Just believe and you're good to go. Nothing else is required.
That's what our modern pop Christian culture seems to communicate. Much emphasis is placed on the "transaction" of mental assent to a set of religious truths. Accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior. Of course, this is a wonderful thing for people to believe accept and trust in Jesus as God Incarnate who came to reconcile humans to God the Father.
But isn't there more to faith than just checking a box? Isn't there supposed to be a life transformation? Isn't faith more than just a get out of jail free card?
Put yet another way, isn't faith more than just "hell insurance"?
In the letter of James, we read that even the demons have this type of faith. (James 2:19). If faith does nothing in my life, is it useless and dead. (James 2:17).
The late Billy Graham condemned this type of "faith" as easy-believism.
"There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven. But there are many questions that must be answered. It should not be surprising if people believe easily in a God who makes no demands, but this is not the God of the Bible. Satan has cleverly misled people by whispering that they can be saved without being changed, but this is the Devil's lie. To those who say they can belong to Christ without giving anything up is Satan's deception."
To follow Christ isn't easy or popular these days (and never has been) and it usually costs us something. That's taking up your cross and following Him. We weren't promised easy, cush lives here on Earth.
Faith is much, much more than a mental assent to a set of beliefs about Christ. It goes deeper than that. Faith seeps down into the fiber of one's soul.
We are very fond of quoting John 3:16 that we forget that a few verses later in the chapter in John 3:36 that:
"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
Ouch. Well, that doesn't sound like you're good to go by just believing. You have to obey.
In the Greek, belief and obey are synonymous because both are a translation of the word "pisteuo" meaning "to trust, to believe or to obey." Likewise, the Greek word "apeithon" in John 3:36 means to "disobey."
So much for easy believism. You must live the faith and obey Christ, even when it costs you something. Again, it's not easy but it's the way it is. That's not a message that everyone is preaching these days but it's literally the gospel truth.
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