Subject: Unbaptized children |
Bible Note: Kin, you ask how I would define faith, and I suppose you are asking about it in the context of "faith in the Lord Jesus" as I used it in the post to which your question is a response..... I mention this simply because there are several meanings in the New Testament for this word. There are, for example (1) an intellectual acceptance of spiritual truths -- James 2:19. (2) the fundamental, doctrinal content of Christianity -- Jude 3. (3) saving faith, a faith which rejects all confidence in and dependence on human effort and relies upon Jesus alone to give to the sinner a right relationship to God -- Phil.3:2-9.... In the first two kinds of faith there is no salvation. A person may well believe in and accept as being valid the broad spiritual truths (1) that the Bible teaches; he may believe in and accept in a general way that the doctrines of Christianity (2) are true. These two kinds of faith might be viewed as passive faith. He can have both and still not know Christ through the kind of saving faith (3) by which he surrenders himself to the Lordship of Christ, believing that only in Jesus Christ can his sins be forgiven and his right relationship to God be effected. --Hank |