To Believe or Just Believe In?

“For they did not believe in God or trust in His deliverance.” Psalm 78:22 (NIV)

Does it make a difference whether you believe in God versus believing God? The Bible says it does. I would say that the majority of the people in the world believe IN God. James 2:19 says “you believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that- and shudder.” For the most part there is no denying in the existing of Creator God. Some atheists believe that there is no God, but just because you don’t believe something does not make it any less true.

But should our belief stop there? Can just believing in God, or Jesus, save us from eternal damnation? The Bible says that just believing in God will not save a person. Simply because the passage above states that even the demons believe in God, and I am certain that they will not be joining the Christians in Heaven to eternally worship God the Father. So what is the next step? Believing God. One must believe that God is truth. His Word is inerrant. “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). When we earnestly seek God, He becomes the master and lord of our lives. We desire to live by His commands, and our lives are changed. Our faith in Him and His will for our lives takes precedent over our own human desires. “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:5-7). So a person who believes in God can still live in willful disobedience to His commands when they do not make Him Lord of their life and desire to live in His ways. Genesis 15 says “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness” (6). When Abraham was given a humanly impossible scenario by God, he still believed what God told him because he knew that “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).


So our challenge as true Christians and Believers of God is this, to not only believe in the existence of God Almighty and His son Jesus, but to make Him Lord of our lives and seek earnestly to live in His will. Only then will our belief be credited as righteousness.