What is faith in God?

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.

"Abraham believed God," not something about God, but God Himself. This is faith. It is taking God's thoughts in place of our own. It is, in short, allowing God to think for us.

An anxious soul once said to a servant of Christ, "Oh, sir, I can't believe!" to which the preacher wisely and quietly replied: "Indeed, who is it that you cannot believe?" This broke the spell. He had been looking at faith as an indescribable something that he must feel within himself in order to be sure that he was all right for heaven, whereas faith ever looks outside to a living Person and His finished work, and quietly listens to the testimony of a faithful God about both. It is the outside look that brings the inside peace.

We must not put feeling before faith. Feeling is based on faith; and faith is based upon the word of God. The gospel calls you to believe on the Son of God, not to feel that you are this or that.

Some may have a difficulty as to Ephesians 2:8, "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." But to us it is perfectly clear that "faith," like every other good and perfect gift, is from God... If faith be not the gift of God, it is only an exercise of the human mind and thus worthless.

When we possess that gift, it may be said to be ours, as we read, "Your faith has saved you." How, then, does it come to us? Romans 10:17 answers the question — "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God." A report, God's Word, brings it to us.

It is evident that this is not a definition of faith but of the effect of faith — that faith makes real to us things hoped for, gives the firm conviction that they shall surely be ours, just as if we already were in possession.

Faith knows, and is persuaded, that there is nothing too hard, nothing too great — yes, and nothing too small — for God. It can count on Him for everything... It turns away from creature streams and creature props, and finds all its resources in the one living and true God.

Thus we see him exemplifying what James so stresses in his letter: faith, if it is alive, must express itself in works. If, having uttered words of faith, he had remained depressed and dejected like the rest, no one would have paid much attention to his words... As yet the circumstances were not altered, but they were altered as the confidence of faith found a place in their hearts.