- Feb 5, 2002
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What does Jesus mean when he says, 'Your faith has healed you'?
When people today speak of “faith,” what do they mean?
In print, and online, “faith” is often synonymous with “religion.” So we can say there are, in this country, members of many different religions, which is the same as saying many different faiths. If there is a difference, it is the distinction between religious institutions and religious systems of thought. Christianity, represented by various Church institutions, is a “religion,” whereas the Christian “faith” is a set of doctrines or principles or beliefs.
And then there is another use of “faith” that is supposedly not religious: the idea of “having faith” in something invisible or something unproven or otherwise uncertain. So people might have “faith” in extraterrestrial life as a matter of conviction, even if it has not been proved. This is where “faith” is synonymous with “belief,” by which we mean conviction without knowledge. This is where people speak of “faith in” God in the sense of believing that God exists even if God is not visible and obvious in normal ways. This is very near the definition of faith we get in the famous “faith chapter” of Hebrews 11: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Continued below.
Your Faith Is Not Private
What does Jesus mean when he says, 'Your faith has healed you'? Is faith just some private thing, or is there more to it than that?
