When we think about it, the act of believing can be a complex animal. This daily devotional looks at the three concepts of believing: knowing, agreeing, and trusting.
Nuggets
- Our salvation must come from our personal knowledge of the Savior.
- We have to make a conscious decision to accept Jesus as our Savior and make a public profession.
- We have to believe — even we don’t have all of the answers.
In the last devotion, we started looking at Gibbon’s sermon. We looked at faith and works.
Gibbon also had an interesting take on believing. He taught us that the translation of the word believe in John 3: 16 incorporates the concepts of knows, agrees, and trusts. That would make it read, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes [knows, agrees, and trusts] in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3: 16 ESV).
Resource
Let see what all of that entails.
The Knowing Part of Believing
“They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world’” (Jn. 4: 42 NIV)
Our salvation must come from our personal knowledge of the Savior.
To me, this is a great verse. We can look at this from a couple of different angles.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
The first way we can look at John 4: 42 is our salvation isn’t based on what our parents beliefs. They may be the staunchest believers we know — and that does not guarantee our salvation.
The second way is we can hear the words based on someone else’s experience. That’s great. That is a good witnessing tool — for them.
For us, we need to have the knowledge ourselves. We have to be introduced to our Savior.
No one can pray us into Heaven. No one can buy our way in.
Then we have to know in our knower, as Pastor Steve says. We may not have all the evidence in the world to back up our conviction, but it is our conviction.
We know what God is about.
That is what faith is all about. Faith is a gift from God that enhances the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives and distinguishes us from others.
Glossary
We aren’t going to understand everything.
The Agreeing Part of Believing
“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10: 9 NIV)
We have to make a conscious decision to accept Jesus as our Savior and make a public profession.
We may not have all the how’s and why’s figured out. But we just have to make the decision ourselves that we are going to believe that Jesus is our Savior and God is Sovereign God.
It has to be a conscious decision. If we don’t make a decision whether or not we are going to follow Christ, we have made a decision that we aren’t.
The free will part figures into this. Free will is the ability within us to make decisions, which determine actions that produce character.
God isn’t a dictator that makes us serve Him. We choose whether or not we are going to follow Him.
We have to pay the consequences of sin if we choose not to follow Christ. The consequences of sin are spiritual death and separation from God.
We don’t want those consequences. We don’t want to spend eternity in hell.
To read a devotion in the Hell Does Have Fury series, click on the appropriate button below
The decision is up to us.
We also can’t be a hidden disciple. Look at Nicodemus.
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night …” (Jn. 3: 1-2 ESV).
Nic was a Pharisee that was seeking God. But he didn’t want anyone to know it at the moment. That was why it says the visit happened at night.
Nic could slip in and out of wherever Jesus was staying and not be seen.
But look how much Nic grew. “After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight” (Jn. 19: 38-39 ESV).
Joe and Nic decided to let everyone know that they were for the Lord. Both spent money to bury our Lord and Savior.
God’s doesn’t want us to love Him in the shadows. How can we tell others if we are hiding?
Don’t get me wrong. If we are hiding from persecution, that is one thing. If we just don’t want others to know we’ve made a profession of faith, something is wrong with that picture.
God wants us to openly confess our love for and submission to Him.
The Trusting Part of Believing
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11: 1 KJV)
We have to believe — even we don’t have all of the answers.
The final concept of believing that Gibbon talked about was trust. Trust is assurance that the promises of God are true.
Faith has the element of the unknown in it. Remember, we said we have to make the decision even though we may not have all the how’s and why’s figured out.
We won’t ever get it all figured out. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways” (Isa. 55: 8-9 ESV).
We aren’t going to figure it out because we aren’t as smart as God. Contrary to worldview belief, we aren’t gods.
That means we have to give control of our lives over to the One Who sees the past, present, and future. He is the One Who loves us (Jn. 3: 16) and wants to see us prosper (Jer. 29: 11).
We have to trust that God wants what is best for us and can provide.
Making the Connections
Yep, believing that there is a God Who loved us so much that He sent His Son to die so that we could live forever hits all of those concepts of believing. Some can get from A to C quickly.
Some, not so quickly.
God doesn’t mind us working it out. I think He actually wants us to go through the process so that we can tell others this is something we in which truly believe.
This does look like a process, doesn’t it? We aren’t going to believe until we have some idea what it is.
We get to the point where we know enough to make a decision. The rest we let go of. God will tell us on His time table. He will reveal what He wants us to know.
Once we say we know enough to put our faith in Him, we just have to trust God on the rest.
How Do We Apply This?
I made it sound kind of easy, didn’t I? It will be hard because Satan is not going to want us to make that decision. He is going to try every trick in his arsenal to make sure we don’t approach God in repentance.
Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to change our sinful ways to ways of righteousness through obedience.
- Obedience means submitting ourselves to the will of God as it is presented to us and living our lives accordingly.
Glossary
We have to accept God’s Plan of Salvation.
If you have not admitted that your relationship is not right with God,
have not asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior,
and have not confessed your sins,
please read through the Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
We do this by searching for God. Once we find Him and accept Him, we need to keep seeking for Him. They process is the same before or after conversion.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
We have to be buried in His Word. We have to be communicating with Him.
We have to be building our relationships with Him.
Father God. We believe in You. In every concept, we turn to You. Thank You for being our loving Father. Amen.
What do you think?
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