In this thread I would like to identify a problem, the wide path, a stumbling block, and most of all a secret of "Faith". Not Faith the noun, which is "pistis" in the original texts. But Faith the verb, "pisteuo" that is what's in the original texts.
Problem, wide path, a stumbling block.
1) When the Greek texts were translated into English, they came to this word "pisteuo" and discovered there was no English word for the verb form of Faith. What they needed to translate "pisteuo" in to English was the words , Faither, Faithing, and to Faithe. But as you know, those words are not in the English vocabulary. So what are they supposed to do? This word "pisteuo" is arguably the most important word in Gods Word. Put yourself in their shoes, what are you going to do, what are your options? Well, they could have lobbied to have the correct words added to the English language I guess, but how long would that take? They were no doubt excvited about getting this first ever English translation out to the public.
They might have said , well, its only one word, lets just find a word that is the closest we can come up with. But to their surprise, this word "pisteuo" is used 248 times in the Gospels alone. This is a huge problem.
For what ever reason, they chose to use the words "believe, believer, and believing." These words aren't what "pisteuo" fully means, but it's at least part of it is correct.
You see the meaning of the word "pisteuo" in the Greek is best defined according to my experiences in the Vines unabridged edition. There it defines "pisteuo" as , "A personal surrender to Him." ( We all know what a surrender is, and what must be surrendered, and who it must be surrendered to.) " And a life inspired by such surrender." ( which means I'm continually surrendering my life to Jesus ). I not only am surrendering my life to Him daily, hourly, and by the minute, i'm filtering every decision I make all day long through that surrender. That is what "pisteuo" is. Much more than belief.
A good understanding of "pisteuo" in English since we don't have the correct word, is what we call the a,b,c's of Faith, the verb. That is: " An action, based upon a belief, sustained by confidence." You can see that belief only covers one third of the original meaning. If someone has built their entire understanding on believing in Jesus for Salvation, they have fallen as they hit the stumbling block. They are on the wide path. You know 99.9 percent of the Christian world has built their salvation on this "MISTRANSLATION"
Who is to blame for this? Is it the translators ? They only did the best of what was at their disposal! Is it us? We are only reading and acting on what our Bibles say. " If I "believe" in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ i'm saved. That's what it says! But the truth is, it should say, "If we "Faithe" (pisteuo") in the name of the Lord Jesus Cjhrist ( personally surrendering to Him continually, filtering all of our decision making through that surrender, we will be saved !" Faithing is an action, based upon a belief, sustained by confidence.
There is no such word as believe, believing, or believer in the Greek language that I can find. The problem is when it was mistranslated from the Greek to English, the reverse thing happened. If you look at the translation of "belief" in English, and trace it back to the Greek, Yup, it has been mistranslated not only from Greek to English, but from English to Greek. They had to, what else could they have done?
I know this is a really hard pill to swallow, and your first instinct might be to attack the messenger. Please don't! Maybe read through this post 2 or 3 times and just give it a little time to let God draw you. I would like to answer any questions you might have. I won't attack you back.
The "one thing" we as the ones drawn by the Father do not want to do Iron2Iron?
"It's surrendering our life to God" PISTEUO! If we don't, we don't have the Holy Spirit in us. If we don't, Christ is none of ours. And if Christ is not ours, Gods Word is not ours. None of it! So now you can kind of see why I was so adamant about focusing the osas conversation on the once saved part of the osas equation. Rom. 8:9