What Faith Is and What Faith Leads To
- Edward D. Andrews
- 43 minutes ago
- 14 min read
Faith stands at the center of the Christian response to the good news of Jesus Christ, yet few biblical subjects are more frequently misunderstood. Some reduce faith to agreeing that certain religious statements are true, while others speak of it as an inward feeling of confidence detached from knowledge, repentance, obedience, and perseverance. Scripture presents something far richer and more substantial. Biblical faith rests upon revealed truth, looks to Jesus Christ as its proper object, receives salvation as the gracious gift of God, and expresses itself in a life that continues to trust and obey. It is neither human merit nor intellectual passivity, neither self-confidence nor religious optimism. Faith takes Jehovah at His word and responds to what He has made known through His Spirit-inspired Scriptures. This book has been written to explain that faith clearly, biblically, practically, and with the earnest concern for souls that characterized the preaching and writing of Charles H. Spurgeon.
The title Faith: A 21st Century Update of C. H. Spurgeon’s What It Is and What It Leads To identifies both the subject and the purpose of this volume. Spurgeon understood that a person may hear much about Christianity and still remain uncertain about what it actually means to believe in Christ. He therefore addressed faith not as a theological curiosity but as a matter touching a person’s relationship with God, forgiveness of sins, conscience, conduct, endurance, and hope of eternal life. That pastoral concern remains urgently relevant because modern readers face many of the same questions, fears, misconceptions, and excuses that confronted people in Spurgeon’s generation. Language has changed, cultural circumstances have changed, and certain theological claims require closer examination in the light of the whole of Scripture, but the human need for reconciliation with God has not changed. Sin remains sin, Christ remains the only Savior, and faith remains the divinely appointed means by which sinners respond to the saving message concerning Him. This updated treatment therefore carries the central concern of Spurgeon’s work into the 21st century while keeping the reader’s attention fixed upon the biblical text.
Faith must begin with an object worthy of trust, and Christian faith therefore begins with Jesus Christ rather than with faith itself. A person is not saved because he possesses a sufficiently intense capacity for believing, nor does confidence acquire saving value merely because it is sincere. People can sincerely trust false religions, false teachers, personal goodness, religious ceremonies, emotional experiences, or their own understanding and still remain separated from the truth. The decisive question is not simply whether a person believes, but whom he believes and upon what grounds his confidence rests. Jesus declared, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Christian faith therefore looks away from human worthiness and toward Christ, whose sacrificial death provides the only sufficient basis for the forgiveness of sins. The opening movement of this book rightly directs attention to the Person faith looks to, because every other aspect of saving faith depends upon knowing and trusting the true Christ revealed in Scripture.
This immediately raises another essential matter: genuine faith requires knowledge. Romans 10:17 states that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ,” establishing an inseparable connection between revealed truth and believing response. Biblical faith is never a leap into darkness, an irrational decision to believe without evidence, or an emotional impulse disconnected from understanding. A person must learn who Jehovah is, what sin is, why mankind needs reconciliation, who Jesus Christ is, what His sacrifice accomplished, what His resurrection means, and what God requires of those who hear the good news. Knowledge alone does not save, because a person can understand Christian teaching intellectually while refusing to entrust himself to Christ. Nevertheless, saving faith cannot exist without sufficient knowledge of the message being believed. The gospel addresses the mind so that the heart can respond intelligently, willingly, and obediently to the truth God has revealed.
The foundation beneath that knowledge is Scripture itself. Christian faith does not rest upon changing religious traditions, private impressions, philosophical speculation, supposed new revelations, or the authority of charismatic personalities. It rests upon the inspired Word of God, which provides the objective content by which every doctrine, claim, experience, and teacher must be measured. Jesus repeatedly treated Scripture as authoritative, and His apostles proclaimed the gospel from the conviction that God had spoken reliably through His written Word. Paul wrote that “all Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). The believer therefore does not need to manufacture certainty from within himself when Jehovah has provided a trustworthy revelation outside himself. Faith stands securely when it stands upon what God has actually said rather than upon what human beings imagine He may have meant. This volume accordingly emphasizes Scripture as the ground faith stands on because confidence becomes stable only when its foundation is stronger than human emotion.
That foundation also guards the reader against a common mistake concerning salvation itself. The Bible presents salvation as a gift made possible through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, not as wages earned by human achievement. Romans 6:23 establishes the contrast plainly: “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Human obedience cannot erase past sin, personal morality cannot purchase forgiveness, and religious activity cannot place Jehovah under obligation to grant life. Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient precisely because fallen humans cannot provide the price required to release themselves from sin and death. Faith receives what grace supplies; it does not create the gift or establish human merit as the basis for it. At the same time, receiving a gift does not mean that the recipient remains unresponsive to the Giver. The distinction between earning salvation and responding obediently to salvation is essential if the biblical relationship between grace, faith, repentance, and Christian conduct is to be understood correctly.
