This article is part of our weekly series, “Our Life’s Comfort: One Year of Being Shaped by the Scriptures.” Read more from the series here.
(20) Q. Are all people then saved through Christ just as they were lost through Adam?
A. No. Only those are saved who through true faith are grafted into Christ and accept all his benefits.
(21) Q. What is true faith?
A. True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit works in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation. These gifts are purely of grace, only because of Christ’s merit.
(22) Q. What then must a Christian believe?
A. All that is promised us in the gospel, a summary of which is taught us in the articles of our catholic and undoubted Christian faith.
(23) Q. What are these articles?
A. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
“What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). That’s one of the most important questions ever asked. Paul answered like this: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). Our lesson elaborates on that answer with three more crucial questions.
Why Must I Believe?
Faith is the one way to break our deadly union with Adam. The fall of Adam “has so poisoned our nature that we are all conceived and born in sin” (A. 7). And “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). God sent the mediator Jesus—“true God and at the same time a true and righteous man” (A. 18)—to “bear in his humanity the weight of God’s wrath, and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life” (A. 17). But how do we get these benefits? A dehydrated man might die holding a bottle of water in his hands. He needs the water in him. You must believe because faith is how you drink in Jesus and all his benefits.
To use another biblical metaphor, through faith we are “grafted into Christ” (Rom. 11:17–24). By faith “an old, dead, lifeless, miserable branch (an unbelieving sinner) … is grafted into the living, life-giving root, Jesus Christ. That’s our union with Christ, our being in Christ.”[i] When the Holy Spirit grafts his chosen ones into Jesus, faith is the first fruit of new life. Jesus said, “I am the … life” (John 14:6). He didn’t mean that his teachings could unlock for us the secret formula to living well. He is life itself given to dead sinners. He isn’t a means to the cure. He is the cure. Faith is our link to him.
Faith is God’s gracious gift (Eph. 2:8). But it is also our activity. Through faith we consciously accept Jesus. Faith is not merely described in Scripture, it is commanded. “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). By repenting we renounce our sins, giving them to Jesus. By believing we embrace Jesus’ righteousness for our justification. Another Reformed confession puts it this way: “Faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with [Christ] and with all his benefits.”[ii]
What Is Belief?
Faith has two main ingredients. First, faith is sure knowledge of the truth of God’s word. John Calvin wrote that “Faith rests not on ignorance, but on knowledge.”[iii] Faith isn’t simply a believing attitude but full confirmation of God’s written revelation. Second, faith is wholehearted trust that Jesus is your Savior. Faith doesn’t simply believe the Bible as a historical document; it believes the gospel as the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). The gospel promises “forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation” to everyone who believes (John 3:16). Believers trust that this promise is for them.
Both of these ingredients are needed for saving faith. Without a sure knowledge of the truth of God’s word, “faith” becomes a subjective experience that latches on to another gospel—hope of salvation by another way than God has revealed. Without wholehearted trust in Jesus as your Savior, “faith” remains an intellectual appreciation for an old document called the Bible. But Christians aren’t only trusting a book—vital as the book is—we are also trusting in the living Word, Jesus Christ, the book’s main character. Admirers of Jesus find him commendable but do not seek and find their life in him. Hell is filled with people who had admired Jesus.
What Must I Believe?
The Bible has no throw-away doctrines; it is a total package. We take it or leave it whole and intact. You can’t truly believe that Jesus is your Savior if you dismiss what he says on other topics. Paul not only told the jailer to “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 16:31); he also “spoke the word of the Lord to him” so that he and his household could believe in God (Acts 16:32, 34). Paul preached to the Ephesians “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).
But we must be most dogmatic about the doctrines that have been “undoubted” by the “catholic” or universal church through the ages. This is the benefit of the Apostles’ Creed, which structures the catechism’s teaching in Lord’s Days 8–22. These 12 articles are like the words of traditional marriage vows; loving your spouse in sickness and in health has a million specific implications. You can’t vow them all individually. But you won’t make it to the specifics if you miss the basic ideas of marriage. The Apostles’ Creed summarizes the basic ideas of a believing marriage to God.
Here is where some people stumble. What we must believe is at odds with what is commonly held to be scientific knowledge—virgins don’t conceive children; dead people don’t live again. But don’t let that bother you. Believing is not incompatible with knowledge. It is a valid way of knowing because revelation is a valid source of understanding. Abraham Kuyper taught that “the antithesis of faith and unbelief not only led to “‘two kinds of people’ (the regenerate and the unregenerate) but also produced ‘two kinds of science.’”[iv] Don’t misunderstand the point. Herman Bavinck insists that “Christians have never been so narrowminded as to dismiss all scientific research advanced by unbelievers as false.” But human knowledge, including scientific knowledge, “is subjective and rests on [non-negotiable] assumptions.”[v] The Apostles’ Creed is not unscientific. It is a different kind of science. It takes as its starting point that God exists, that he created the universe, that his Son Jesus was raised from the dead, and that all believers will experience “the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.”
Many reject that knowledge. If you want to be saved, don’t follow their lead.
[i] Fred Klooster, Our Only Comfort, 1.205.
[ii] Belgic Confession, 22.
[iii] Institutes, 3.2.2.
[iv] James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2020), 229.
[v] Eglinton, Bavinck, 229.
