings, but for our purposes, the best definition is “physical material from which something is made” (see Merriam-Webster at 2b). In English, the word substance is used to capture the idea that faith is something real, substantive, even tangible. (We also must be careful here because the full, Biblical definition of faith cannot be reduced to one or two words, as we shall see as we examine the full counsel of Scripture.) The Greek word “hypostasis” is translated as “substance” and means “a support, substance, steadiness, assurance.” The Greek word is a compound word formed by joining “hypo” and “histemi”. The Greek word “hypo” means “under” and the Greek word “histemi” means “to stand.” Together, the words means, literally, to possess standing under a guaranteed agreement (such as a title-deed). Said another way, the Greek word “hypostasis” means confidence in what you possess–namely, “things unseen”–because you have standing under a guaranteed agreement. Even more clearly, I believe what the writer of Hebrews is trying to convey is this: faith is your title-deed to things unseen. Faith is what you use to prove you have a “possessory right” in things unseen and it is substantive in that it is real. Faith is, then, what you point to in order to prove that what is unseen is real.
While we don’t yet have a definition of faith, in the traditional sense, we do know this about faith at this point in our study:
- Faith (however it is ultimately defined) is the title-deed to that which is unseen and as a title-deed it provides confidence because it is a guarantee from God. God has granted you a title-deed to things unseen and that title-deed is something real . . . something substantive, something that can be seen, touched, reviewed, and used as evidence.
As something substantive, faith must be something other than a “feeling”. It has to be tangible, something that can be seen and understood. Whenever some gets title to a piece of property, they have something to show others that they are the true owners of that property. A deed is executed in a formal manner and is recorded in the public record so that everyone will know who owns the property.