By Wendy Wood
Years ago as I was parenting very young children, I read an article by Tedd Tripp called “A Child’s Call to Faith”. Tripp’s goal in the article was to help parents understand the difference between their children having head knowledge and assent to the truth of God and His word, compared to a salvific trusting in God. The distinction between knowing, believing (assenting) and trusting is huge, though often mistaken. Understanding where we, and our children, fall on this spectrum is crucial! It is the difference between spending eternity with God or apart from Him. While we don’t know our own hearts perfectly, or other people’s hearts perfectly, examining the fruit of a person’s life will give insight to the depth of their knowing, believing, or trusting God.
Everyone who comes to faith in Christ must have knowledge. A believer places their trust and hope in a Person. Knowledge about God, His attributes, His purpose in all things to bring about His glory, His plan for salvation through Christ are essential truths that must be known. Before a person can believe and trust in Christ as Lord and Savior, he must that he is a sinner, and he must know that Christ lived a perfect life, was fully human and fully God, and was the atonement for sins on the cross that satisfied God’s wrath against us sinners for all who would repent and follow Him. Our job as parents is to continue to teach and provide knowledge of God through His word.
Our children need to know more about God. They need to learn about God’s sovereignty and providence over all His creation. They need to know how God’s holiness sets Him apart from all other beings and that His moral perfection is the very essence of His wrath and His grace. God describes Himself in scripture and it is our job as parents to give our children a high view of Him. In the midst of difficult circumstances everyone needs to be reminded (or taught) about how great God is. Knowledge of Christ and His redemptive work is also essential to teach. Christ, as the exact imprint of God, gives us a clearer view of God’s compassion and judgment on sin. Knowledge must precede faith. Faith is not to be in the absence of truth. We place our faith in God.
The Pharisees are a good example of people who stopped at knowledge. The Pharisees were experts in the law. They knew all of God’s law from the Old Testament and knit-picked every single one. In Matthew 23 Jesus issues His seven ‘woes’ to the Pharisees. Each ‘woe to you’ is about how they knew the law, but didn’t love God or others. Knowledge was not enough for faith. They focused on minutiae and ignored the larger Truth about God’s attributes and purpose.
In our children, this head knowledge might show up as a compliant child or teen. Children who grow up in the church learn the behaviors and right answers to church questions. They may gladly come to church or life group and be known as a “good kid” and yet not have a saving faith. In our desperate desire for our children to be saved, we can rush into getting them to “pray a prayer of salvation” at a young age and cling to that. One way to think about this is, a person can study space. They can learn all about the planets and their atmospheres. They can study the moons around each planet and learn about gravitational pulls and why each planet has a different number of moons. They might study asteroids and comets and learn the names and trajectories of each one. Yet all this knowledge, all these “right answers” does not make them astronauts. Head knowledge is never enough to make someone a true Christian either. Knowledge is a necessary component of faith, but on its own, it does not produce salvation.
Believing is one more step down the road to saving faith. Believing is giving assent to the knowledge. Webster’s dictionary defines assent as “to agree to or approve of something (such as an idea or suggestion) especially after thoughtful consideration : Concur”. Where knowledge can say “I know that Jesus is the person Christians believe died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins”, someone who believes that truth would say “I am persuaded that Christ died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins”. Where some might reject the knowledge outright and say “I don’t believe that at all, it’s just a fictitious story”, a person who gives assent to this truth can approve and agree with what Christ has done. This is still not saving faith.
The demons believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that He was sent into the world to be the Savior for all who would trust in Him. In Mark 5 Jesus comes to the land of the Gerasenes and comes to a man who lives among the tombs. As Jesus approaches this man, the demons cry out with a loud voice “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (Mark 5:7). The demons know who Jesus is! They address Jesus as the Son of the Most High God showing their belief in Jesus’ power and deity. These demons know that Jesus can cast them out of the man they are dwelling in and are begging Jesus not to do that. A few verses later the demons say, “Send us to the pigs, let us enter them’ (Mark 5:11). The demons have given thoughtful consideration to Jesus and agree that He is truly God. Yet, they do not have salvation. The demons will spend eternity separated from God in hell because they do not have saving faith.
Because our children grow up hearing their parents affirm these truths, they may readily agree that Jesus is the Savior of the world and be able to see the difference in other’s lives who are truly redeemed and transformed into Christlikeness. They will pray and ask God to do them favors, as the demons did in the story of Mark 5. They will want the benefits of being a child of God without the sacrifice and commitment necessary to be a follower of Christ. They may be confused as to why the fruit of their life is still producing anxiety, frustration, and broken relationships. They may be confused about why they keep struggling with anger and feel defeated by the on-going, repetitive sins in their lives. They will by trying really hard to get biblical principles to “work for them” but not have the Holy Spirit indwelling them to produce genuine fruit. John Piper says, “But being persuaded that Christ and his promises are factual is not by itself saving faith. That is why some professing Christians will be shocked at the last day, when they hear him say, “I never knew you,” even though they protest that he is “Lord, Lord”. Believing that Christ and his promises are true, based on a testimony, is a necessary part of faith. But it is not sufficient to turn faith into saving faith” (Future Grace, page 199). This person is not truly in a relationship with God.
