{"id":10208,"date":"2026-03-03T02:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T02:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10208"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:16","slug":"believe-in-fill-in-the-blank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10208","title":{"rendered":"BELIEVE IN &#8230; (FILL IN THE BLANK)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s interesting to step back and take an overview of the word &#8220;faith\/believe&#8221; in the New Testament.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If I am reading my sources correctly, the Greek word &#8220;pistis&#8221;, the noun form translated most often as &#8220;faith&#8221; occurs 243 times in the New Testament.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coincidently, the verb form, &#8220;pisteuo&#8221;, translated typically as &#8220;believe&#8221; also occurs 243 times.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both exist quite often without any object. But when they do have objects, there is quite a range.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s a sampling of the noun form, pistis\/faith:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Bible speaks of faith&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>in God (Mark 11:22)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>toward God (Heb 6:1)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in him who justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the Son of God (Gal 2:20)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in Christ Jesus (Col 1:4)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the truth (2 Thess 2:13)<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The verb form, pisteuo\/believe, has even more variety in its objects:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Bible speaks of people believing&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>John the Baptist (Matt 21:32)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the gospel (Mark 1:15)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that what Jesus says will come to pass (Mark 11:23)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that you have received what you asked for in prayer (Mark 11:24)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>the reports about the risen Christ (Mark 16:14)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Jesus&#8217;s words (Luke 1:20)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>all that the prophets have spoken (Luke 24:25)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in His name (John 1:12)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken (John 2:22)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the Son (John 3:36)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that &#8220;I am He&#8221; (John 8:24)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the Son of Man (John 9:35)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>the works Jesus performed (John 10:38)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that &#8220;you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world (John 11:27)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that God sent Jesus (John 11:42)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the Light (John 12:36)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that Jesus came from God (John 16:27)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Philip as he preached the good news about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 8:12)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the Lord (Acts 9:42)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in God (Acts 16:34)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord (Rom 4:24)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 10:9)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that Jesus died and rose again (1 Thess 4:14)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 5:1)<\/li>\n\n\n<li>in the name of the Son of God (1 John 5:13)<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But most often, the Bible simply speaks of &#8220;believing in Jesus&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s funny that when you hear people try to define exactly what a person must &#8220;believe&#8221; in order to be saved, the answer is usually something like &#8220;You must believe that Jesus died for your sins and that He is the only way for you to be forgiven and to get to heaven&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But belief is never formulated exactly that way even once in any of these verses.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wouldn&#8217;t you think that if faith were simply a mental assent to some propositional truth, the magic formula would be repeated throughout the New Testament, so that nobody would miss it?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you look at the lists above, it seems to me that the emphasis is not at all on propositional truths, per se.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The emphasis is not on the object. The emphasis is on the verb itself.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Believing is a heart attitude.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Believe = Trust.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s interesting to step back and take an overview of the word &#8220;faith\/believe&#8221; in the New Testament. If I am reading my sources correctly, the Greek word &#8220;pistis&#8221;, the noun form translated most often as &#8220;faith&#8221; occurs 243 times in the New Testament.\u00a0 Coincidently, the verb form, &#8220;pisteuo&#8221;, translated typically as &#8220;believe&#8221; also occurs 243 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10209,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208\/revisions\/10209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}