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You don’t have to believe the entire gospel to receive eternal life. And even if you believed in the gospel, you might not be saved.

Do such statements shock you?

They should—especially if you hold to one of the traditional (yet not so biblical) definitions for the words “gospel” and “saved.”

When most people today hear the sentence “You must believe the gospel to be saved” what actually goes through their mind is this: “Here are the things you must believe in order to go to heaven when you die” (And of course, everyone has a different idea about what we must believe).

So people are often shocked to learn that the biblical word “gospel” (Gk., euangelion) means way more than what a person need to believe to receive eternal life. Similarly, the biblical word for “salvation” (Gk., sōteria) has very little to do with going to heaven when you die.

To see what each word means, we will look at the word “gospel” in the next couple posts, and the word “salvation” in a few posts after that.

The Definition of “Gospel”

The word “gospel” means “good news.”

And although “gospel” almost universally today refers to good news about forgiveness of sin and the offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ, the word itself carries no such connotations.

In ancient and biblical times, the word is often used regarding things like children who recovered from sickness, a battle which was won, or a successful trading voyage (See my article on the gospel where I document this in more detail).

Just as the words “good news” can refer to almost any sort of happy event or positive outcome today, so also, the words “good news” or “gospel” could refer to almost anything good in biblical times as well.

In the New Testament itself, though, the phrase “good news” or “gospel” has a more focused meaning.

Though it can sometimes refer simply to an encouraging message (1 Thess 3:6), and Jesus often used the term to describe the coming of the Kingdom of God (cf. Matt 4:23; 9:35), Paul is the one who used the word in his writings, and he uses the word most often in reference to describe the complete chain of events regarding what God has done for sinful humanity through Jesus Christ to provide eternal life for them.

And when I write “the complete chain of events” I mean the complete chain, beginning with God eternal love for humanity, including the creation of mankind and their subsequent fall, and going through God’s calling of Israel, His work through them during their checkered history, the birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and looking forward to the return of Jesus and the new heavens, the new earth, and our eternal existence with God. The biblical “gospel” includes all of this. Every bit.

While the term gospel is a non-technical term for any good news, the NT usage seems to define it as good news for everybody, whether Jew or Gentile, believer or unbeliever, regarding the benefits and blessings which come to us from the person and work of Jesus Christ. It includes everything from “the eschatological expectation, the proclamation of the [kingdom of God] … the introduction of the Gentiles into salvation history, [and] the rejection of the ordinary religion of cult and Law.” This gospel contains everything related to the person and work of Jesus Christ, including all of the events leading up to His birth, and all the ramifications from Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for unbelievers and believers. (see p. 50 of my article on the gospel).

So what is the gospel? It is everything about Jesus.

So do you see why you don’t have to believe “the gospel” to receive eternal life? The reason is because you cannot believe everything about Jesus. It’s impossible to know everything about Jesus, let alone believe everything (we will talk about Mark 1:15 in a later post). To receive eternal life, you simply believe in Jesus for it (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47, etc.). This is a truth within the gospel, but is not itself “the gospel.”

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

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Faith is Not a Work; Faith is Not a Gift

By Jeremy Myers

50 Comments

If we define faith as “confidence” or “conviction” based on the evidence presented, and once we recognize that there is no such thing as “degrees of faith,” then this leads to the truth that faith is not a work.

Faith is not a Work

If we do not choose to believe something, then it cannot be said in that faith is meritorious. That is, faith does not contribute in any way to our goodness before God.

Calvinists often argue that if man “contributes” faith to the process of salvation, then man has done a good work to earn that salvation, which therefore makes salvation not a gracious gift of God but a transaction between God and man.

But if faith is not something we choose, but is rather something that happens to us when we are persuaded or convinced that something is true, then we cannot say in any way that faith is a work. Besides, Paul pretty clearly contrasts faith and works in Romans 4:5.

Faith is Not a Gift

Yet despite the fact that faith is not something we choose but is that which happens to us based on the evidence presented, we must not go to the other extreme and say that faith is a gift.

