The Faith of God

I believe there are two kinds of faith. God's supernatural faith and our natural, carnal or human faith. The differences, while not always understood or recognized, are huge.

Let me try to explain the difference. Carnal faith (or natural or human faith - all are used synonymously) is limited to what we can percieve with our 5 senses and our own believes or reasonings. Whereas, God's faith is unlimited. He speaks things into existance, when there was previously nothing there. Rom 4:17 says that God gives life to the dead and calls those things that be not as though they were. The context is speaking of God changing Abram's name(prince) to Abraham (father of many nations).

Carnal faith lets us believe that a chair is going to hold us up when we sit in it, or go through a stop light and believe that crossing traffic is going to stop when our light turns green. While this is faith to a degree, it is based on carnal (or sense) knowledge.

God's supernatural faith is involved when we get saved. We can't see God or satan. We can't see heaven or hell. We can't see sin ( we can see people sin or the effects of sin but we don't see sin). Neither can we see forgiveness. Yet we believe we have been. It's like sitting in a chair you can't see. This takes God's supernatural faith.

Now the question is : how do we get this faith? The answer is that it has already been given. Eph 2:8,9 says that "its by grace that you're saved, through faith and that not of yourselves but is the gift of God." The word "that" could refer to salvation or faith, (either would be an accurate statement), but I believe it is referring to faith. And since we know that salvation is a gift, we could deduce that we have been given both salvation and faith.

God's word contains His faith. Rom 10:17 says that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." We needed His faith in order to believe that God became flesh, and lived a perfect life, and suffered our punishment for us in His death. It takes supernatural faith to believe that the death of one man could pay the price for so many people's sin, even if that man was God.

Jn 17:8 " for I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them..." Another verse that goes along with this is 1Pet 1:23 "being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever." I love this verse for many reasons but for the purpose of this discussion it shows that it is the word of God that is ultimately responsible for our salvation. And when viewed in light of the other verses quoted it shows that the faith needed to receive salvation is a gift, and it is in God's word, and His word has already been freely given too us.