“Why is belief a virtue?” A friend struggling with their faith once asked me. “There’s no merit in believing Santa Claus exists.”

In the moment, her question stumped me because she was absolutely right. Believing in something naively  – especially if it turns out to be false – isn’t noble or admirable. It’s pitiable. I think that’s what many people think Christians are doing when we talk about believing in Jesus. But when we discuss our faith, we’re not talking about believing a set of facts about God or the world.

For most of human history, it was a given that the supernatural world existed. 

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder” -James 2:19

Only recently, since the Enlightenment Age of  the 17th and 18th centuries, has that changed. The debate used to center more around whose god was more powerful: who deserved your loyalty. 

Our God is not an impersonal force or a list of facts; He is a person. Three persons to be exact. That’s why I think a more helpful definition is to call faith in the Christian God “believing loyalty,” as Hebrew and Old Testament scholar Dr. Michael Heiser puts it in his book “The Unseen Realm.” He goes on to say that “baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord’s side in the cosmic war between good and evil” (p. 338).

Everyone agrees that loyalty is a virtue. Without it, all relationships – and society with it – would break down. When you “ask Jesus into your heart,” what you’re really doing is promising to be loyal to Him. True conversion is a submittal of your will to God’s, like a knight bowing before his king and pledging to serve him unto death.

But again, this calls for nuance. Blind loyalty, or loyalty to the wrong person, isn’t admirable either. We don’t celebrate loyal Nazi party members for their outstanding character.

That’s where the believing part comes in. In order to make an informed decision about whether or not you want to surrender completely to Jesus, you need to know the character of the person you’re pledging your loyalty to. 

It is important to know the things we confess in creeds, like how Jesus was born of a virgin and lived a sinless life and was fully God and fully human and died on a cross and, mostly importantly, rose from the dead, defeating death and paying for our sins. Those facts are what give Jesus the authority and trustworthiness to be Lord of your life, and they don’t require blind faith: they’re historically well-attested to.

God created you! He sustains your every living moment. You were made in His image. If anyone has claim to your loyalty, it’s Him.

Once you’ve pledged your loyalty, you can rest in the fact that you don’t need to defend a list of facts. In-house fighting over things like the age of the earth and mode of baptism pits the Body against one another and paints us in a bad light to the watching world. These and other apologetic questions are interesting and important, and it’s good to have a firm grasp on the specifics of your faith. There is always more to learn! But when head knowledge takes the place of our relationship with the Living God, we have a problem.  

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul said he “resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). This is pharisee Paul, the man who used to boast in his extensive scriptural knowledge and proper theology. What changed him? A personal relationship.

In “My Utmost For His Highest,” Oswald Chambers says, “Paul was devoted to a Person not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ’s; he saw nothing else; he lived for nothing else.” He believed in Christ’s resurrection, and it moved him to fierce loyalty in the man who had the power to defeat death. May we live in such a way that others would say that about us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie is a writer and editor by trade living in College Station, TX. She enjoys reading, dancing and serving high school girls at her local church.