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NASB | John 3:16 ¶ "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 3:16 ¶ "For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. |
Bible Question: What does the word"believe"involve |
Bible Answer: Rom 3:28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Some people complicate and obscure the meaning of believe with a lot of religious mumbo jumbo. What they wind up doing is making “believe” either incomprehensible or turning it into works so that instead of being justified by believing (faith) one is justified by works. But there is no special biblical meaning to the word believe (translated “faith” when used in its noun form). The only difference in the Bible is the OBJECT of what one believes. But the meaning of the word believe is the same whether the object is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus or a message in a letter from your friend. But because the salvation of God is of free grace (Rom 6:23), people are tempted to make believing as hard as possible while trying not to make it appear that one is contributing some of his own efforts towards his salvation. No, to believe means what many religious people hate. They call it “easy believism.” To believe means to mentally accent to an understood statement. It is to agree, to accept that a proposition, a message, a statement is true. It’s as simple as that, and it must be that way because of the nature of our sin, the holiness and justice of God, and the person work of Christ. The thoroughness of our corruption in sin makes us incapable of rendering anything acceptable to God towards our salvation. The holiness and justice of God make it impossible for any of our good efforts to remove His just wrath and punishment for our sins. And the person and work of Christ makes any contribution on our part superfluous and insulting to His life, crucifixion, and resurrection. Any contribution from our polluted selves would make a mockery of the truth that “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.” So, to believe is easy. But if one wants to make believing the Gospel hard, all we need to realized is that it is impossible for a sinner, dead in his sin (Eph 2) to believe the Gospel. To believe the Gospel is a gift from God. "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;" Eph 2:8 |