(14) Of Saving Faith

Of all the words that have lost their meaning in modern culture, near the top of the list must be faith. Faith today is thought of as a generic attitude of openness and trust, rather than submission to divinely revealed truths. The Unitarian Universalist Association boasts of having no shared creed and envisions moving beyond belief. Modern Unitarians are fully lock-step with the spirit of this age: Faith is the act of believing in good things.

The Christian concept of faith is entirely different. Faith is a saving grace by which believers fully accept God's revealed truth centered in Jesus Christ. The Christian faith is not inclusive; it does not accept competing claims as equally valid. This makes the Christian faith unpopular. But if God is true we must believe him no matter what others say.

To understand biblical faith we need to know where it comes from and what it does.