Foundations of the Christian Faith – Faith Towards God

Faith is believing beyond what we can see or feel. Rather, it is a means to believe with our heart, our spirit, our inner man. Faith is much stronger than a fleeting emotion, which has no stability, but is tempted and motivated by the winds of change that constantly blow in different directions, never seeming to set foot on solid ground.

In fact, the person who decides to live with the notion that “if it feels good, it must be good” and “if it feels good, do it”, can testify that a life influenced by every feeling an individual experiences will be filled with much. misery, regret and decadence. Feelings are not always reliable. They should be enjoyed, but not depended on.

Christianity is not based on how we feel. It is stable and reliable. it is by faith. It is believing in God and in what He says, beyond how things appear. This is actually the second of the six fundamental teachings of Christianity. We must have faith in God and we must develop faith in God.

No intelligent person who wants to know the truth will deny that there is a God. Even creation itself reveals that God exists. The world is too well organized and the universe too magnificent and vast for any thinking person to doubt that a Being of Enormous Power, Wisdom, Intelligence and Strength created it. This Being is God. Some call it the Higher Power. Of course. He is the One who made everything and therefore He is the One to Whom everyone will have to give an account.

The first of the Doctrines of the Christian Faith is Repentance for Dead Works. This means turning around sin and all religious works that cannot give a person a right position with the Creator of the universe, a Just and Holy God. The next step is to have faith in God and what He has done to bring us back to Him.

Did I say, “bring us back”? In fact I did, because something happened that had separated us from our God. The story can be found in the first Book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis. Almighty God had created man in his image and after his likeness. Man was made for the purpose of fellowship with God. Man had a right position with God. He was clean, innocent and holy. God made man like Himself and for Himself. Man, however, decided to go against God, being tempted by an angel, a fallen angel who did not want to submit to the same one he did. We in Christianity call him the devil. He is evil, wicked and full of lies and deception.

He tempted man and humanity succumbed to that tempter. When the first man, Adam and his wife, listened to and obeyed God’s enemy, the fallen angel, they fell from their rightful standing with God. They were now sinners, which means they were in sin and unable to help themselves out of it. This is what is meant by the phrase in the Bible, “dead in sin.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)

This sinful nature was passed on, through birth, to all mankind. (Romans 5:12, The Bible). All of us came into this world with a sin nature. Man is said to be inherently good. According to the teachings of the Bible, this is not so. Man is inherently evil, until he repents and turns to God in faith that what God has provided for man can set us free and bring us back to right standing with Him.

God, seeing the situation of mankind determined, out of His great love for us, to help us. We couldn’t help ourselves. So God sent his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us and shed his blood to wash away our sinful nature, bringing us once again into right standing with God as his own children.

This is the true essence of faith towards God. We must believe that God sent his Son to die for our sins. We must believe that Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins and that God raised him from the dead. We must believe that we can now come to God and be His children, getting a right standing with Him once again, not on the basis of what we have done, but on the basis of what He has done for us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we must receive the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior.

This is the second of the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Keep looking through the e-zine articles for the third of these lessons on the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith.