“Belief in Christ” means a LOT MORE than you probably think.

[0:00] Belief is a tricky word. The way we use it, it usually means something like something I agree with or an idea I hold to be true. It's even trickier for Christians. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? Believe the good news. Is it enough to simply believe in God? Does it stop there? Is it simply agreeing to a fact? I've got to tell you, when I went and studied this out, it actually went in a direction I didn't expect it to. And what the Bible actually has to say was both exciting and challenging. So, buckle in because this might take you to a place where you have to do a little bit of introspection and looking at yourself to see where you really stand. So, for most of us, the English word belief or faith is a word that describes, you know, something that's going on inside our head or heart, depending on your language. Like it's just a mental agreement to a truth

[0:49] claim. I believe this to be true. Some of you probably even believe that the belief doesn't require evidence. Like it's just asserting something or a senting to something that was said, even if you have no good reason for believing it. Now, the biggest problem with that view is the Bible. There's one whole chapter in the Bible that deals with faith over and over again, and it's not what you might think it's saying. So, let's jump into this chapter. It's the 11th chapter of Hebrews, and let's just read around a little bit and see the kinds of things that we uh that we might find. So, it begins right in the first verse. Now, faith is This is the closest we get to an actual definition of the word. And by the way, belief and faith are the same word in the Greek or they come from the same word. And that word is pistis, okay? Pistis doesn't really

[1:39] just mean an ascent to the facts. It actually means trust, okay? Trust. Trust is different from belief. Trust from the way that we use the word in English. Trust means to not simply agree, but like to demonstrate that trust, right? I trust fall My son, when we went on a vacation, was doing trust falls a bunch for no reason. I really don't understand what he was doing. But like if you don't know what a trust fall is, it's the idea that you stand with your back to someone and you just lean back and and take your weight out from under yourself and throw yourself on their ability to hold you up. And my son kept doing trust falls with me. So, what he was demonstrating wasn't just that he believed I could do it, right? He would say, "Yeah, I believe if I fell, Dad, you'd catch me." What he was doing was demonstrating his trust. He was transferring his trust for

[2:28] holding himself up from his own legs to my arms. He was There was a transfer of trust here. So, trust is something that's demonstrated, okay? And that's the word pistis. Uh pistis shows up in uh all kinds of of legal documentation, too. You would have like a good faith contract. It's the same thing. You're you're writing out a contract in order to establish a uh a relationship of trust between you and this other person, okay? You're entering into a contract with them because you trust them, okay? You're you're believing that they will hold up their end of the bargain, and you're going to act as though they're going to hold up their end of the bargain, and you're going to hold up yours, right? That's a good faith negotiation. Um epistemology, it's good reasons for trusting the knowledge we have. The epistemology is the study of knowledge.

[3:16] So, all of these things come from that same root word, and the one of the key things I want to communicate here is that it's not just mental ascent to a fact. It's also a decision or an action that follows that ascent. And we're going to see that pretty clearly here. But the closest we get to a definition on the pages of scripture is right here in this first verse, where it says, "Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Now, there are a couple of things that we can talk about here. Um first off, hoped for. When it says that it's the assurance of things hoped for, hope in the Bible isn't a wishy-washy maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't thing. It's waiting. Waiting for something good to come, right? Interestingly, hope is waiting for the good thing coming, and fear is like waiting for and believing in the bad thing coming, whenever those things happen, okay? It's

[4:05] very interesting. But faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So, it's it's the assurance, it's trusting that good is coming, okay? And it is the conviction, other translations might have like the evidence of things not seen. So, again, this isn't this isn't without evidence. What the author of Hebrews is trying to communicate throughout this whole passage is what it looks like to live by faith, by trusting in God, by transferring your trust to him. So, here in in verse three, "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." "By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks." So, because Abel had faith, he made choices.

