Seek Saving Faith: The Path to Renewal

There’s something beautiful about simplicity, isn’t there? In a world that loves to complicate things, the Christian faith calls us back to the basics—those foundational truths that define what it means to be a “little Christ,” a Christian. I’ve been struck by this need time and again, whether in evangelizing the rugged souls of the Keweenaw, discipling students at Michigan Tech, or talking with folks who claim deep roots in their traditions. We have a tendency to chase sophisticated sophistry, to want to look wise without doing the hard, humbling work of letting God’s Word shape us. So let’s strip it all away, set aside the fancy arguments, and get back to the milk of the faith. My hope here is to call us to a low place, where we read, digest, and walk steadily toward the glory of the Lord. It might feel basic, even pedantic, but we must start here as this is where the conversations keep leading, and it’s where we need to linger.

Biblical Faith

Saving Faith, as the Scriptures paint it, is a living, breathing thing—both belief and action woven together. The Bible gives us three categories of faith: the saving faith gifted by the Holy Spirit that transforms us, faith in temporal things that sustain us for a moment, and deceptive faith that twists truth for earthly gain. Let’s walk through these in reverse, peeling back the layers to see what’s real and what’s not.

Deceptive Faith

Deceptive faith is an old trick, as old as the serpent in the Garden. It takes one piece of Scripture, hoists it up as the whole truth, and declares, “If you don’t agree, you’re not one of us.” It’s not new—it’s been used to mislead God’s people from the start. Today, it shows up in modern evangelicalism as a love for talking the talk without walking the walk. Jesus Himself warned us in Matthew 7:21–23:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, in Your name did we not prophesy, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name do many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”

We see it everywhere: on social media, in churches, even in campus ministries. People memorize the right doctrinal phrases, parrot their favorite theologian, and think that’s enough to be justified. They put their faith in intellectual prowess, in having the “correct” answers, as if that makes them right with God. They use this prowess as a weapon to bludgeon others as being beneath them and unworthy for salvation. But Jesus says no. No amount of works, no matter how impressive, contributes to your justification. The worst, most vile sinner, that turns from their sin in trust that the savior can and does save them is going to heaven before the most righteous know-it-all who keeps the whole law. Faith that leans on the latest trend, the loudest voice, or the most dangerous idea to seem more pious is hollow. Paul nails it in 2 Timothy 3:1–9:

“But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Keep away from such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires, always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, disqualified in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also.”

Modernity loves this game—chasing the rowdiest preacher or the most captivating gossip instead of doing the quiet, faithful work God calls us to. It’s not intentional malice; it’s just easier to pretend at manliness or piety than to embrace the mundane tasks of obedience. There is no saving faith in this. This is a deceptive faith that places its trust in intellectual prowess and ability to regurgitate your favorite theologian instead of rightly understanding the Word of God and it’s teachings. I urge you to seriously disconnect from the modern things that want to completely sway you away from the basic biblical teachings and get you hooked on whatever the latest thing is. Do not put your faith in knowing or understanding the latest problems, the latest doctrinal statement, or the most captivating Gossip. I urge you, brothers and sisters, to unplug from the noise pulling you from Scripture’s simple truths. The Bible has everything we need to face today’s problems. Let’s be men and women of the Word, washing away the world’s wisdom with God’s.

Faith in the Temporal

You might wonder how this differs from deceptive faith, but hear me out. Temporal faith is placing your hope in something that, if it fails, shatters your belief. I was in a Bible study once where a man said, “I can’t believe in a God who sends people to hell.” That stopped the conversation cold. If Scripture teaches hell and God’s justice, but you reject it because it doesn’t fit your view, your faith isn’t in God, it’s in an idol of your own making. Paul warns us in 2 Timothy 4:1–4:

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

If you scour books or blogs to validate your position, cherry-picking teachers who align with your desires, you’re not seeking God—you’re building a god who suits you. Scripture will push back. It will offend you. It will expose your sin. That’s its job, used by the Holy Spirit to sanctify you. Don’t À la carte God, picking only the parts you like. That’s not faith; it’s idolatry.

