Do You Pisteuō?



This sounds like something you don’t write about in a Christian blog. But you can relax. This page is not going to get flagged by your accountability program!

Pisteuō (πιστεύω) is the greek word which in most English translations of the Bible is given as “believe”. It occurs about 250 times in the New Testament. For example John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

So what?

Here’s why you should care: According to many sources the number of Christians in the world is over 2 billion which represents the majority of people, and yet according to Scripture there won’t be “many” who as John 3:16 puts it “don’t perish”: “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Mat 7:14) That means many of those 2 billion people are deluded, and will realise they were not Christians when it’s too late! Put another way, many people who would call themselves Christians are not really “believing”.  

Kinds of Believing

There are kinds of believing that do not save! Like the many” mentioned in John 2 verses 23 & 24 who “believed in [Jesus’] name when they saw the signs that he was doing but Jesus did not entrust (or believe - pisteuō is the word used here) himself to them,…”

Interesting that word “many”. In the verse before Matthew 7:14 quoted above, it says there are many who try to enter through an easy way (instead of the hard way), and that way leads to destruction.

Scripture tells Christians to test themselves to be sure they are believing: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.” (2 Cor 13:5) From a human perspective that sounds weird! Flesh wants to say “surely if I believe something, I would know whether I believe?” Therein lies the problem. Salvation is a miracle! Being “born of God”, receiving Christ, believing in Jesus are by grace alone through faith alone.  You don’t save yourself. Saying you are a Christian, because you say so is nonsense and theologically implies you have saved yourself. Tragically, that is exactly what is behind the professions of many of the 2 billion professing Christians.

Pisteuō

So pisteuō is an important word to understand. Pronounced as pist-yoo'-o, it means to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing). That is by implication to entrust: - believe, commit (to trust), put trust in.

The word is derived from another greek word, pistis (πίστις - pronounced pis'-tis) which means  persuasion, credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; with constancy in such profession.

John 3:16 is a wonderful verse for those who love Christ, but like anything in Scripture it can get twisted. Many people who know John 3:16, would say they do believe in Jesus like it says. But the kind of "believe" they mean may be the wrong kind. It's more like the kind you mean when you say "I don't believe in Santa". This is an intellectual assent to a fact, without any evidence in their lives of the commitment that follows if you really believe. If you overlay the above definitions of pisteuō onto John 3:16, the kind of believing implied is one in which “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever relies upon Christ for salvation and commits to him should not perish but have eternal life.

Saying it that way makes it a little harder for people to say “sure I believe in Jesus!” Even demons do that! (James 2:19)

The amazing story of the French tightrope walker, Charles Blondin, crossing Niagara Falls is a great illustration of what true faith is.
In June of 1859 he attempted to become the first person to cross a tightrope stretched over a quarter of a mile across the mighty Niagara Falls.

He walked across 160 feet above falls several times, each time with a different daring feat - once in a sack, on stilts, on a bicycle, in the dark, and once he even carried a stove and cooked an omelet! On one occasion though, he asked for the participation of a volunteer. A large crowd gathered and a buzz of excitement ran along both sides of the river bank. The crowd “Oooohed!” and “Aaaaahed!” as Blondin carefully walked across one dangerous step after another -- blindfolded and pushing a wheelbarrow.

Upon reaching the other side, the crowd's applause was louder than the roar of the falls! Blondin suddenly stopped and addressed his audience: "Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?"The crowd enthusiastically shouted, "Yes, yes, yes. You are the greatest tightrope walker in the world. You can do anything!"

"Okay," said Blondin, "Get in the wheelbarrow....."

No-one did!

The story of Charles Blondin paints a real life picture of what faith actually is. The crowd had watched his daring feats. They said they believed, but their actions proved they truly didn't.  James Chapter 1 captures this nicely: “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

It's one thing for us to say we believe in God. It's true faith though when we believe God and put our faith and trust in His Son, Jesus Christ.