Belief in the New Testament

Belief in the New Testament is a special type of belief. In our Western culture we often use belief as something that we feel. The focus is on us, our internal experience. But in the New Testament the focus is on where we place our faith. The object of our faith is what is important, not the quantity or quality of our believing efforts. Maybe you want to go back through the first five chapters and mark in whom or what John tells us to believe. You will find that we are to believe, to put our trust in, to rely on Jesus. He is the object of our faith.

Think of it this way. Faith is like an arrow. It is always being fired. We are always trusting someone or something. Jesus is calling us to aim at Him and trust Him. The target, the endpoint of every trusting arrow is to be Jesus. That is what makes Christianity different from every other religious system of belief. Without Jesus and His life, death, burial and resurrection, Christianity has nothing. It is hallow and empty. Jesus is the beginning, middle and end of every act of faith.