[4:55] He chose to do something. Let's keep going, looking at verse eight. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was going." So, this is where some people get the idea of a lack of evidence being the the on the part of faith. The fact of the matter is that Abraham had evidence. Abraham and Sarah had had this whole series of experiences out in the wilderness where God would you know, where God was taking care of them. And he he didn't just sit there and agree, "Yeah, God, I can trust you." He acted on it. He went. He obeyed. It doesn't say, "By faith Abraham, when he was called, believed what God was saying." It says that he obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, okay? So, there's action is tied to it. Again, down in verse 11, same thing.

[5:43] "By faith even Sarah herself received the ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised." So, the object of your faith isn't what you can see with your eyes. The object of your trust isn't your circumstances. The object of your trust is the one who is calling you. You have to assess in the moment of decision whether God himself is faithful to you. And if God is trustworthy, then you put your trust in him. And that's what belief means, that's what faith means. All this comes from that Greek word pistis. So, here's the thing. Faith begins in the mind. Yes, Christian faith is something that begins in the mind, but it only comes to full flower and fruition and can only accurately be described as faith once it's acted upon. It's not enough just to mentally assent

[6:34] to the facts. It needs to go from your head, where you're considering whether you trust in God or not. It needs to go from your head to your heart, where you you start to live and believe as though that's the truth, as though God is trustworthy, and as though you can place your full weight on him. And then it needs to go from your heart to your hands, so to speak, where you believe it in a mental way, you're living now like you believe it. You're you're you're making decisions, you're reasoning as though you believe it. And then it's going out into your hands and feet to where you're acting now as though you believe it. All of that is faith, and anything less isn't. Now, the amount of faith that saves you is a mustard seed. It's the tiniest possible transfer of trust, okay? You're simply saying, "You are the king, and I

[7:21] want to be part of your kingdom." But then that faith is backed up with not just a transfer of allegiance, but also a desire to now become a newer and better citizen of the kingdom into which you're transferring your allegiance, okay? It should mean a commitment to live as though Jesus really is king of the universe and to abide by what he taught. And what he and the apostles taught is that your eternal life begins now at the moment of your transfer of trust, okay? This is going to get really interesting because we're talking about faith and belief, but what we're talking about is belief in Jesus. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? It's not just believing that he existed, it is transferring your trust to him, okay? To him, to his actions, to his message, and putting your full weight on him to do the trust fall

[8:08] and throw yourself back, taking your own feet out from under you, and saying, "I'm going to put my weight on you." This is fundamentally what makes somebody a Christian, is that they have trusted that Jesus is who he says he is, and that's the main thing. The thief on the cross who believed in Jesus, even though he didn't All he could do was this transfer of trust. Was set himself up to say, "I I have no basis on which to to hope for any good in my life. I There are mere hours left. I won't be able to go and demonstrate in a bunch of ways that I believe that you're king, but I'm going to transfer my trust to you and say, 'I believe that you are the king, and I'm going to ask you to remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And I'm going to exercise my belief that way by taking my own

[8:57] uh my own hope that I can rescue myself out from under my own legs and and and not put my weight on myself to do anything, and put all my weight on you, bank everything on you for hope for a good future." And that's what saved him. And that's why Jesus could say to him in that moment, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." That's the faith that saves, okay? That's all you need is that one mustard seed-sized transfer of trust. But it does not end there. This is where James goes and says, "Okay, but faith without works is dead. It has no life behind it. If you say out of one side of your mouth that you believe that Jesus is king of the universe, cuz that's the gospel, after all. The The gospel isn't just personal salvation from my own sins leading to

[9:46] either heaven or hell if I accept or don't accept. That's not the gospel. The gospel is the kingdom of God. You go to Mark 1 and you know, let's go there. Cuz you know, sometimes I say that, and then some of you get mad at me as though I'm not teaching the Bible. Um Mark 1, okay? One of the earliest Mark is the earliest written gospel. We know that for pretty much certain and the earliest recorded message of Jesus. Very very few times does he say anything about like salvation the way that we would describe it. What Jesus talks about is the kingdom of God. So, Mark 14 Mark 1:14 very much at the beginning of the the the the the chapter, very much at the early part of the story. Now, after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God saying, there is no and here, okay? In Greek, there is no and

