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One of the points on which Christians disagree—in fact, one of the defining disagreements among conservative Christians (or “evangelical Christians,” if you must)—is that of whether or not salvation and sanctification and the same thing. Perhaps another way of putting this is whether or not salvation always leads to sanctification, or whether there are “two classes of Christians, those who believe only, and those who both follow and believe.” This discussion, in reality, almost always comes down to the definition of words. Does faith mean to believe and to follow? Or does faith simply mean to believe, with following as a logical, but not necessary, result? To find the answers to these sorts of problems, it’s often useful to pull back from the Scriptures, and look at how we uses these words in the rest of our lives. To illustrate, let’s consider the following situation.
Suppose you tune into a television station you don’t normally watch, and you find yourself listening to a pitch on how to get rich in real estate. There are four possible reactions you could have to this pitch.
- You find the technique presented to be unrealistic, and you think the person selling the technique to be lacking in facts or in their ability to reason. Hence, you don’t end up having any faith in the salesman or the technique, and you determine you should not follow it.
- You find the technique presented to be unrealistic, but you think the person selling the technique is intelligent. While he probably knows his stuff, you don’t think he has this technique quite right. You end up believing the salesman is nice, and probably honest, but you don’t end up believing in the product he is selling.
- You find the technique presented realistic, and you think the person selling the technique is well worth emulating in their application of the technique. You immediately lay out plans to find out as much as you can about this technique, and the person selling it, and follow the path the salesman has laid out before you.
- You find the technique presented realistic, but you think the person selling the technique hasn’t really understood, or applied, the full technique as he has laid it out. You determine to follow the technique presented, after finding out all you can about it, but you decide the person doing the selling probably isn’t the best example of the technique as its explained.
While belief always does imply following, a careful examination shows us there are two things we can believe in here, a technique (or a path), and a person. The technique the salesman is selling and the salesman himself are two different things; we don’t necessarily need to place our faith in one to follow the other. In the rest of our lives, then, we always separate following what someone says from following the person themselves. We may sometimes follow the person (as a person) without placing our trust in what they say, and we may sometimes follow what the person says without placing our trust in the person.
If this is true in the rest of our lives, why shouldn’t it be trust of Christians, as well? We know, for instance, that Judas Iscariot was a disciple of Christ, and yet did not have faith in Christ. We know that Peter had faith in Christ, and yet was not always a disciple of Christ. These two things are divided in our everyday experience, and they are divided in the lives of people in the Scriptures.
It is possible to have faith in Christ, and not follow Him. In this situation, you believe that Christ has atoned for your sins, but you are not willing to do the work of actually being a disciple. It is also possible to follow Christ, and not have faith in Him, as a Person. Here you are placing your faith in a technique, a way of living that will bring prosperity, or peace, or some other thing you really desire. But you don’t place your faith in His power to save, specifically, and you aren’t following Him, you’re following a technique.
Faith and following are two different things. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to state that you can have faith in a person, without having faith in the path the person has chosen, and you can have faith in a path, without having faith in the person who shows you the path (or you can choose not to follow a path you know is right and good). So while following Christ would be the natural result of having faith in Christ, our experience of life shows us it’s possible to have faith in a person, and not follow them.
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