Apostolics of Southwest Missouri
Every doctrine we hold as Apostolic Pentecostal believers rests upon a single foundation stone: faith. Before a soul can repent, before the waters of baptism can wash away sin, before the Holy Ghost can fill an earthen vessel with power, there must first be faith. Faith is not a peripheral topic for the mature believer to consider after the fundamentals are settled — faith is itself the first fundamental, the door through which every other grace of God must enter.
Without faith it is impossible to please him. Hebrews 11:6, KJV
Not difficult. Not unlikely. Impossible. Over the next several weeks we are building a solid biblical foundation concerning the fundamentals of faith. Tonight we ask the most basic of all questions: what is faith? We cannot build a house of faith without first understanding what the building material actually is — and we reject the modern reduction of faith to a single mental transaction, because Scripture takes faith more seriously than that. Let us turn to the Word of God and let it define its own terms.
Point One
The Definition and Nature of Faith
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1, KJV
Notice the two key words: substance and evidence. The Greek word translated “substance” is hupostasis — an underlying foundation, a real and concrete essence standing beneath something. Faith is not wishful thinking dressed in religious language. It has weight, it has reality, it stands under the promises of God the way a foundation stands under a house. Faith, then, is the present-tense reality of a future-tense promise.
The second word, “evidence,” translates the Greek elegchos, a courtroom term meaning proof or conviction. This is precisely why Paul could write, “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). The believer does not wait to see the answer before believing; the believer believes, and the believing itself becomes the proof sustaining us until the manifestation appears.
Faith Is a Different Kind of Evidence
A common misunderstanding is that faith means believing in spite of all evidence, a blind leap into the dark. This is not the biblical picture. Faith is itself evidence — the strongest kind, because it rests upon the character and spoken word of God rather than changeable circumstances. Abraham, considering his own body “now dead” and Sarah’s womb equally dead, “staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith” (Romans 4:19–21). He did not deny the natural facts — he simply believed God’s word carried more weight than those facts.
This matters for our people, many of whom face sickness, financial hardship, or spiritual battles that seem, by every natural measure, unwinnable. Faith does not ask us to pretend the circumstance does not exist. Faith asks us to believe that God’s word about the circumstance is more true, more real, and more final than the circumstance itself.
Faith is not one virtue among many that God appreciates — it is the currency of the entire relationship between God and man. No amount of ritual or religious activity performed apart from faith can please God, because faith is the only response that properly honors who He is: a God who is, and who rewards those who diligently seek Him.
Point Two
The Source of Faith
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17, KJV
This single verse should shape everything about how a local church approaches its services, its preaching, and its personal devotions. Faith is not manufactured by human willpower or generated by positive thinking. Faith comes by hearing — specifically, hearing the word of God. This is why preaching and teaching are never optional in the Apostolic church; every time the Word is faithfully preached, faith is being deposited into the hearing of the congregation, whether or not the hearer immediately perceives it.
The Greek word rendered “word” here is rhema, a spoken utterance applied to a specific situation, distinguished from logos, the whole body of divine revelation. This is precisely what happens when the man or woman of God preaches under the anointing — the written logos becomes, in that moment, a rhema, a now-word spoken directly to the needs of the people in the pews. If faith comes by hearing, then personal engagement with Scripture must be a daily discipline, not an occasional afterthought — faith is like a muscle fed by a very specific diet, strengthened only by continual feeding upon the Word of God.
Pattern — The Household of Cornelius
We see this principle in Acts 10, where Cornelius and his household gathered specifically to hear the word God commanded Peter to speak. As Peter preached Christ to them, “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word” (Acts 10:44). The word was preached, faith arose in the hearers, and the Holy Ghost fell upon them in response to that faith. This same pattern holds true today — when the Word concerning salvation, healing, or deliverance is faithfully preached and truly heard, faith rises in the sincere listener, and God is faithful to respond with manifest power.
Point Three
The Object of Faith
It is possible to have a great deal of religious feeling that is misdirected because its object is wrong. Faith, biblically defined, is never faith in faith itself, nor faith in a religious system, nor even faith in one’s own sincerity. Biblical faith always has a specific object: the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. John 14:1, KJV
Jesus places faith in Himself on the same plane as faith in the Father, because Jesus Christ is Himself the fullness of the Godhead bodily manifest in flesh. There is no faith in the abstract “God” that bypasses Jesus Christ — “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). This is why, throughout the book of Acts, faith and the name of Jesus are so tightly bound together: when Peter healed the lame man at the gate called Beautiful, he declared it was “his name through faith in his name” that made the man strong (Acts 3:16).
Faith’s object is not our own emotional state, however sincere. Faith rests upon the objective, historical, accomplished work of Jesus Christ — His death, burial, resurrection, and present exalted lordship — not upon the shifting weather of human emotion. Faith looks outward and upward to a finished, historical, and living Christ, not inward to the fluctuating condition of one’s own heart.
Point Four
The Fruit and Evidence of Faith
We come now to a point that must be handled carefully, because it distinguishes genuine Apostolic faith from the shallow “faith alone, apart from any obedience” teaching so common in contemporary Christianity.
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. James 2:17, KJV
James is not contradicting Paul’s teaching on justification by faith; he is completing it. Paul insists we are not saved by the merit of our works. James insists that genuine faith always, necessarily, produces works of obedience — “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?” (James 2:20–22).
Why This Matters for the Fundamentals of Faith
We do not teach that a person is saved by the mere performance of repentance, baptism, and Spirit infilling as dead religious rituals detached from faith. Neither do we teach that a person is saved by a single mental assent that requires no further response of obedience. Genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will always, inevitably, express itself in obedience to His commands — and the great New Testament pattern of that obedience is repentance, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38).
Jesus taught that genuine faith is not passive but active, reaching out and laying hold of the promises of God: “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). And the prophet declares, “The just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4) — a phrase quoted three times in the New Testament, showing how central this truth is to the whole of the Gospel. It is not merely that the just are declared righteous by faith at a single point in time; the just live, continually, moment by moment, by faith.