Just Believe?
I often hear the Gospel message described as something like this:
“Believe that Jesus died for your sins, rose from the grave, and you will be saved. All you have to do is believe.”
I think the “all you have to do is believe” call to salvation intends to emphasize grace and de-emphasize the role of personal works in salvation. There is something simple about the method of accessing salvation; the act of believing someone or something in this world is not beyond us. However, what you believe about someone or something changes the outcome. I have found that “easy believism” omits much of what the Bible actually says about faith. I’ve come to understand Christian faith as more than belief in God’s Gospel as fact, but as belief that the applications of those facts for life are true.
According to Paul, Christians do not just believe the primary tenets of the Gospel to be true: that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for the world’s sins, and raised from the dead. Christian faith believes the application of these tenets which culminates into the ultimate life action: dying to self and living with Christ.
“Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him.”
Romans 6:8
Precisely, we believe that if we die to our sinful nature, the Holy Spirit will give us life because Jesus is the Son of God. In other words, Jesus proves he is the Son of God through not only his own resurrection, but also through our resurrection (see Romans 6:5).
A person only dies to their sin, which is everything to them, if they believe the promise which lies on the other side of that death is better than their sin. Is the life that Jesus offers worth my dying to the things that I currently love?
Every person (Christians included) sins because it is enjoyable or brings some sort of comfort or relief or builds our esteem in some way. It’s quite unnatural for us to want to abandon sin. That is unless we have found something better in which we trust to give us life.
What this verse tells us is that if anyone dies to sin they trust God to be powerful enough to transform their death into life. They are trusting God that his commands are actually good and that their own desires which feel good and feel right may not actually be so. They are trusting that Jesus will faithfully lead them to greater satisfaction in himself than they can find in sin. They are trusting that if they die to the things they currently love, that God won’t leave them in their death.
Christian faith places confidence in God that he will bring about life through death.
“Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame”
Romans 10:11