Another significant lesson from 2023:<\/p>\n\n\n
It has become clear to me this past year (and I have written about it several times here) that we as Christians are deeply confused about what is involved in “believing in Jesus”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Mere mental assent to propositional truths – “God is three persons in one”, “Jesus was like us in every way but was without sin”, “Regeneration precedes faith”*, etc. – is not what Scripture means by “believe”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
We can argue doctrine all day long, but orthodox doctrinal statements do not save anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n
Belief IN JESUS<\/i> is at the core of salvation and it is a “belief” which goes far beyond “belief” in His existence or “belief” in this or that doctrine.<\/p>\n\n\n
The belief in Jesus<\/i> at the heart of Christianity is a love and trust that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, as the Son of God, is a definitive demonstration of God’s great love for humanity.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And something which you have experienced <\/b><\/i>as life-altering!<\/p>\n\n\n
It is the difference between me saying “I believe my wife exists” and me saying “I believe in my wife”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“I believe my wife exists” requires nothing of me beyond mental assent to the obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n
“I believe in my wife”, on the other hand, assumes her existence as a matter of fact but then goes on to express so much more<\/i><\/b>: my love, admiration, and trust of her.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And where does that love, admiration, and trust come from?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It isn’t something conjured from my imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n
It comes from relationship.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(* It doesn’t. \ud83d\ude09)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another significant lesson from 2023: It has become clear to me this past year (and I have written about it several times here) that we as Christians are deeply confused about what is involved in “believing in Jesus”.\u00a0 Mere mental assent to propositional truths – “God is three persons in one”, “Jesus was like us […]<\/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-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","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=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2975,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions\/2975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}