What does the Bible say about faith?

Faith has very simply been defined as "Believing what God says, because God says it," and this is well supported by Paul's words, "I believe God." In this case feelings, reason, experience, the probabilities of the situation, all would have contradicted the Divine statement, but faith accepted what God said, though all else denied it. Faith in our hearts will speak in just the same way. The Divine testimony to us deals with matters far greater than a salvation for time only, and it reaches us not from the mouth of an angel but through the holy and inspired Writings, which we now have in print in our own tongue; but our reception of it is to be equally definite. We simply believe God, and thus set to our seal that God is true.

Faith is a thing which people exercise in a hundred ways every day of their lives. When that lady entered the tent just now, and sat down on that chair, it was an act of faith. She trusted the chair and committed herself to it. When I removed my hat and hung it upon yonder hook, that again was an act of faith. I trusted the hook, and depended upon it to hold my hat. The faith of which the Bible speaks is just as simple as that. Christ is its object, and to have faith in Him is to rely on Him, or count upon Him for that which our souls need. The same thing is expressed in other ways in Scripture: "Look," "Come," "Take," "Receive"—all these mean very much the same as "Trust" or "Believe."

If I talk of faith, I may mean belief of a testimony - a person tells me a thing, and I believe him. But there is another sense in which I may have faith in that man; that is, I may put my trust in him We often confound these things. There is the testimony of God which I have to believe, and a trusting in God which is the power of my walk.

Faith is the divinely-given perception of things not seen, wrought through the word of God by the Spirit. Hence it is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen. The examples in Hebrews 11 are not given to shew all that faith is, but how it works in man in active life or patient endurance, because God's word is believed. If the word reveals a divine person in grace, He becomes the object of trust; if a work, its efficacy becomes the ground of confidence. But the trust and the confidence is not the faith. Indeed, though there will always be attraction, and so far trust in Him as a person worthy of it, and drawing it, in the revelation of God in love, it does not at first always produce confidence, properly speaking, and, speaking of Christ, "a full reliance upon Him and upon His work;" because that revelation, if it attracts the confidence of the heart, awakens the conscience; and, till this is purged by a clear knowledge of redemption, we cannot trust. The element of it is there, but we cannot do so. When Peter preached to the Jews, the effect of the power of the word, convincing them that Jesus was the Messiah — making them believe — was to make them say, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" They had crucified Him. This was not trust; but faith was wrought in their hearts as to who Jesus was. Not that scripture was true — that they believed before; not assent to a proposition — but true faith that Jesus was the Christ. The answer to the need of soul this produced was Peter's shewing them the path of peace. They were to have remission of sins, and receive the Holy Ghost.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." This is not a definition, but shows us something of what faith does. It is that which, to the individual, gives solid substance to things hoped for. It is no mere fanciful imagination, but an honest trust in the living God, by which the things of God are made a definite, clear reality to the heart, and are thus recognized to be more truly substantial than all material substance-for the latter will pass away. Also it has that peculiar power of evidencing to us "things not seen." Faith in the living God is not blind, but the actual opening of the eyes, accepting unquestionable evidence of the reality of unseen, spiritual things.

In short, it is simply "A living faith in the living God." It is taking God at His word. It is believing what He says because He says it. It is committing your soul to the word of Him who cannot lie. It is doing what Abraham did when he believed God and was counted righteous. It is doing what Jehoshaphat did when he planted his foot firmly on those immortal words, "Thou gavest it to the seed of Abraham Thy friend, forever." It is doing what the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the saints in all ages have done, when they rested their souls for time and eternity upon that Word which "is settled forever in heaven," and thus lived in peace and died in hope of a glorious resurrection. It is resting calmly and sweetly on the immovable rock of holy Scripture, and thus proving the divine and sustaining virtue of that which has never failed any who trusted it, and never will, and never can.

And what does that testimony set forth? This, most distinctly, that all through the dark and gloomy watches of the nation's night the twelve tribes are before the eye of God in their perfect unity, undisturbed by all the heavings, and tossings, and surgings of the nations. The blasphemer may have to be stoned outside the camp; the governmental dealings of God may be displayed in all their stern reality; but faith sees the twelve loaves on the golden table. Faith has to do with eternal realities. It endures as seeing Him who is invisible. It looks at things within the veil. It makes God its significant figure, and is in nowise moved by outward appearances. In a word, faith knows God, and can trust Him for everything. Faith is the knowledge of God, it is confidence in God — this is faith. Ah, what a reality, beloved brethren! I earnestly beseech you, as in the presence of God — I beseech every one of you to get hold of what this is, this simple faith in God, that will carry your soul through all sorts of circumstances, the same faith that sustained Elijah on the top of Carmel, the same faith that enabled Hezekiah to command that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for "all Israel" — that is to say, the sacrifice which was to be the foundation of all the nation's hopes, the sacrifice which was in its aspect to embrace the whole Israel of God.

In days of agitation and doubt, such as the present, the question is of paramount importance to us all — What is Faith? Much depends, both for the present and for the future, upon the answer we are able to give our hearts to this question. Perhaps the simplest account of what faith is, is furnished to us in the words of Paul the Apostle, uttered in the midst of the violent storm which befell him on his voyage to Rome. The circumstances were most distressing. For several days the vessel in which he sailed had been tossed up and down in the Adriatic, with every prospect of total loss. When his fellow travellers were at the point of despair, he told them of the simple message that had been conveyed to him by an angel of God, that not a life should be lost of all the two hundred and seventy-six contained within the ship, adding: "Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer; for I believe God that it shall be even as it was told me" (Acts 27:25).

Here we have the whole secret of faith — "I believe God." The first man and his wife lost confidence in their Creator when in the garden, preferring rather to credit the word of the serpent; ever since it has been common with man to distrust and disbelieve his God. Faith is the return of the soul to man's original confidence in his Maker.

It is easy to say we believe, but as James puts it, “What doth it profit though a man say he have faith?” Faith is a divine reality and not a mere human effort. It is based upon divine revelation and not upon the working of human reason. It connects the soul with God with a living, mighty link which nothing can ever snap. It bears the soul above and carries it on in triumph, come what may. There may be failure and confusion, error and evil, coldness and deadness, strife and division, breaking down and turning aside, stumblings and inconsistencies — all manner of things to shake the confidence and stagger the soul — but faith holds on its peaceful, steady way, undaunted and undismayed. Faith leans on God alone and finds all its springs in Him. Nothing can touch the faithfulness of God and nothing can shake the confidence of the heart that simply takes God at His word.

Now, "faith," we are told, "is the substantiating of (or, giving substance to) things hoped for, the conviction (or, the proving) of things not seen." What a simple explanation of that which, doubtless, has troubled many a one in the early days of his spiritual career. But what a power there is in that of which those words speak, which nerved and animated saints of old to deeds of valour, to endurance of trials, and to implicit confidence in God. For faith may be manifested by confidence in God, as well as in the quiet resting on His written word. Leaving aside for the present the illustrating the latter, it may not be time thrown away to ponder a little on the former. And for that we would direct the reader to two instances, both of them women — the one concerned for the salvation of her child, the other for the salvation of herself and of her house.