A Christian Guidebook: What Is Faith? (7)

Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. Hebrews 13.9

Difficult and demanding
The course of life is long, and the course of the Christian life is difficult and demanding. We can expect many distractions along the way—subtle voices telling us that concentrating on unseen things is folly, that if God really loved you He wouldn’t make your life so difficult, that worship on Sunday is sufficient, that others should be loving and sharing with you rather than you taking all the initiative, that you don’t need to submit to any church leaders, and that you don’t need more teaching from the Word, or that you can decide for yourself just what the Christian life really ought to be.

There will be no shortage of voices suggesting that this “full faith” enterprise isn’t worth it, and that all you have to do anyway is just believe.

Such voices, however, are not those of the Word of God. They are the winds of doctrine that blow continually around, over, and through the Church, enticing gullible believers to embrace something other than the teaching of Christ and the apostles (Eph. 4.14). Their source is not the God of Scripture but the father of lies.

Against such voices the writer of Hebrews commands that we “not be carried” away.

False teachers in every age
In every age there have been smart, clever, articulate, and persuasive false teachers who have led many believers into a compromised faith. They use all the language of Scripture and elevate the Name of Jesus, but their teaching departs from the truth of Scripture in subtle ways, and those who follow them never quite get around to knowing full and abundant life in Christ. They speak the language of grace and love and attract devoted followers of all kinds. But they are winds of false doctrine, and we must not hoist the sails of full faith into them. If we do so, and continue to do so, allowing our “faith” to be defined by false winds of doctrine, we will prove that our “faith” is in fact no true faith at all.

The writer of Hebrews is as urgent about this as Paul and Peter and John: Do not allow yourself to come under the thrall of false teachers, no matter how appealing they may be, for you will not attain full faith in Christ by sitting at their feet.

So how do we keep ourselves from being led astray by false teaching?

By pursuing full faith in Christ day by day! The only way to keep from being blown off the course in the race we have been appointed to run is to make sure that we are staying on that course, day-in and day-out. This means ongoing attention to both facets of full faith—making sure of the hope we have in Jesus Christ, and working to bring forth the evidence of that hope in every aspect of our lives.

A full-time calling
Living the Christian life is a full-time endeavor. The tendency among so many contemporary Christians is to live their lives in niches—work life, family life, avocations and diversions, church and Christianity, and so on. The only thing that connects and drives all these niches is the personality and desires of each person who lives this way, not faith in Jesus Christ.

As many studies and polls have shown over the years, the vast majority of those who profess to be born-again followers of Jesus Christ lead lives which are barely distinguishable from their wrong-believing contemporaries. They spend their money in the same way, watch as much television, participate in the same diversions, spend as much time cruising the Internet, incur as much debt, and divorce at about the same rate.

This is because they’re living their “faith” in a niche—the niche of church and Christian activities. This is where they do their “Christian thing.” The rest of their lives seem hardly affected by their profession of faith in the King of glory. They’re living niche faith rather than full faith, and niche faith may well be no faith at all.

If this is how you live, then you will certainly be vulnerable to being blown off the course of full and vibrant Christian faith. Our Lord Jesus has redeemed, not just the souls of those who believe in Him, but their whole lives. He has reconciled us, whole and part, back to God, and He is now in the business, by His Word and Spirit, of making all things new in our lives. We who have faith in Jesus are called to join Him in restoring the reconciled world, beginning with our own lives.

Assured of eternal life because we have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, we must now be about the business, as Paul puts it (Phil. 2.12), of working out—out, not for—our salvation day by day. We must strive to yield all our relationships, roles, responsibilities, possessions, and time to the Lord Jesus Christ. From these various staging-grounds, assured of the hope of glory in Jesus (Rom. 5.1, 2), we may show the watching world the reality of full faith, evidenced in the undeniable power of transformed lives.

Live this way—live full faith!—and you will not be led astray but will grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, and be fit and ready to serve Him day by day.

Search the Scriptures
1. How might you be able to tell when you were beginning to be “led away” into something other than full faith?

2. How can Christians help one another in keeping to the path of full faith? Can you cite some Scripture to support your answer?

3. What is faith? How would you explain faith to a friend who was interested in becoming a Christian? What Scripture would you cite?

Next steps—Transformation: Do you have a soul friend or a prayer partner? If not, find one. Prayer partners and soul friends can be valuable assets in the journey of faith.

T. M. Moore

Additional Resources
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Except as indicated, all Scriptures are taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.