Repentance therefore belongs naturally beside faith rather than standing in competition with it. When the good news confronts a person with the holiness of Jehovah, the seriousness of sin, and the saving work of Christ, genuine belief produces a changed attitude toward wrongdoing. Biblical repentance is not mere regret, emotional sorrow, embarrassment over consequences, or temporary fear of divine judgment. It involves a changed mind that leads to a changed direction, turning away from conduct condemned by God and turning toward Him through Christ. Peter called his hearers to “repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19), joining inward recognition with an outward redirection of life. A person who claims to trust Christ while deliberately refusing to abandon known sin contradicts the very faith he professes. Saving faith does not require moral perfection before a person can approach Christ, but once a person comes to Christ, faith cannot make peace with deliberate rebellion. Repentance is therefore not an additional price paid for salvation but one of the necessary responses produced when the gospel is truly believed.
The relationship between faith and assurance requires equal care. Many sincere Christians have been troubled because they imagine that genuine faith must always feel strong, certain, and emotionally undisturbed. Others move to the opposite extreme and treat assurance as permission to assume that a past moment of belief guarantees final salvation regardless of later unbelief, rebellion, or abandonment of Christ. Scripture supports neither despair nor presumption. Christians may have strong confidence in Jehovah’s faithfulness, the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, the truthfulness of His promises, and their present standing as those who are faithfully following His Son. Yet biblical assurance does not abolish the repeated commands to remain in faith, continue in obedience, resist deception, and endure to the end. Proper assurance fixes the believer’s confidence upon Jehovah and Christ while preserving the seriousness of continued discipleship. Faith therefore produces confidence without encouraging the careless assumption that future apostasy has no consequence.
This is why obedience must be understood as the activity of living faith rather than as a rival means of salvation. James writes that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26), not because good deeds purchase eternal life, but because genuine trust necessarily influences conduct. Paul likewise speaks of “the obedience of faith” in Romans 1:5 and again in Romans 16:26, showing that believing and obeying cannot be separated into unrelated compartments of Christian existence. Jesus Himself connected love for Him with keeping His commandments, making obedient discipleship the visible expression of loyalty to Him. The person who trusts Christ begins ordering his thoughts, decisions, relationships, speech, worship, moral conduct, and priorities according to the teachings of Christ. Such obedience remains imperfect because Christians continue to live with human weakness in a wicked world, yet their direction changes because their allegiance has changed. Faith works because faith is alive, and its works demonstrate dependence upon Christ rather than confidence in human merit.
The peace produced by such faith must also be distinguished from mere emotional calm. A troubled conscience cannot finally be silenced by distraction, positive thinking, comparison with worse sinners, or repeated assurances that wrongdoing does not matter. Genuine peace with God begins when the sinner understands the seriousness of sin and then recognizes the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. Romans 5:1 states, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The conscience finds rest because forgiveness has an objective basis in what Christ accomplished, not because the individual has succeeded in convincing himself that he is acceptable. Faith takes hold of the promise of God and refuses to make personal worthiness the foundation of reconciliation. This peace does not remove every emotional difficulty or eliminate every period of discouragement, but it gives the believer a sound reason to approach Jehovah with confidence. The weary conscience rests most securely when it stops looking endlessly at itself and looks instead to the One whom God provided as the Savior.
Doubt nevertheless returns for many Christians, and weak faith must not automatically be confused with absent faith. The Scriptures contain faithful servants who experienced fear, confusion, discouragement, and moments when their confidence required strengthening. The answer was never to make feelings sovereign but to return their attention to the truthfulness of God and the reliability of His Word. Faith may be strong or weak, mature or immature, steady or temporarily shaken, while still being directed toward the correct object. A trembling hand can receive a valuable gift just as truly as a strong hand, because the value lies in the gift received rather than in the strength of the hand. Yet Scripture does not encourage believers to remain permanently weak when knowledge, prayer, fellowship, obedience, and careful study of the Word can strengthen confidence. Perseverance develops as Christians repeatedly choose to trust Jehovah during difficulties arising from human imperfection, satanic opposition, hostile influences, and life in a wicked world. Enduring faith therefore grows through continued attention to revealed truth and continued dependence upon Christ.
