"The truth is that the faith by which alone the elect sinner is justified is a knowing and trusting that renounce works and working for righteousness... The faith that renounces works and working for justification is true faith. Whatever supposed 'faith' insists on working for righteousness is, thereby, exposed as a false faith. No one is justified by a false faith."
-David Engelsma, "Gospel Truth of Justification," p. 190
We have all seen TV shows and movies in which the solution to some tragedy is stated, "Just have faith." That is all the encouragement we are given, without any statement of faith in whom or in what. That is because our humanistic age believes in faith in faith as a form of salvation without God. It is also stated as "just believe in yourself." It is a type of secular religion.
That is not at all the way the word is used in the Bible.
After her brother Lazarus died, Jesus said to his sister Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die" (John 11:25-26). "Believe" here is used as a synonym for "have faith." There is nothing here like "just have faith." Rather, Jesus comforts Martha by telling her to have faith in Him. In other words, her comfort is to come, not from her faith, but from Jesus, the object of her faith.
And that is exactly where modern secular religion fails. By separating faith from its object, secularism posits the power in the commitment of a person's mind, not in the power of one outside that person who has actual authority over events.
Remember the story of Jesus and the storm (Mark 4:35-41): "On that day, when evening had come, He said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.' And leaving the crowd, they took Him with them in the boat, just as He was. And other boats were with Him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. And they woke Him and said to him, 'Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?' And He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?' And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?'"
The disciples were in a small fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee, and a severe storm blew up, threatening to capsize the boat. Jesus, unperturbed, lay sleeping in the back of the boat. The disciples woke Him, pleading for His help. And what was His answer? Just believe in yourselves? Just have faith? No, His response was to command the storm to cease. Why? Because their salvation from impending death was not within themselves. It was only because they believed in Him that they survived that day.
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