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Is Obedient Faith a Proper Term to Describe Our Faith In God?

Jimmy Akin

Jimmy Akin addresses the various ways to understand the term “faith,” in response to a caller who asks whether one particular way is more legitimate.

Transcript:

Host: Let’s just go real quick to Denny in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania listening on 720 AM. Denny, you’re on with Jimmy Akin, what’s your question?

Caller: Jimmy, concerning faith, is it correct to use the term “an obedient type of faith,” or should it be expressed as “a faith which includes obedience,” or are both expressions correct? And secondly, is it correct to say that true faith is believing in God, trusting in God, and obedience to God?

Jimmy: Okay, in regard to the first question, both expressions are fine. Neither one of them is quite the phrase the Bible uses. In Romans, Paul, on a couple of occasions, talks about the obedience of faith. So he clearly is envisioning the idea that faith brings about a form of obedience to the Gospel and its requirements. He also uses similar expressions elsewhere, like in Galatians he talks about faith working through love, which would indicate a faith that manifests itself in acts of charity, which is going to include obedience to God.

In terms of the second question, faith can be defined multiple different ways, and so there’s not a single correct definition. If you want to define faith the way you just did in the second part of your question, you can do that, but you need to be aware that’s not the way it’s defined all the time, it’s that’s not the way it’s going to be defined all the time even in Scripture. There are going to be different uses of the word “faith” even in Scripture. And an example of that would be contrasting, for example, the type of faith that Paul discusses, either as the obedience that comes from faith–indicating a faith that brings forth obedience–or faith working through love, and the kind of faith that James talks about in James 2, which he says even the demons have. Well, the demons don’t have faith working in charity, and they don’t have the obedience of faith, so what the demons have is a purely intellectual faith, and so the concept of faith can be understood and is understood in Scripture in a very narrow way, but it’s also understood in broader ways.

And so that means whenever we’re in a discussion with somebody about faith, we need to stop and define our terms because it can be and is used in multiple different ways and we shouldn’t assume just one understanding of the term is correct.

Caller: So in other words, it’s okay to use the term “obedient type of faith?”

Jimmy: Yeah.

Caller: It’s not against any…

Jimmy: No, it’s fine, but you’ll need to stop and explain what you mean by that in all likelihood, because it’s not a common phrase. I see.

Caller: Okay, I just wanted to be correct; I’m preparing some classes here and I want to be correct on using the correct term.

Jimmy: Well you’ve got it.

Host: Denny, thank you very much.

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