Many obstacles to faith arise not from the gospel itself but from false ideas about what believing requires. Some people wait until they feel worthy enough to approach Christ, forgetting that the good news is addressed to sinners who need forgiveness. Others imagine that they must first reach a particular emotional state, experience a dramatic religious moment, understand every biblical doctrine, conquer every weakness, or attain an extraordinary level of sorrow before they may respond to the gospel. Still others look inward repeatedly, asking whether their faith is sufficiently intense rather than asking whether Christ is sufficiently trustworthy. Such misunderstandings place attention upon the quality of the believer instead of the sufficiency of the Savior. Scripture calls people to repent and believe, not to manufacture a mysterious spiritual sensation that qualifies them to believe. Faith may involve profound emotion, but its validity does not depend upon emotional intensity. The discouraged reader therefore needs the liberating clarity that Christ is approached through genuine trust, not through the achievement of a psychological condition.
The simplicity of faith should never be mistaken for shallowness. Jesus regularly spoke in language that ordinary people could understand, and the apostles proclaimed a gospel meant to be heard, understood, believed, and obeyed by people from every level of society. The central response is not hidden behind specialized philosophical systems available only to scholars or religious elites. The sinner learns the truth about Christ, recognizes his need, turns from sin, and places his confidence in the Savior whom Jehovah has provided. This simplicity humbles human pride because it removes every imagined ground for boasting. A person cannot claim superiority because salvation has not been purchased by intellectual brilliance, moral accomplishment, social standing, wealth, ancestry, or religious prestige. Faith receives rather than earns, trusts rather than boasts, and obeys because it acknowledges the authority of the One trusted. The simplicity of the gospel is therefore one of its strengths, allowing the message to address both the highly educated and the person with little formal learning on the same spiritual ground.
Yet the simplicity of faith does not weaken the exclusive claim of Jesus Christ. The modern preference for treating contradictory religious claims as equally valid cannot be reconciled with Christ’s own teaching about Himself. Jesus did not present Himself as one helpful religious guide among many equally acceptable approaches to God. He identified Himself as the way to the Father, and the apostles continued proclaiming that salvation is found in Him. Acts 4:12 declares, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Christian faith is therefore exclusive because its object is exclusive: only Jesus Christ gave His sinless life sacrificially for mankind and was raised from the dead. This claim does not authorize arrogance or harshness toward unbelievers, but it does require Christians to speak truthfully about the message entrusted to them. Genuine love cannot offer people religious alternatives that Scripture itself does not identify as paths to eternal life.
The exclusivity of Christ also explains why evangelism is inseparable from Christian faithfulness. If salvation were equally available through every religious path, the command to proclaim the good news to all nations would lose its urgency and much of its meaning. Jesus commissioned His followers to make disciples, and the early Christians understood the message about His death and resurrection as news that needed to be carried to others. Faith therefore does not terminate in private spiritual satisfaction. The person who comes to understand the value of Christ naturally possesses a responsibility to help others hear the same message from which faith can arise. Evangelism need not depend upon unusual eloquence, professional religious training, or an aggressive personality, because Christians are witnesses to truth rather than manufacturers of conversion. They explain from Scripture who Christ is, why sinners need Him, what His sacrifice accomplished, and how a person should respond. Active faith therefore produces a concern that others receive an accurate opportunity to hear and understand the good news.
Growth in faith occupies another important place in the Christian life because the believer does not acquire complete knowledge or perfect spiritual maturity at conversion. A person may begin with limited understanding and genuine trust, then gradually develop deeper knowledge of Scripture, greater discernment, stronger resistance to sin, steadier confidence, and more consistent obedience. The apostles themselves had to grow in their understanding of Jesus and His mission, and Christian disciples today likewise require instruction and correction. Growth comes primarily through the Spirit-inspired Word as the believer reads, studies, meditates upon, and applies Scripture. Jehovah has not left Christians dependent upon continuing private revelation or an inward indwelling voice that supplies new doctrinal information. His Holy Spirit guided the biblical writers so that the Scriptures provide the authoritative teaching through which Christians are instructed and transformed in their thinking. Romans 12:2 connects transformation with the renewing of the mind, while repeated biblical exhortations call believers to increase in knowledge, discernment, love, endurance, and holiness. Stronger faith is therefore cultivated by taking God’s revealed truth increasingly seriously and bringing more of life under its direction.
This growth also helps the Christian understand salvation as Scripture presents it across past, present, and future dimensions. The believer has been delivered from his former condemned condition through faith in Christ, is presently walking on the path of salvation, and looks forward to the final realization of eternal life through resurrection. Scripture can therefore speak of Christians as having been saved, as being saved, and as awaiting salvation. These statements need not be forced into a system that turns salvation either into human achievement or into an unconditional status detached from continued faith. Eternal life remains God’s gift through Christ, and Christ’s sacrifice remains the only basis upon which sinners can be reconciled to Jehovah. Nevertheless, the New Testament repeatedly calls believers to continue, remain, endure, obey, guard themselves, and refuse apostasy. Faith is consequently not one isolated act that renders every later spiritual choice meaningless. The Christian begins by faith, lives by faith, grows through faith, and must continue in faith as he advances toward the promised life ahead.
