What is true faith?

³⁹ You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

John 5:39–40

Heidelberg Catechism: 

Q21: What is True Faith?

A: True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in His Word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel, that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation.

This Sunday, we covered this question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism. When Dan WIllman read the answer, he got a headache along with the rest of us.. It’s one of those run-on sentences that says a lot in a little space. We don’t usually have words for what faith is. We intuitively know our own faith, and but to describe it like this answer is a little difficult. 

The answer gave us three things: it is a knowledge, conviction, and deep-rooted assurance. When we consider faith, we often think of it most like a knowledge that we have a bit of conviction about. It’s interesting because someone asked, can faith not have knowledge? And the answer is probably not when we’re talking about Christian faith. When we have faith in a machine to do it’s job, we might have more of a faith without knowledge. But can we have a blind Christian faith? The answer is that yes, we do have blind faith in that we have faith in something we do not see. What is it that we have faith in? The most famous summary is the Lord’s prayer. But I like to think of things like the content of faith as something that we have an opportunity to grow in. We can never get to the bottom of this gospel that we have our faith in and in this Jesus Christ who is the object of our faith. It’s a well so deep you could go scuba diving in it. And this is why a verse like John 5:39 is important. It reminds us where we are directing our faith. It is not simply in a law or a list of how we should live our lives. Instead, it is directed at the person of Jesus Christ. Why do we study the scriptures? It is because we are pursuing inward deepening. We are working hard at knowing Christ, who is truly God and truly man, who is a person we can know. 

So we could saw that faith is a static thing: a person has to have faith to become a Christian. We also have to saw that faith is a immense thing. It is something that will always be growing on this side of eternity. And we pray that every decade of our lives our faith will continue to grow like a slow growing oak tree. And if it is rooted in the word of God which tells us about Jesus, then we won’t be moved. It’s the same faith as when we first trusted Christ, but time beautifies it as we grow. It’s not just a knowledge or conviction. It’s an assurance of the gift of salvation.