What does it mean to believe in God according to the Bible?

Believing in God is a choice one must make for oneself. No one can make this choice for another. We are all created with free will, and we are individually responsible for our own choice to believe. God created us with free will so that our love for Him would be genuine. The purpose of this life is to know God and to prepare ourselves for eternity with Him in heaven. God desires for all people to choose Him, but unfortunately, not everyone does.

 

Many people are deceived into believing in other gods by our greatest adversary, the devil. Those people unfortunately perish along with him if they do not turn to God. The souls of the damned also live on after this life, in their case to eternal torment in hell, which God had prepared only for the devil, who rebelled against God in heaven.

 

To believe does not mean that one can explain everything, but that one puts one's trust in something. To believe in God is to put one's trust in Him.

 

The first step is to choose to believe in God. To believe that He exists and confess Him as one's Lord and Savior in one's life. Belief in God leads us to repentance from our old life, what we believed before, and what we then placed our trust in. Much of what people without God place their trust in, the Bible describes as sin. Examples of this are trust in salvation through money, love through sex, or belief in salvation through a specific religion.

 

The Bible gives us several examples of sin, which are: lying, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, shameless lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, sexual immorality, and sexual relations with those of the same sex. The Bible actually tells us that no humans are without sin. Everyone has committed sin, and therefore, we are all sinners! That is why Jesus came to take our sin upon Himself. He died on the cross for the sins of all humanity, so that whoever believes in Him and accepts Him is saved. That is, when we turn to Him and make Him the Lord of our lives, the Holy Spirit helps us to be free from sin.

 

Sin is freed from when one recognizes it and acknowledges that what one is doing is not pleasing to God, by then turning away from sin and asking God for forgiveness. This is something every believer must do continuously because we are all humans, and we all make mistakes. We can all fall into sin even after becoming a true Christian, but it is expected that life with God changes one's values and actions so that one does not continue to live in sin.

 

As a confirmation of one's new faith, here comes baptism. The Bible says that whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, and several things happen in baptism.

 

1. One buries one's old life in the watery grave together with the death Jesus endured on the cross for us. And in rising from the watery grave with Jesus, one is clothed in a new identity, one becomes a citizen of the heavenly kingdom - in Christ Jesus!

2. In baptism, one proclaims one's allegiance to Jesus Christ. This is not just for God and other people but also for the devil and his demons, the invisible spiritual forces surrounding us. By proclaiming our faith in God in this way, one disarms the power of the devil and his demons over oneself.

 

In conclusion: Faith is a choice each individual must make for themselves, and through faith and confession in Jesus Christ, one becomes a child of God. Through repentance from sin, one becomes free, and in baptism, one clothes oneself in God's protection.