● What Do We Believe by True Faith? Everything taught to us in the gospel. The Apostles’ Creed expresses what we believe in these words: We believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

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New City Catechism Commentary: “The only thing I can contribute to my salvation is my own sinful nature. It’s about coming to God with an awareness of our humble need—coming in faith, repenting of my sins, and laying out before God my sense that I need him. That’s the beginning of salvation.”
There is No Faith So Little That it Is Not Saving (The Gospel Coalition): “There is no faith so little that it can’t be saving. Faith does not have to be strong to be saving, it just has to be real. The smallest faith, if it is real, receives the same strength of Christ in salvation as the strongest faith.”
What Saving Faith Sees in Christ (DesiringGod): “Saving faith glorifies Christ by looking away from self to Christ alone — to his all-sufficiency, including his blood and righteousness, without which we could have no right standing with God. To which I say, with all my heart, Amen! Let us be willing to die for this. As many have.”

• What is Faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ is acknowledging the truth of everything that God has revealed in his Word, trusting in him, and also receiving and resting on him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel.
• It is not the strength of our faith that saves us; it is the object of our faith that saves us. We do not put our confidence in how strong or smart our faith is, but on what Jesus has done for us by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

Recommended Resources

• New City Catechism Commentary: “The only thing I can contribute to my salvation is my own sinful nature. It’s about coming to God with an awareness of our humble need—coming in faith, repenting of my sins, and laying out before God my sense that I need him. That’s the beginning of salvation.”
• There is No Faith So Little That it Is Not Saving (The Gospel Coalition): “There is no faith so little that it can’t be saving. Faith does not have to be strong to be saving, it just has to be real. The smallest faith, if it is real, receives the same strength of Christ in salvation as the strongest faith.”
• What Saving Faith Sees in Christ (DesiringGod): “Saving faith glorifies Christ by looking away from self to Christ alone — to his all-sufficiency, including his blood and righteousness, without which we could have no right standing with God. To which I say, with all my heart, Amen! Let us be willing to die for this. As many have.”

• How Can We Be Saved? Only by faith in Jesus Christ and in his substitutionary atoning death on the cross; so even though we are guilty of having disobeyed God and are still inclined to all evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of our own but only by pure grace, imputes to us the perfect righteous- ness of Christ when we repent and believe in him.
• “My hope does not live because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith does not rest upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is now doing for me.” - Charles Spurgeon

Recommended Resources

• New City Catechism Commentary: “My hope does not live because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith does not rest upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is now doing for me.”
• Dressed in His Righteousness Alone (Desiring God): “In justification, Christ’s righteousness does not become ours as some sort of personal possession. It is counted or reckoned as ours. Why? Because we do not perform the acts of justifying righteousness. Christ, as our substitute, lived the perfect life we couldn’t and died the death we deserved. The righteousness of Christ must therefore primarily and exclusively belong to him.”
• The Greatest Issue We Face (Ligonier): “How can an unforgiven person become forgiven? How can an unjust person be justified or be considered just in the sight of God? There are not many issues in theology more serious than that.”