FAITH vs. KNOWLEDGE

(A Thread)

It is already clear that for one to be able to be in contact with God i.e. the whole religious (if you may) spiritual experience, faith is the basis.
It’s the foundation but is it all there is?

Hebrews 11:6 is often quoted and it is taught generally that faith pleases God but look again! that’s not what the verse says; it rather points out that with faith pleasing God is made possible.
What does this mean?

It is one thing to say “Salt itself is an interesting food” and another to say “without salt it is impossible to make an interesting food”.
Do you get it now?
It speaks of not faith itself being the pleasure, but it being what makes you & your service pleasurable to God.

This therefore means that if a person has faith and does nothing with it, it profits them nothing.
Merely believing it would rain yet going out without an umbrella is pointless.
E.W. Kenyon calls it “Mental assent”: you agree it is true but it has no effect on your life.

And just as well on the other hand, if one does everything in service but faith is lacking, not only will the service not be pleasurable to God, but sooner or later they’d find it was a waste of time too.

So then what it says is that faith helps you please God.

Why? (And this is basic)
Because you can’t serve or maintain a relationship with what you don’t think exists or is relatable; and hence Hebrews 11:6 states that you must believe God is (exists) and God is a rewarder of those that seek him (relationship).

That being said, it is clear that to deal with God everything must begin with faith.

But Faith itself is of two levels or forms:
• The Primary faith which we call “belief” and
• The higher form of faith called “knowledge”.

The thing however is that most times when people talk about faith they are talking about the primary level i.e. BELIEF.
Belief is powerful because it forms the core basis of every man. I dare say everything we know (including about ourselves) starts out here.

Everyone is a believer of something even the things we think we know for sure start out as belief:

You board an Airplane and you don’t know the intelligence and emotional/mental status of the pilot sometimes even his name, but you believe he’s equipped to take you safely.

Even from birth:

You had no knowledge the day of your naming, and before you learned to read your birth certificate you had to grow trusting that the name you were called was really what your parents gave.

You might think this is a silly illustration but I have a close friend who bears the name “Leading”, he grew with it, but what his parent had originally given was “Lyndon” the person who wrote on his certificate made the mistake, and he is Leading now.

What do you know for certain without the help of faith?

The atheists who say creation story is false and that there is no God because they can’t see Him were themselves not present to witness Evolution.

Most of them have never had the opportunity to examine any fossils for themselves. So they laugh at the believer for receiving Creation account at hearsay whilst they themselves received Evolution the exact same way.

They believe that there’s a planet named Jupiter, they’ve read it in a book but have never been there. Some scientist may have observed it but not them; yet they laugh at you with just at much proof of Heaven as you believe Jesus Christ came from there too, like you also read.

I could go on and show how virtually everything we hold dear and wholeheartedly accept is rooted in a belief one way or the other i.e. the primary faith.

And this primary faith (in Christ) is enough for a person to receive salvation. For the simple reason that acting on a belief no matter how weak the conviction, is enough to gain results on a level.

What I mean is If I wasn’t so sure a business deal would pay, yet believed enough (with fear) to put in capital and it happened to be a good deal, I would get my full profit.
No one cares about my fears because it didn’t stop me.

This simple faith, everyone has it and God just requires it to be used on Christ to receive His salvation (the whole package) just as we’ve already used it on everything else in life.

I mean you grew up believing the adults who raised you were your parents, did you see them at your birth?
You had no knowledge then to be first-hand certain.
Even if they tell you, you didn’t see for yourself. The possibility of falsehood arising shows it’s based on Simple faith.

But simple faith is not all there is, there’s a higher form of faith called KNOWLEDGE.

Unlike simple faith that merely has the “what” of life, knowledge has/seeks to gain the “how” & “why” of life.

So if you were invited to invest in a business, you may start out just hearing what it is about. But it will be foolhardy to have spent time in it and haven’t begun to understand why it will work, and the systems that keep it in place.

Even in Christianity, after people were encouraged to believe the gospel, you never find the Apostle Paul (for instance) asking Christians to believe, but to know: using many different expression.

Apostle Peter also:

Add to your faith, goodness and add to that knowledge:

“Don’t stay at simple faith”.
Even if it’s mustard seed it will yield results but why be the guy with the mustard seed when you can be more.

