Life from faith

1 John 5:12 (NLT)

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.

God the Father has placed the honor upon His son Jesus Christ to provide eternal life to those who place their faith in Him. So those who are united with Christ will have life and should honor Him just as the father has honored Him.

Theologian Alister McGrath outlines the following three stages of receiving what Christ did for us on the cross:

[First], I may believe that God is promising me forgiveness of sins; [second], I may trust that promise; but [third] unless I respond to that promise, I shall not obtain forgiveness. The first two stages of faith prepare the way for the third, without it they are incomplete.

Then he illustrates these three stages with the following true story:

Consider a bottle of penicillin, the famous antibiotic identified by Alexander Fleming, and first produced for clinical use in [Great Britain]. The drug was responsible for saving the lives of countless individuals who would otherwise have died from various forms of blood poisoning. Think of the three stages of faith like this. I may accept that the bottle exists. I may trust in its ability to cure blood poisoning. But nothing will change unless I receive the drug which it contains. I must allow it to destroy the bacteria which are slowly killing me. Otherwise, I have not benefited from my faith in it.

It is the third element of faith which is of vital importance in making sense of the cross. Just as faith links a bottle of penicillin to the cure of blood poisoning, so faith forges a link between the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ and ourselves. Faith unites us with the risen Christ, and makes available to us everything he gained through his obedience and resurrection. [Alister E. McGrath, What Was God Doing on the Cross (Zondervan, 1992), pp. 99-100]

The Bible tells us there are many who believe there is a Jesus Christ, but not all have placed their faith in Him. James 2:19 says, “You believe there is one God. That is good! But even the demons believe that, and because they do, they shake.” The demons that follow Satan know and believe there is a God, but instead they have decided to follow Satan. They shake at the thought of what God could do to them, but it does not stop their actions and cause them to return to God.

There are people today who admit to being agnostic. They believe there is a God, but they place no faith or trust in Him. He exists around them, but they have no relationship to Him.

It is a relationship we want with God and Christ. We want to deepen our faith by building that relationship of trust that says I will trust and obey. We want to listen to God’s words and know they are for our benefit. We need to know that God and Christ have our best interest at heart and no matter what circumstance we are faced with that we will be provided for. Faith is trusting in God and believing in His promises with hope.