[10:34] there. It's just preaching the gospel of God saying, colon. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel, okay? Repent and believe in the good news. The word good news, you angelion in Greek and beser or besora, depending on how you you know, what what tense it's in in the Hebrew. Both of them are good news. It's an announcement of a king, okay? Of the either either the reign of a new king or the arrival of that king. So, when you're believing in Jesus, it's not just that he died and rose again to rescue you from your sins. That's part of the bigger story, okay? The bigger story is that he's the king of the universe. You have been invited to transfer your allegiance from the kingdoms of darkness and the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of God. Which is captained and chiefed and

[11:23] kinged by Jesus. And it's a transfer of allegiance into his kingdom where you're setting aside your old allegiances and declaring fealty to him now. So, what does that mean? What are the actions that should then follow if you have that kind of faith? Is it enough to simply say, okay, I'm a citizen of the kingdom I'm a citizen of the kingdom now. What do citizens of kingdoms do? They abide by the laws of that kingdom. They contribute to the well-being of that kingdom. They seek the favor of the king of that kingdom. Being your faith having transferred you into Christ's kingdom means that he's king over you, over your life and what you do and what he says goes. Now, thankfully, I think God in his mercy is willing to rescue still even lousy citizens. Paul in 1 Corinthians says it this way. 1

[12:10] Corinthians 3:10 starting in verse 10 he says, according to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder, I laid a foundation and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now, if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. But if any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. So, what's Paul saying here? The foundation for your rescue is Jesus. No other foundation can be

[12:58] laid for that. If you have Jesus, you will be rescued. But depending on the kind of citizen that you are in the kingdom of Jesus, you can either build through the way that you live a legacy of faithful, loving obedience and impact for God's kingdom where you're advancing the goals of God's kingdom while you live and draw breath. And if you do that, you will be rewarded in an eternal sense. But if you build with lousy materials, with shoddy building, you you live a life that doesn't advance the kingdom, you live a life that doesn't demonstrate that you want to be a citizen that serves your king, then that's going to get burned up, but you don't lose your salvation. Okay, you're still rescued. So, what does this have to do with eternity? Let's go to another chapter. This will

[13:45] be the last one we go to. What is something that you are now asked to believe, to hold as a truth in your mind and act upon as a result of your transfer of allegiance into Christ's kingdom? This is incredible. There's a lot to unpack here. Let's jump into it. It's in Colossians 3 starting in verse 1. This is Paul talking to the believers in this place Colossae that he's never he's never met these people. He's writing them this letter. There's a few things he said in the previous two chapters which are interesting, but look at what he does. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Seated at the right hand of God is throne room language, king language, right? Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. This doesn't mean ignore your earthly things. In fact, we'll see

[14:34] what he does with this in just a minute. But he says, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. And in them you also once walked when you were living in them. But now you also put them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek

[15:22] and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all and in all. He goes on to apply it to how wives and husbands should treat each other, how children and parents should treat each other, how masters and slaves should treat each other. All of these different things that he applies this message to are all rooted in the idea that now I'm asking you to believe. Since you have placed your trust in Jesus and been transferred into his kingdom, you are there and you are a royal priesthood. You are a new creature already. You have new desires. You have new will. You have a new set of of actions that pertain to the life you now have as a citizen of God's kingdom. Since you have faith, what is the next logical step is that you commit to live

[16:10] as though Jesus really is king of the universe and to abide by what he taught. And what he and the apostles taught is that your eternal life begins now. To believe based on God's own faithfulness and what he did in Christ as your evidence that you have been made a new creature even if it doesn't feel like it today. To live like you are a member of a royal priesthood ruling over your corner of the earth and representing God well to your circle of influence. To live like you really do have freedom from sin. That the kingdom of God, the new creation has begun, has been inaugurated and has been launched in the resurrection of Jesus and we can advance that ball further and further down the field until that overlap is complete and Christ returns to finish the job.