In the entire Holy Bible (KJV) the word “know” in all its various forms & uses is present 1291 times and “believe” just 280 times.

This outta say something.

Fun fact: The name Jesus Christ in all the varied uses (including “Jesus”“Christ”) is present more times than any other.

As proof that you ought to move from basic faith to knowledge, even Jesus was displeased when His disciples who clearly had believed in Him, and had been with Him, failed to come into that deeper knowledge of Him.

Time won’t permit to list all the pertaining texts proving the importance of receiving knowledge along with the simple faith.
How knowledge was a thing of joy & gratitude for the apostles to have and for all to gain.

Hello! They are called believers because they already believe.
That’s what we do for a living (literally). But to show that knowledge just like simple faith is necessary to enable your service be pleasurable.

Why the distinction?

While simple faith is enough to get one saved, if one remains there they are susceptible to the deception of the enemy. When the hard questions of life come, simple belief will need a resting platform.

Over the years, countless heresies have crept into the church and some of them sounding so close to truth that one might miss it.
For instance mystifying Christ and denying His humanity or humanizing Him and denying His divinity.
Both heresy!

There was also the Gnostic teaching that sounded like Christianity but wasn’t: teaching that salvation was gained by an esoteric knowledge (light) of the soul that had no effect on the body and it’s deeds. Heresy!

Early believers (just like us) had a lot of these to combat and many texts of scripture that we’ve held as contextual formulas today were actually responses to counter such heretical beliefs, eg 1 John chapter 1 against Gnosticism.

Romans 6 was aimed at tackling the heretical lifestyle of LICENTIOUSNESS and
Romans 7 dealt with the lifestyle of LEGALISM, both negative extremes of Christian living side by side. Romans 8 victorious living.

So then Simple faith will get you in but not keep your feet firmly established. But knowledge will keep you grounded, different flying views will never sway you.

However both simple belief that saves & knowledge that settles are components of the entire Christian Faith journey.

But not only does knowledge establish you, it is also a plus tool in witnessing.
Have you ever seen a person giving a sales pitch with a firm knowledge of what they’re selling?
Their face is bright with confidence.

And such don’t just belief (a blind faith as some call it) that Jesus is the Son of God, they know (have learned & are learning) how God orchestrated life and creation to prove the truth.

They can bring out the gospel message from the twelve signs of the Zodiac (which is not about you), from imitations in the Quaran, Greek Literature against them because you can do nothing against the truth but only for the truth.
You can’t hide Jesus the Light.

Such can see Christ in science, the study of the WORK of God, consistent just as in the Bible, the WORD of God.

Paul was so filled with the knowledge of Christ, that when he was on Mars hill facing people who had never heard of Jesus, he used a Greek poem to preach Christ.

Yet there is no end to knowing Christ, nobody has even the tiniest fraction of all there is to know of God & Christ. But as we grow we get better & firmer and are not blown in the wind.

You won’t start out as a believer having knowledge, but simple faith. So “I don’t understand much” should not be a hinderance to receiving Christ. We grow into maturity in life, not before we’re born (so with being born again).

But knowledge in faith comes by being immersed in the word of Life. It’s only when you’re buried in it that you’d see Christ in everything, in your experiences too.
If you try seek knowledge in anything else you would be lost.

Of course in the practice of the Word too. Everything you learn, you learn by the word including how to receive the Holy Spirit & recognize His leadings & His teachings.

Evidently people love to stay over at simple faith with God because it seems non challenging and safe at first; because they’ve been limited in defining “Faith” but the real relationship is in knowledge not belief.

People often use this statement “Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard...” to express faith, but that’s an Old Testament state, an Isaiah quote fulfilled in the New Testament. Scripture says now we know...

If your relationship with your spouse is “belief” then you married them too early, for even Adam “knew” his wife Eve...lol
Though you started out believing you know your family now; who they are, what they can do.

Experience in relationship, grows and strengthens your knowledge.
What you have learnt in your walk with God builds your simple faith into knowledge.

So what am I saying in essence (because if you leave me I’d go on)?

Come over into Faith:
Faith is of two stages: If you have BELIEVED simply (which is enough to save you), it’s time to grow in KNOWLEDGE which will establish you.

Wow! you made it to the end.
God bless you!