Perseverance therefore occupies a necessary place in any complete discussion of what faith leads to. Jesus warned about those who receive the word but later fall away, and the apostolic writings contain serious warnings against abandoning the faith once professed. Such warnings possess real meaning because human beings remain responsible moral agents rather than becoming incapable of rejecting God after conversion. At the same time, Scripture gives powerful encouragement that Jehovah is faithful, Christ is a sufficient High Priest and Savior, and no hostile outside force can compel a faithful Christian to abandon Him. Perseverance is therefore neither anxious self-preservation nor passive confidence that choices no longer matter. It is continuing trust expressed through loyalty to Christ despite discouragement, persecution, temptation, doubt, deception, and the pressures of a world alienated from God. The Christian remains secure by continuing to look to the same Savior to whom faith first turned. Endurance becomes the mature expression of a trust that refuses to exchange Christ for the temporary attractions or threats of the present world.
What faith ultimately leads to can be seen in the life it produces. It changes a person’s relationship with Jehovah because reconciliation replaces alienation, and it changes the conscience because forgiveness replaces unresolved guilt. It changes moral direction because repentance replaces deliberate surrender to sinful conduct, and it changes priorities because Christ becomes Lord rather than a peripheral religious interest. Faith produces obedience without making obedience the purchase price of salvation, assurance without presumption, peace without self-deception, and perseverance without denying human responsibility. It also produces love for fellow Christians, concern for unbelievers, respect for biblical truth, willingness to forgive, moral seriousness, and a growing desire to please God. None of these results makes the believer sinlessly perfect in the present age, but together they reveal the direction of a life increasingly shaped by trust in Christ. The New Testament does not know a saving faith that permanently remains barren, indifferent, rebellious, and unconcerned with the commands of the Savior it claims to trust.
For this reason, the chapters that follow move deliberately from the object of faith to the knowledge faith requires, the scriptural ground on which it rests, and the grace it receives. From there the discussion proceeds naturally to repentance, assurance, obedience, peace, perseverance, and the misconceptions that often discourage sincere seekers and believers. Attention is then given to the simplicity of faith without minimizing the exclusive claims of Christ, followed by the possibility and necessity of growth in faith. The final movement considers the kind of life that belief in Christ produces when faith is understood biblically rather than reduced to mental agreement. This progression reflects an important truth: faith cannot be isolated from the larger biblical teaching about the Christian response to the gospel. Knowledge leads a person to understand what Jehovah has revealed; belief embraces that revelation as true; trust places reliance upon Christ; repentance changes direction; obedience gives visible expression to allegiance; and perseverance continues along the path. These distinctions help protect the reader from confusing salvation by grace with salvation by works while also protecting him from imagining that saving faith can remain permanently inactive.
The reader should therefore approach these pages with an open Bible and a willingness to examine familiar assumptions. The question is not whether a theological tradition has defined faith in a particular manner, nor whether a popular preacher has expressed the subject persuasively, nor even whether an idea has been repeated for centuries. The decisive question is what the Spirit-inspired Scriptures actually teach when read according to their historical setting, grammar, context, and the normal meaning intended by their authors. Spurgeon’s earnest appeals remain valuable because he continually sought to direct troubled sinners away from self-reliance and toward Jesus Christ. At the same time, every Christian teacher, past or present, must remain subject to the Word of God, because Scripture alone possesses inspired authority. Where traditional formulations obscure human responsibility, ongoing faith, repentance, obedience, or perseverance, Scripture must be allowed to correct them. Where human anxiety makes the gospel more complicated than Christ and His apostles made it, Scripture must also restore its clarity. The purpose throughout is therefore not to place confidence in Spurgeon, an editor, a theological system, or the reader himself, but to direct confidence toward Jehovah’s Word and toward Jesus Christ, the One whom that Word presents as Savior and Lord.
Faith begins when divine truth is heard and genuinely embraced, but its significance reaches into every area of Christian existence. It teaches the sinner where to look when guilt accuses him, the discouraged Christian where to stand when feelings become unstable, and the growing disciple how to respond when obedience becomes costly. It reminds the confident believer that assurance must remain rooted in Christ rather than in presumption, and it reminds the weak believer that saving confidence does not depend upon possessing unusually powerful emotions. Faith directs the mind toward truth, the conscience toward Christ’s sacrifice, the will toward repentance and obedience, and the life toward continued loyalty to Jehovah. It receives grace humbly because it knows eternal life cannot be earned, and it becomes active because the One trusted possesses rightful authority over the believer. It grows stronger through the Scriptures because the God who calls for faith has not left its content undefined. What faith is and what faith leads to therefore cannot finally be separated, because the faith that truly receives Christ also begins shaping the person who follows Him.
About the author
EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 220+ books. In addition, Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
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