Saving faith comes when a person apprehends the truths about Christ in a different way. Saving faith is a genuine trusting of the Lord where who God is and what He is for us in Christ changes the way we live every moment of every day. John Piper is again helpful in explaining this truth. “This different way is what [Charles] Hodge calls a ‘spiritual apprehension of truth’. He says, ‘It is a faith which rests upon the manifestation of the Holy Spirit of the excellence, beauty, and suitableness of the truth… It arises from a spiritual apprehension of the truth, or from the testimony of the Spirit with and by the truth of our hearts’” (Future Grace page 199). When a person has saving faith in God, God is treasured, savored, and delighted in.
Picture the parable of the hidden treasure from Matthew 13. When a person has the knowledge and belief of who Christ is, and is willing to sell all he has and pursue Christ alone, he has truly tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord through the Holy Spirit enlightening the eyes of his heart. This love of God, this delighting in Him, comes from the Holy Spirit and produces the fruit of Spirit in a life that is unmistakable as saving faith. The fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control replace the fruit of anxiety, frustration, broken relationships, and fear. “Another way to say it would be that, in all the acts of saving faith, the Holy Spirit enables us not just to perceive and affirm factual truth, but also to apprehend and embrace spiritual beauty. It is the ‘embracing of spiritual beauty’ that is the essential core of saving faith. This is what I mean by ‘being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.’ Spiritual beauty is the beauty of God diffused in all his words and works - especially in the saving work of his Son. Embracing this, or delighting in it, or being satisfied with it, is the heart of saving faith” (John Piper, Future Grace page 205). Apprehending and embracing is the evidence of a new heart and a new creation.
A child who knows, believes, and trusts (and delights) in God is a joy to every parent. There may be ups and downs along the journey of parenting, but there is a genuine desire to surrender their will to God’s will, a deep repentance for sin, a love of God’s word and enjoyment of spending time with Him. John Piper calls this “seeing and savoring” Christ. As our children see the truth laid out for them in scripture and as the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to see and their ears to hear, they see God as beautiful. As they see the beauty of His nature and understand His works at a greater depth, they savor the love, mercy, grace, and holiness of God more and more.
Picture yourself sitting down to your favorite meal. As you take a bite of your favorite dish you sit back, close your eyes, and experience all the details of the texture and flavors. You take time to think about how much you love this meal and even tell the cook how great it is. That is what savoring God should be. We should read His word and sit back, taking our time to appreciate how loving, compassionate, and merciful God is. We should take time to think about all the blessings He has given us in Christ and then exclaim to God how great He is in praise and worship. Giving voice to that enjoyment in prayer and praise grows our delight even more. The evidence of saving faith is the treasuring of Christ that transforms the follower of Christ from one degree of glory to the next (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Here is an analogy that I often use to explain this concept.
Nick Wallenda is a professional and famous tightrope walker. He has walked across tightropes over the Grand Canyon and Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua without a safety net below him. In 2012, Wallenda arrived at Niagara Falls on June 15, and there was a huge crowd waiting to watch him work. Picture themself in the crowd. As the crowd watches the tightrope being laid out across the falls and secured carefully on the ends, what are they thinking? They watch Wallenda walk across the tightrope and easily cross Niagara Falls 1,800 feet above ground. As he comes to the end of the rope and safely gets down, they KNOW he can walk across a tightrope.
Then, Wallenda asks the crowd, “Do you think I can walk across the rope while pushing a wheelbarrow?” The crowd is cheers and screams “yes”. The crowd is in agreement that Wallenda can do it and enthusiastically wants to see it. Wallenda gets up on the tightrope with the wheelbarrow and carefully walks safely across again. There are no wobbles or moments of doubt. The crowd now BELIEVES Wallenda is the greatest tightrope walker of all time.
For his third pass across the falls, Wallenda asks the crowd, “Who thinks I can go across pushing the wheelbarrow while a person rides inside it?” The crowd all cheers and replies “yes, we believe you can do it!”. Nick Wallenda then points at you and says “get in and I’ll push you across”. What would you do? Do you get in the wheelbarrow or think ‘that’s fine for other people but there’s no way I’m risking my life for that!’.
That is the level of TRUST. Someone who knows the facts and gives assent to the truth is not really trusting until they are ready to give up their way of life for the truth. Trust changes the way we live. When we are trusting (seeing and savoring) Christ, we live in surrender and obedience to Him.
Jesus said “If you love me, you will obey my commands” (John 14:15). Treasuring Christ, seeing him as beautiful, glorious, and delighting in Him, leads us to want to please Him and live wholeheartedly for Him. Trusting involves action and obedience.