Faith is not a gift. Though there is a spiritual gift of faith (1 Cor 12:9), this is not to be confused with the faith that leads to eternal life (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47, etc.).

And though some claim that the “gift” which Paul refers to in Ephesians 2:8-9 is faith, the Greek word “that” (“that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God) is neuter and the Greek word for “faith” is feminine, which means the gift of God is not faith, but rather the entire “salvation package” which originated with God (i.e, “by grace you have been saved”). See the excellent article by Rene Lopez on whether or not faith is a gift.

What is Faith?

What then is biblical faith (or belief)? In the end, we can do no better at defining faith than does the author of Hebrews. He writes: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).

To expand on this a bit, we could say that faith substantiates, or sees as reality, that which we previously only hoped to be true; it is the evidence, conviction, or confidence in things we cannot see. Certainly, some things we believe in can be seen, but the great faith described in the rest of Hebrews 11 is the faith that is confident in God’s promises based on what is known about God’s character and God’s Word.

Faith is the confidence or conviction that something is true based on the evidence presented.

Faith is seeing what is true based on what we know to be true.

Are there Degrees of Faith?

By Jeremy Myers

24 Comments

Yesterday we defined faith as confidence or conviction. One of the problem people sometimes have with this sort of definition, however, is that we think that there are degrees of faith, or (to put it another way), faith is on a sliding scale, where one end is “wishful-hope-so-thinking” and on the other end is “absolute certainty.”

Though lots of people like to talk about “degrees of faith” this is not a proper way of thinking about biblical faith.

There are no Degrees of Faith

Faith is more like a light switch (and not a dimmer switch!). Just as a light is either on or off, so also, you either believe something or you don’t. If you are not sure whether or not you believe something, then you don’t believe it. If you are partially convinced, but not yet fully convinced, then you do not believe.

Though Scripture does talk about “little faith” and “great faith” (e.g., Matt 8:10, 26), this is not a reference to the degree of faith someone has, but to the difficulty of the truth believed. Some things are easier to believe than others, and so when someone does not even believe the simple and obvious things, they have little faith, whereas, when someone believes things that are difficult to believe, they have great faith (See my article, “Now That’s Faith” for more.)

You Cannot “Choose” to Believe

What all of this means is that we cannot exactly “choose” to believe something. Belief, or faith, is not a decision we make. Faith is something that happens to us when presented with convincing and persuasive evidence.

Sometimes we might not be able to believe something until we see it with our own eyes. Other times, we might come to faith through reason, logic, and the weight of argumentation. Occasionally, we even come to believe something despite our desire not to believe it.

For example, if a father was told that his son was a mass-murderer, the father might not want to believe it, and would not believe it. But if the father sat through the trial of his son, and saw the weight of the evidence, and maybe even heard the confession of his son to his crimes, the father would be forced to believe what he did not want to believe. The father did not choose to believe, but was persuaded or convinced by the evidence presented, and came to believe something he did not wish to be true.

So while facts, logic, and reason can lead to faith, so also can experience, relationships, and revelation. Even hope and trust, which are not themselves faith, can be transformed into faith.

Faith itself can lead to faith, for once we believe some things about God, it becomes easier to believe other things. Divine revelation itself can lead us to believe things about God, ourselves, and eternity which we may not have believed otherwise (Rom 10:17).

What is Faith?

By Jeremy Myers

59 Comments

Defining “faith” (Gk., pistis) and the verb “believe” (Gk., pisteuō) is a bit like trying to define love. We can look up the words in Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and compare how the words were used in various ancient contexts, but when it comes down to how the word is used in real life, the way the word is used today bears little resemblance to the way the word was used in biblical times.

With love, we go through our days talking about how we love football, love pizza, love our cars, and love our spouse, and then we read in Scripture about how we are to love God and love one another, and although we know there is a difference between the various forms of love, we don’t really think about it too much or understand the ways that biblical “love” might be different than our modern use of the word.

Is Faith the same thing as hope?

