So we are told in the bible to have faith in order that we might believe. So if faith is a substance and not just a feeling, than believing must be something more than we have thought it was.
I looked up the word in a concordance. The image of believing I most want to share with you comes from the Greek word “pistis”. 1) a conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief with respect to man’s relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it.
Start with the word “conviction”. this refers to the legal concept of a final verdict or being convicted. It means there is no more to be said about the issue. The time of debate and questioning outcomes is past. In fact the root word here breaks down as “pi” meaning “to be, or final ” and “stis” which means “condition or state”.
Believing is “the state of being” without contingent… an empirical state of being.
Now granted this is a hard line and is only useful in a transitive application. One could still say I believe this or that concept. This is to say I agree with the concept philosophically. There is no reason to torture this comment into saying you express the state of being this concept. It may be practical but it strains the point a bit, this is an unfortunate shortfall of the English language.
However it is equally useless to say I agree philosophically with the concept of Jesus Christ or intellectually with the words of God. This is not what Jesus meant when He told his disciples to believe.
To believe something that is a living actual thing is a very old and very biblical truth but it is one largely lost on today’s Christians. The word of God is a living word. In this application you and I are expressing a transitive or relationship which is in reality the same state of being.
Maybe this helps us see why Jesus taught to believe on Him as love meant you would love also, to believe on Him as forgiveness meant you would forgive also, to believe on Him as anything means we must “be” a state of being Him. Being like Christ is not born of duty or obligation but of an actual oneness of state.
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” John 17:20-23 (KJV)
Believing the word of God is existing as a living manifestation of an accumulated amount of faith in the word of God without contingent. It is being alive as He is alive.
I hope you have a better understanding of what it means to “believe” this word of God. We are designed to be a living testimony of the word of God, just as Jesus was and is.
The way to make that happen is dealing with the “born of faith and joined with it” part as well as the greater work of the Holy Sprit; perhaps yet another blog…