[16:59] And reunite heaven and earth again. There's a Christian YouTuber who I think I just really respect. I love this guy. I love what he has to say. I love his heart for Jesus. And he was talking about some similar things the other day and he was talking about working out your salvation, being a disciple. A disciple is someone who follows the teaching and the example of another person, okay? So, to be a disciple of Jesus means that you're following his teaching and you're following his example in your acted out living. Not just in your your thinking and your thoughts, but actually in your acted out living. So, Brussalam was expressing a little bit of frustration and I'm going to let him speak for himself and then we'll sort of assess what he had to say. I wish someone communicated to me that my salvation was not compartmentalized from the rest of my life. My salvation was not compartmentalized with from how I took care of my body or how I treated my mother or how I spent time with my

[17:46] friends or how I pursued my education. That they're all integrated. That we are not great at compartmentalization yet we often walk in that and we think that we're smarter than God. That we got we got one up. Whenever I talk about these things, uh people get very angry. When we talk about relationships, when we talk about dating, when we talk about health, when we talk about fitness, when we talk about work ethic, when we talk about being faithful with your finances, being faithful with your time, talent, and treasure, people will have visceral reactions to things that I believe are very clear in scripture. Very clear in the Proverbs, very clear in the way that we are to navigate this life, that we are to make the most of our time, talent, and treasure to ultimately know God and make him known. I believe that the Christian has a new heart, new desires to please God. Therefore, I believe we're held to a higher standard. The miraculous work of the cross giving us these new desires and the power to do what pleases him. And my question to all of us today, my question to myself, and everybody watching is, are we walking in the power

[18:33] to do what pleases him? If Jesus did it all on the cross, if he finished it all, we have a response in that. We have a part to play in that. We have a responsibility in how this is fleshed out. And telling people that you can just live your life the way you want to live your life and it's inconsequential or telling people that you need to walk on eggshells before God because he's going to get you if you take one wrong step is unproductive ultimately to helping people in their sanctification journey. The sanctification journey, we're saved by grace through faith, meaning it's a gift, you didn't do anything to deserve it. But there's a sanctification process in that. There is a sanctification process in cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit. Every day you and I get to choose. Am I going to walk in the power of the spirit as God has given me these new desires or am I going to walk in my own wisdom and in my own way of doing things? Every day we get to choose. Now, he's articulating this in a way that I think is really beautiful and really helpful. It needs to touch every area of your life. It needs to touch how you treat your body. It needs to touch

[19:20] how you treat your finances. It needs to touch how you work out your relationship with your wife because this is this is the key. Belief can't just be mental assent to the facts. It has to be acted out. The fact that you are assenting to and then acting upon is that Jesus died to rescue you and invite you into his kingdom where he rules and reigns now. Therefore, if you have faith that that is true, you need to live more and more as an effective citizen of God's kingdom. And this isn't just in your own private morality and your adherence to moral commands and values and duties. This is in the way that you work. This is in the way that you rest. This is in the way that you carry on your relationships. And if you notice all three of those things cover every second of your available calendar time. It's in

[20:07] the way that you view your own identity. It is now, since I have transferred my trust to you, Jesus, I'm going to transfer my model of reality, I'm going to transfer my trust in my model of reality over to the model of reality that you say is the truth. Where you say I have been remade. I need to believe that I've been remade. You say I am more than a conqueror through Christ who strengthens me in my suffering. I I have no choice now but to believe that and act as though that is the case. And to the degree that I do, I will be rewarded in the next life. This is where people when people say, you know, you need to have more faith. And some people will say, well, you know, you just you just need to have faith in the first place. No, there there are degrees of faith. You can you can have little faith. Like Jesus says, you of little faith, to