It is similar with “faith” and “believe.” Often, when people use these words today, it means little more than “hope.”

Though someone might say they believe the Bears will win the Super Bowl this year, they know, as does everyone else, that their faith is little more than hope. You even sometimes hear people say “I believe I will win the lottery!”

In this case, the word “believe” does not even rise to the level of hope, but is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Is Faith the same thing as trust?

Sometimes when “faith” is used today, it means “trust.” Banks talk about the “full faith and credit” of the United States Government in insuring our deposits, meaning that we trust that if the bank loses our money, the government will give it to us.

Or as another example, you may have heard the story about a man who crossed Niagara Falls while pushing a wheelbarrow, and then asked the watching crowd if they believed he could do this same feat with a person in the wheelbarrow. They all enthusiastically shouted “Yes!” but when he asked for volunteers, nobody came forward. This illustration is sometimes used to suggest that faith without follow-through is not really faith; but what it really proves is that there is a difference between faith and trust.

In light of this, people get confused—and rightfully so—when they read about faith and belief in the Bible. They are not sure whether they should understand faith to be more like hope, wishful thinking, trust, or maybe something else.

Faith is Confidence

So when it comes to the biblical definition of faith, it is probably best to think about faith (and the verb “believe”) as a confidence, persuasion, or conviction that something is true. While it need not rise to the level of certainty—for we have all know that beliefs can change when we are presented with new evidence—faith is being fully persuaded by the evidence we now have.

We will talk a bit more about what faith is and what faith isn’t in the days ahead, but for now, what do you think of defining faith as “confidence”?

Calvinism’s TULIP by any other name… still doesn’t smell very sweet

By Jeremy Myers

9 Comments

It is important to know before embarking on a serious study of Calvinism that Calvinism goes by various names.

Sometimes it is called “The Doctrines of Grace” and other times it is referred to as “Reformed Theology.”

This sort of terminology reveals, in my opinion, the pride and arrogance of some Calvinists,for despite the claims of some Calvinists, many people who are not Calvinists still believe in grace, and not all the Reformers were Calvinistic.

Calvinists also like to claim that Calvinism is equivalent to the gospel, and that there is no such thing as biblical Christianity that is not Calvinistic. All I can do is shake my head at such statements…

Anyway, you should know that if you hear people talking about “the Doctrines of Grace” or “Reformed Theology” they are probably referring to Calvinism.

Nevertheless, I believe it is inaccurate for Calvinists to attempt to appropriate the words “grace” and “reformed” for their own system of theology, especially when, in my opinion, many Calvinists know less of grace than their opponents, and numerous others have stopped seeking further theological reformation.

Though I am not a Calvinist, I hold to radical, outrageous, scandalous grace (a grace which is more gracious than the grace of many Calvinists), and I believe that as fallen and sinful human beings, we should always be about the work of reforming ourselves and our theology and never consider ourselves fully reformed.

So despite the tendency of some to refer to Calvinism as “The Doctrines of Grace” or “Reformed Theology,” I reject both titles as misleading and inaccurate.

In the posts that follow I hope to show that while I am not a Calvinist, I stand fully within the Reformation emphases of grace, faith, Jesus Christ, Scripture, and the glory of God.

Though I have sometimes joked that I am a two-and-a-half point Calvinist, it is only because I hold to half of each point of Calvinism, which is really no Calvinism at all.

I believe in depravity, but not total depravity.
I believe in election, but not unconditional election.
I believe in the atonement, but not limited atonement.
I believe in grace, but not irresistible grace.
I believe we are saints, but not in the perseverance of the saints.

What is the Gospel?

The Definition of “Gospel”

Faith is Not a Work; Faith is Not a Gift

Faith is not a Work

Faith is Not a Gift

What is Faith?

Are there Degrees of Faith?

There are no Degrees of Faith

You Cannot “Choose” to Believe

What is Faith?

Is Faith the same thing as hope?

Is Faith the same thing as trust?

Faith is Confidence

Calvinism’s TULIP by any other name… still doesn’t smell very sweet

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