The basis of all saving faith is rooted in Love for God, as Augustine says in “Faith may indeed exist without love, but it is of no profit”

If we place our faith in temporal desires of seeing God in a certain light, of gaining only a certain understanding or pursuing a certain belief, all we do is make a wicked idol of “God” that isn’t the God of the Scriptures. It’s a strange amalgamation of the things we deem acceptable and the things we enjoy. We cannot À la carte God and have any hope at all.

Saving Faith

Saving faith, the kind that marks God’s people, always does something. James is our guide to this, and yes it is a popular verse for the papist to throw at the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone, but we will cover that too, from James 2:14-26

“What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”

James isn’t arguing against justification by faith alone, he’s shouting it from the rooftops. He’s challenging those who say, “I believe, and that’s enough,” comparing them to demons who believe but tremble. Saving faith, like Abraham’s when he offered Isaac or Rahab’s when she hid God’s people, acts. It moves. It does the hard things because the believer is changed. Justification by faith alone demands this: a heart transformed by God naturally produces good works. Rahab didn’t just claim faith; she risked her life. Abraham didn’t just believe; he obeyed, even when it hurt. (You can read more on this here.)

Justification comes through Christ’s work on the cross, not ours. Nothing we do earns it, and nothing we do can lose it. That’s the beauty of grace—God’s unmerited favor. We’re miserable, finite beings, yet He calls us sons and daughters. That’s humbling. That’s life-changing. That’s saving faith. This is not a new idea either, Clement wrote in his epistle to Corinthians this: “And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men…” (ANF1:13)

Faith, saving faith, is something unique. My wife makes bread, and I love hot white bread from the oven filling the house with that warm, yeasty smell. I didn’t watch my wife make it, she could be trying a new recipe or have undercooked it because our children are giving her the run around. I have two choices when it comes to the bread:

1. See it and identify if it is indeed bread. Looks like bread, smells like bread, shaped like bread, etc..
2. Cut off a peice and eat it.

Faith that doesn’t save fits in step one, it merely acknowledges it exists and has the “essence” of what it claims to be. Yet it doesn’t actually fulfill what iit is called to do. My acknowledgement of all these things should have driven me to cut off a slice and eat some, yet I did not. I didn’t actually have faith, whether something restrained me or I refused to eat some, I did not accomplish what the breads goal is, sustenance.

Saving faith looks at the bread, cuts off a slice, slaps on some butter, and eats it. I don’t know if my wife is trying a new recipe, if she undercooked it, and yet, I acknowledge completely that this breads use is for sustenance and to be enjoyed. In order to be faithful I had to do something in response to what had been done for me. This is saving faith, standing on a truth (in this case an easy one) even if it could go against my senses. My favorite example of this caomes from 1 Samuel 14 and Jonathan and his armor bearer.

“One day Jonathan son of Saul said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side.” But he did not tell his father.

Saul was staying on the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree in Migron. With him were about six hundred men, among whom was Ahijah, who was wearing an ephod. He was a son of Ichabod’s brother Ahitub son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the Lord’s priest in Shiloh. No one was aware that Jonathan had left.

On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez and the other Seneh. One cliff stood to the north toward Mikmash, the other to the south toward Geba.

Jonathan said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised men. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.”

“Do all that you have in mind,” his armor-bearer said. “Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.”

Jonathan said, “Come on, then; we will cross over toward them and let them see us. If they say to us, ‘Wait there until we come to you,’ we will stay where we are and not go up to them. But if they say, ‘Come up to us,’ we will climb up, because that will be our sign that the Lord has given them into our hands.”

So both of them showed themselves to the Philistine outpost. “Look!” said the Philistines. “The Hebrews are crawling out of the holes they were hiding in.” The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his armor-bearer, “Come up to us and we’ll teach you a lesson.”

So Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, “Climb up after me; the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.”

Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armor-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer followed and killed behind him. In that first attack Jonathan and his armor-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre.”