[20:56] people who are really really reluctant to believe in him and trust what he's saying. Or you can have great faith. Like the Centurion who said, look, I'm a man under authority. I say to my servants, go and they go, do this and they do it. You don't even need to be there to heal my child, right? Or to heal my servant child. And Jesus says, I've never I haven't seen faith this great in all of Jerusalem. There are degrees of faith. And so, what what all of this has to do with eternity and why am I talking about it on my channel where everything we talk about is geared around living every second of your life in light of what the Bible really says about eternity. The fact of the matter is that it is through faith. It's by faith. It's through trusting in God continually and replacing your mental model of reality and even your mental model of your own

[21:44] circumstances with the mental model and with the action set that accompanies being a citizen of the kingdom of God and being a follower not just of the teachings of but also of the example of Jesus and his disciples and his apostles. And that's going to impact the way that you do everything. And that means that the Bible all of a sudden becomes it's not a divine behavior manual. It's not written that way. It's written as a narrative. It's written, you know, 2/3 of the second half of the book are all, you know, reading other people's letters and reading other people's mail. So, it it's not written to be just a straightforward list of commands. But living by that as the word that sets you up your new model of reality. Living as though the Bible

[22:31] is the truth because it comes from God and Jesus, who was the one who died and rose again, he trusted he treated the Bible as though it were authoritative. If you want to be his disciple, you need to do the same thing. And you need to live it out in your daily life. And to the degree that you do live it out in your daily life, not only will your life work better, and I promise you it will work better, it will also lead to rewards, hundredfold rewards if Jesus is to be believed in Matthew 19, hundredfold rewards in an in a coming eternal life that will never end. Because you see, living as though God really is the king is not just wise from a moral standpoint, it's smart, it's savvy. It actually leads to what is best for you in the long run. Because God wants to diligent to reward those who

[23:19] diligently seek him. And sin and living as though you're part of the kingdom of darkness still, choosing that, is not just unwise in a moral sense, it's also stupid. It sacrifices opportunities you have to accrue eternal rewards for yourself, to spread the influence of this kingdom throughout your circle of influence, and it also robs the people who are in your circle of influence from finding this same rescue and coming into this same kingdom where the king loves his disciples and his citizens as children, as his own children, and equips them with everything that they need to live a a life of success not measured just monetarily as small an idea as that is in the grand scheme of things. Not just not in terms of of fame and notoriety and and people praising

[24:08] them all the time. That's the old that's the old man. But in terms of approval with God, peace, joy, hope, connectedness with God, fullness of love coming from the creator of the universe and expressed in community life with other people who are part of the same kingdom. Those are the things people actually want. But at the same time, if you are treating with respect the commands that you've been given, you will take care of your body. You will take care of your finances. And that's how you'll show me that you have faith, that you've trusted in God. But it's just like this image I've always utilized of the the the the the painted end of the infinite rope, right? Or the dot and the line. Where you have you have a rope surrounding you that is filling this room in which you're currently inhabited. And it's going out the door and it's going and filling your entire house or your entire office

[24:56] building. And it's it's 4 ft deep, this rope coiling up around you, spilling out into the parking lot or spilling out into your driveway and filling your entire neighborhood neighborhood 4 ft deep. And the entire rope is white. And then you've got a length of rope in your right hand, the end of which 1 in is painted blue. And that 1 in of blue rope is your life now and is the 70-something 80 years you get to live now. And what you do, your acts of faith, your decisions to live as though you trust God for who he is, what he's done, and you've transferred your allegiance into his kingdom and you want to be a good citizen. Every decision you make that accurately or that that that is born out of that, it you you you make decisions here and here and here and here in this

[25:43] little bit of time, and it affects the quality of the white rope for you. So, faith, trusting in God for who he is, for what he's done, and transferring your trust from your own self to hold yourself up into his kingdom and allowing your mental model of the universe to be updated according to what he says in his word, is not just the right the right moral thing to do. It's wise. It's good. And it leads to eternal rewards. And if this is interesting to you, you should also check out this video over here where we talk in a little bit more specific terms about what God's actual plan for eternity really is. Further up and further in.