Belief in God Is Not Enough.
Do I truly trust Jesus’ kingdom-first perspective and the priorities implied by it?
Approximately 90% of adults believe in God or some higher being. That number dips only slightly for teenagers at about 85%.
This means virtually every person you interact with believes in God. But we get unsettled when we call to mind the immoral, unethical, harmful people in our newsfeed today and realize that nearly all of them would say they, too, believe in God.
What is going on here? Does belief in God make any attitudinal or behavioral difference? Is it supposed to? Are the routine sinful actions of so many around us simply the pile-up of random one-offs of imperfect “believers-in-God”? Or is something else going on?
Something else is going on.
Here it is: It is one thing to believe in God—it is quite another thing to believe his Son whom he sent.
Here are two sample cases: Mark 1:15 and Matthew 4:17
In Mark 1:15, Jesus’ first public words called for repentance and belief.
What do you suppose he envisioned his hearers doing if they believed him? To repent means to examine your whole life and reconsider your future plans in the light of Jesus’ kingdom words and works. That’s a big deal! The actions of belief are rounded out well in The Amplified Bible: trust in, rely on, and cling to. Jesus is asking us to place our confidence in him to such a degree that we would make him our teacher and that we would become his disciples (students, apprentices) of his kingdom-of-God worldview with all its past, present, and future implications.
In Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ life in Matthew 4, the story moves quickly to the Sermon on the Mount, wherein Jesus teaches things like:
Turn the other cheek.
Love your enemies.
Don’t worry—look at the flowers.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
These and Jesus’ many other ethical teachings raise a simple but important question: Do we have a strong inclination to believe (trust in, rely on, and cling to) his teaching? Do we suppose that what he taught is wise and good for humanity? Further, we could wonder: Is Jesus smart? Do we presume that Jesus has the best insights upon all the important aspects of being human? If your belief in Jesus does not include holding him to be brilliant, you will not likely believe him—believe and practice what he taught.
Jesus’ words, works, and manner of being were all meant to teach. When we sincerely believe the things he taught, it makes a major difference in Christian spirituality. It facilitates moving from mere faith in Jesus to having the faith of Jesus. This was always the direction of his teaching:
Witness and mimic my faith in God…in storms, in public challenges to his person and work, at his arrest, in unfair trials, etc.
So…when Jesus says,
What you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what he wants you to do, Matthew 6:33, ERV
what do you really think and feel?
Do I really believe this? Well, yes, sort of. I know I should. But such belief is challenged afresh in every trial and era of my life. I am realizing this afresh as I prepare for the many unknowns of retirement coming up for me in 2026. I am having to ask myself: Do I truly trust Jesus’ kingdom-first perspective and the priorities implied by it? I am coming to see that as Tom Wright says,
“Whenever God does something new…he asks people to trust him in a new way, to put aside their natural reactions, to listen humbly for a fresh word and to act on it without knowing exactly how it's going to work out.”
In my old age, believing the things Jesus taught and modeled will be something very different than it meant when I first believed at age 19, and then started ministry as a youth pastor within months of that conversion. Eugene Peterson helps me balance belief with the action called for in each moment or era of life:
[Trusting born of belief] does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation.
It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions.
There’s that word confident again. It alerts us to the truth that practicing belief in Jesus’ teaching does not happen merely in our prayer or worship times—though those routines surely help. They allow us to rehearse off the spot so that when we are on the spot in the rest of life we routinely, even if not perfectly, do the right thing.
Here is something to rehearse in the coming days:
The Apostle Paul encouraged Christians in Rome that the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you (Romans 8:11). It is one thing to believe Paul said that. It is better to believe it is true and that it corresponds to something real. It is another thing altogether to believe his insight is livable, something we can practice.
Try it this week: if you feel lonely—call on Paul’s words; if you feel weak—ask God to nourish you with the livable truth of Paul’s words. This practice helps us move from believing in God, believing in the Bible, to putting our trust in both.
Modernity has made it possible to decouple our beliefs from any real investment in what we believe. But it doesn’t change the fact that we pretty much always act on the things we believe. Of course the belief we might act on might be deceptive in the reward it offers.
I don’t remember if it was Bp. Hunter or Dallas Willard, probably a decade ago, that impressed upon me that Jesus was the most brilliant person that ever lived. He is the philosopher that every other philosopher looks up toward, at the top of the mountain (where he gave The Sermon), not trying to compete in the economy of ideas, but offering evidence of his truthfulness through miraculous acts, and through death’s impotence to hold his brilliant mind and sinless soul.