Jonathans father Saul is out underneath a pomegranate tree, relaxing by the wayside and Ahitub, the son of Phinehas (who is also someone who should be zealous) is with them. Yet Jonathan sneaks off on his own, approaches a bastion of warriors from underneath in a pass. This would be a death sentence, they could just rain arrows or rocks on his head. Yet Jonathan says “Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf”, he crosses over tells his armor bearer that if they say to come up, the Lord has won for them. Jonathan understood something, that God was the one who protected and redeemed His people, and Jonathan set out believing that by doing what faith called them to do. This is taking the bread and eating it, this is embracing the truths of God with Faith, with life giving saving faith.

Fighting Unbelief and Faithlessness

We’ve lost this understanding of saving faith. We lean on backup plans, bank accounts, or our own cleverness instead of trusting God’s sufficiency. Paul heard it straight from the Lord: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). What happened to being weak? Needy? Dependent on God for our daily bread, as Jesus taught us to pray? We’ve been cut a thousand times by pragmatism, materialism, and cultural idols. We want enough money to fix any problem, enough stuff to soothe our consciences, enough status to feel secure—all while grieving the Holy Spirit.

We must turn back from our place and return to faithfulness. We must stop trying to make a way for God and instead pray for Him to make the way. He is God alone, He is the one who can stop the sun, turns back the wicked, redeems sinners, gives us our strength and our food. We are under the curse that God promises in Deuteronomy 28

“Yahweh will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. Yahweh will strike you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart; and you will grope at noon, as the blind man gropes in darkness, and you will not succeed in your ways; but you shall only be oppressed and robbed all your days, with none to save you. You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it; your donkey shall be torn away from you and will not be returned to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you will have none to save you. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them all the day long; but there will be nothing you can do. A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labors, and you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed all your days. And you shall be driven mad by the sight of what your eyes see. Yahweh will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. Yahweh will lead you and your king, whom you set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone. You shall become an object of horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the people where Yahweh drives you.

“You shall bring out much seed to the field, but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it. You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them. You shall have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off. You shall become the father of sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. The cricket shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground. The sojourner who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you will be the tail.

The curses for not keeping and doing all His commandments and statutes. Our illnesses, our children, our oppression, whether its our children cannot find faithful spouses, whether its the quality of our food has so deteriorated, whether it’s the work that we do that is not providing or sufficient for us. We plant, we strive to make it possible, and yet the “world” seems against us and we do not realize that it is actually God who is punishing us for our unbelief. He is the one causing these things, not other people, not satan, it is God and God alone.

Repent and believe

Look in the mirror. The problem starts with us, with God’s people. We’ve chased false gods, lusted after flesh and money, and given our strength to the enemy. But it’s not too late. Fall on your knees. Plead for God’s mercy. Confess your unbelief, your shame, your sin. It’s not about trying harder tomorrow or earning His favor. It’s about recognizing we turned our backs on Him, even as He poured out blessings. 1 John 1:5–10 promises:

1 John 1:5-10
And this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not do the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

Confess your unbelief, your shame, your sin. John Chrysostom, a renowned preacher, wrote, “Repentance is the medicine which heals the wounds of the soul, and faith is the hand that receives it.” This calls us to turn to God in faith, trusting His grace to restore us because God is the God of resurrection, redeeming what seems lost. Cling to His faithfulness. Pray for His grace to change you, to conform you to His image. Return to the simplicity of saving faith, rooted in Scripture, and walk humbly toward His glory. It’s not too late for He’s the God of the living, not the dead.

References:
Augustine of Hippo. (1888). On Faith and Works. In C. T. Wilcox (Ed.), The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series (Vol. 3, Chapter 14, Section 21, p. 447). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
Clement of Rome. (1885). First Epistle to the Corinthians. In A. Roberts & J. Donaldson (Eds.), The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol. 1, Chapter 32, p. 13). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
John Chrysostom. (1889). Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews. In F. Gardiner (Ed.), The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series (Vol. 14, Homily 34, Section 3, p. 513). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.