The Second Word: Believing

The Gospel of John never once uses the noun faith. This is not an accident of translation. John made a choice, and the choice is the point.

He uses the verb pisteuō — to believe — nearly a hundred times. Only the verb. Because in John's understanding, believing is not a possession a person holds. It is an act a person is doing, or is not doing, right now.

And John's characteristic construction is pisteuō eis — to believe into. This is an unusual preposition. Believing does not take eis — into — in ordinary Greek usage. John uses it deliberately. To believe into is to entrust the whole self into a Person, the way weight is entrusted to a bridge. You are not standing on the bank having correct opinions about the bridge's engineering. You are on the bridge. You stepped. The full weight of you is on it now. That is pisteuō eis.

John sets the matter straight in a single verse:

"The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God's wrath remains on him." — John 3:36 (NET)

The word behind rejects is apeitheō — literally, the one who disobeys. John places believing and obeying as opposite poles in a single sentence, because in his vocabulary they are the same motion seen from two directions. The entrusting that is real produces following. The sheep in John 10:27 hear the voice, are known, and follow — one unbroken sequence. Jesus pressed the same question that has never stopped being uncomfortable:

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and don't do what I tell you?" — Luke 6:46 (NET)

And James finished the demolition of the flattened word:

"You believe that God is one; well and good. Even the demons believe that – and tremble with fear." — James 2:19 (NET)

Assent is something devils do. It saves no one. Pisteuō eis — the entrusting of the whole self into the Person of Christ — is something else entirely.

The modern church has flattened this word into assent: agreeing that certain statements are true, having prayed a prayer, holding a membership, having the right answers. Under the flattened version, believing and living are two separate compartments. A person can believe fully, in the modern sense, while holding any practice indefinitely, because the believing happened once, in the mind, and the living happens somewhere else. The transaction is complete. The relationship is optional. This is not the word John used.