To believe is to buy completely into Christ. It is to buy into His kingdom and what it means to be the people of God. It is to know the “Age to Come” has come, and we are now living it. It is to surrender to Messiah’s Lordship. It is to embrace His teachings as a way of life. It is to learn to act and react as He did. It is to give up your old ways of being and doing for the new ways He is training you daily to do. Belief changes everything.
“Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands? Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”? The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture sentence, Abraham believed God and was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?” James 2:19-24 (The Message)
