What is Faith?

[dollarsbill]

our sins testify against us
for our transgressions are with us
and as for our iniquities, we know them...
Isaiah 59:4-12

because we know our sin , our abuse of others, from conscience, from heart of Love, from mind, from spirit.... thus we are GUILTY when we sin, but men deny their shame...

Did you not state that you live a perfect life, without sin?

 

[strangertoo]

Did you not state that you live a perfect life, without sin?

for the nth time, NO... it is for God to say whom He forgives by grace for giving up every sin, not for us to tempt Him by presumption that we know all our sins ourselves... men can lie and so they do, even to themselves... God undertakes to tell us ALL our sins once we show willing by stopping from sinning all those we can bear to admit to ourselves ...quite a shock if one is not ready to accept that one deceives oneself about many sins ... but clearly one cannot confess fully until spirit baptism and it is sealed that God will not do so until one stops sinning to His satisfaction that one is genuinely willing to stop sinning, and God cannot be fooled, god looks on the heart of one's desires, God knows who is ready, who has yet to see more pain from sinful abuse of folks and oneself before deciding Love is better than all sin, for all...

 

[he-man]

It's just that those who profess to live without sin expose themselves. Nobody in this life lives without sin.

The apostle adds, that it is evidence, what argues to us "Things not seen", We are apt to be very indistinct in our Notions of Faith. In common speech we often take Faith and Knowledge the one or the other: The believing of a Thing upon good testimony, and the knowing it, are in a general Acceptance reputed one and the same Thing: But the Scriptures shew us a real Difference between Faith and Knowledge: They are not the same Attainments for we are exhorted to add the one to the other.

Add, says St. Peter, to your Faith, Knowledge, 2 Pet i, 5. Faith is the believing Things not seen, not known to ourselves, but declared to us, and believed upon Testimony, that they are true: We are capable of Information, without the Testimony of others, two ways, by our Senses, and by our Understandings:

Things external strike our Senses; and we immediately know what Impressions we receive of them: And we have an Ability of Mind to see and compare our Thoughts of Things, and to form a Judgment what to conclude of them:

In this Sense divers Things, which literally speaking, are invisible, may in the Language of St. Paul be said to be clearly seen, being understood, Rom. i. 20. We have a Knowledge, an Intuition of them in our Mind, from our clear Reasoning upon them, without Information of them from another:

But Faith is not of this Sort: Faith comes by Hearing, Rom. x. 17: It is the Belief of what we do not know, of ourselves, but are assured is known by some other, and declared to us : And if we would accurately distinguish between Belief in the general, and that Faith which is our religious Concern, in the One we believe, Things, which are testified to be known by Men to be true; in the other we believe Things, that are well testified to have been declared from God.
THE CREATION AND FALL OF M A N. By Samuel Shuckford D.D. Page 433