By grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. . . .

— Ephesians 2:8

The Bible teaches that when Adam and Eve—the parents of all humankind—sinned against God, their human nature became corrupt. And this corruption has been passed along to every generation. This means that we all have a sinful nature and that we all sin.

But Jesus Christ, God’s Son, became human and provided us the remedy for sin, and the Bible states clearly that the remedy must be received through faith. As Paul says, “It is by grace [we] have been saved, through faith”!

Believing that we are sinners and that only Jesus can save us is the faith that brings salvation. And we are responsible to live wholeheartedly for the Lord, doing the good that he has prepared for us to do. In fact, we are eager to do that out of gratitude for all that God has done for us in Christ. We can be tempted, however, to get lazy in our life of faith, so we do well to test whether our faith remains true.

One way to do that is to examine our relationship with God. Throughout the Bible God uses a picture of marriage, in which he is the husband and his people are the bride. When the people’s affections shift from God to other things, God compares that to adultery. So, to test if our faith is genuine, we can ask ourselves if we are faithful in our relationship with God, if God is our deepest joy, and if our deepest love is for the Lord rather than for anyone or anything else.

God, grant us the wisdom and the will to test our faith regularly. May we truly love and be faithful to you in all that we think, say, and do. Amen.