Written by Pastor Gardner Wednesday, 24 May 2006 00:00

During a recent conversation I had with a man who had visited our church, I asked him if he knew for sure that he was going to heaven when he died. He said that he thought that he would, but didn’t seem to know for sure. When I asked him what he was basing his hope of heaven upon, he said that anytime he became aware that he had sinned, he stopped and prayed to ask God to forgive him of his sin. He said that he did this on a regular basis and that he knew that Jesus’ death on the cross was the only way that his sins could be forgiven. This conversation led into a discussion about “saving faith” – the kind of faith that a person must exercise in order to receive the gift of eternal life.

To try to explain “saving faith” to this man, I told him that the Bible says in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace are you saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” Grace is simply defined as “unmerited and undeserved favor.” The Bible tells us that none of us deserves to go to heaven because we are all sinners. (See Romans 3:23.) Because we are all sinners, we deserve death: both physical death and spiritual death, which is separation from God for all of eternity in hell. (See Romans 3:23 and Revelation 20:12-15.)

According to Ephesians 2:8-9, we receive God’s free gift of salvation and eternal life when we apply God’s grace to our lives “through faith.” This type of faith is what I call saving faith. To best explain saving faith, it is helpful to first understand what saving faith is not. First, it is not mere intellectual assent. In other words, saving faith is not just knowing and believing certain things in your head. Some people believe in Jesus Christ just like they believe in George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. They know facts about Jesus’ birth, his life on earth, his death, and even his resurrection, and may even believe that he was a good man and a good example. However, the Bible clearly tells us that this type of knowledge and belief is not saving faith.

Second, saving faith is not mere temporal faith. By temporal faith, I mean saving faith is not simply trusting God for the things of this life. Many people pray to God about things of this life and have faith that He will help them with various matters. For instance, people often pray to God believing that he will help them with their health, their finances, decisions they have to make, and their family. While this type of faith is more than mere intellectual assent, it still just concerns temporal matters of this life and is not the type of faith by which we receive eternal life.

Saving faith goes beyond both of these concepts. Saving faith is trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, to save you eternally. It is a one-time decision to place your complete trust in what Jesus did in dying on the cross for you and in His rising from the dead in order to give you eternal life and the free gift of heaven.

When it comes right down to it, there are really only two things that people trust in to get them to heaven. They either trust in something they are doing or they trust in Jesus Christ. Those who are trusting in something they are doing usually point to things such as their church membership, their baptism, their good works, the fact that they live by the Golden Rule, etc. Saving faith is transferring your trust from what you have been doing to what Jesus has done for you on the cross. Jesus Himself explained the importance of saving faith in the most well-known verse of the Bible, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth (puts his complete faith and trust) in him, should not perish but have everlasting life.”

While only God knows the true condition of a person’s heart, I told this man that I was concerned that he may not have ever exercised saving faith. It seemed that his prayer for forgiveness was only dealing with one sin at a time and that he had never truly trusted Jesus Christ to save him eternally. If you haven’t already done so, my prayer for you, and for this man, is that you will stop trusting in what you are doing to get you to heaven and exercise saving faith in Jesus Christ to receive the free gift of eternal life.