Faith | Bible Study Notes

Expanded explanation

Faith is the means by which a person receives God's gracious promise of salvation. To believe in Christ is to trust him rather than rely on personal goodness, religious performance, or works. That makes faith necessary without making faith meritorious: the value is in the one trusted, not in the act of trusting.

God's initiative remains prior at every point. People do not discover salvation apart from God's revelation, the witness of the gospel, and the Spirit's work. The disagreement concerns what that grace does to the human response. Calvinism commonly says regeneration must occur first so that the elect person will believe. Decalvinised holds that God's gracious initiative genuinely enables a person to respond in faith, and that the response is meaningful precisely because it can be accepted or rejected.

Context

In the New Testament, faith is more than bare agreement with facts. It is trust in God's promise and reliance on Jesus Christ. Faith may be accompanied by repentance and obedience, but those responses should be distinguished from the basis of justification. The site therefore uses faith to describe a grace-enabled response, not a human contribution that completes God's work.

Calvinist Usage

Calvinist theology commonly treats saving faith as God's gracious gift only to the elect, produced by the Spirit's prior work of regeneration. Because fallen people are understood to be unable to respond positively to God, faith follows God's effectual call and cannot finally be refused by those whom God has chosen.

This view rightly emphasizes that faith does not earn salvation and that salvation begins with God's grace. The disputed question is whether God's prior grace creates a response that is effectually certain for some, or whether grace genuinely enables people to believe or refuse.

Decalvinised Position

Faith is not a meritorious work and does not persuade God to save someone. It is the real human response to God's gracious revelation and promise. God takes the initiative, provides the gospel, draws people to himself, and gives sufficient light for a responsible response. A person is therefore able to trust Christ or reject the promise without either response becoming a work that earns salvation.

Decalvinised understands saving faith as reliance on Jesus Christ, not mere intellectual agreement. Obedience and perseverance matter as the fruit and evidence of faith, but they are not the basis on which a person is accepted by God.