Can you have faith in Jesus and still not be a Christian, still be someone who dies and goes to hell? You may be thinking, "Well, of course not." But actually I would say the answer is yes. This all hinges on what you mean by faith.

Oftentimes in Christian circles we talk about faith like it's some incredibly special type of thing, like it's, even sadly, believing in spite of evidence, which it's not. Biblically speaking, faith is active trust in what you have good reason to believe is true. So there are people who can exhibit trust in Jesus who will still die and go to hell.

You might be thinking still, "Well, how can that be?" Well, let me give you some real world examples. You could trust Jesus to save you even if you believe he didn't rise from the dead. You could trust in him for salvation even if you think he's still in a tomb. Now, does that make much sense? No, it doesn't, but nonetheless, you could. But that would not be saving faith. You would be denying a core component of the gospel, namely that Jesus died, and three days later, that he rose from the dead. So you could have a trust that is not sustainable based on Biblical evidence.

You could also trust that Jesus will save you from your sins even if you don't repent of your sins. You could look at this like Jesus is my add-on. So I have my beliefs, I have my religion, I have my practices in my life, and I'm going to believe that Jesus is going to save me, but I don't need to repent. Well, Biblically speaking, someone who has that type of perspective doesn't actually have saving faith. They are exhibiting a faith in Jesus, that is true; they are trusting in Jesus, but the type of faith they're exhibiting is not saving faith. So if someone has not repented of their sin, they don't have saving faith.

Here's another example, you could trust that Jesus saves you so that you will become wealthy. This is actually taught today, this is the prosperity gospel, where Jesus doesn't want you to be poor. So what often happens is, people will place their trust in this idea of Jesus, in the Jesus that the prosperity gospel teaches, so that they will get money. I would say that that motivation is so skewed Biblically that those people oftentimes do not have saving faith, as sad as that is.

Now, in all three of these examples we've looked at, people had a faith in Jesus, they exhibited a trust in Jesus. But the problem is that Biblically speaking, when we look at the descriptors of what saving faith looks like, none of these people had saving faith.

You may be saying, "Well, this sounds really harsh. How can you say someone doesn't have saving faith?" It's not up to me to say. I'm not the judge here. But I can reflect and repeat what Scripture says. Scripture doesn't aim to give anyone assurance of salvation if they aren't living in the way and having the type of faith that Scripture commends.

Jesus says, "If you love me, you'll follow my commands." One of the ways we are told in 1 John that we have assurance of salvation is by examining our life and our motivations, and how we live, and our thoughts and our desires, and things like that. So if you don't pass those Biblical tests, the Bible doesn't aim to give you assurance of salvation.

Now, I think the Bible does aim to give the Christian assurance of salvation. And there are many ways it does that, and we'll look at that in the future. My goal today is not to scare anyone, it's not to make you think, "Oh, well maybe I'm not saved. I could have faith in Jesus and still not be saved." That's not my point. My point is that there is a type of trust in Jesus that is not supported Biblically and is not a saving type of trust. It's not a saving type of faith.

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