Faith

Faith 2

I was in Sunday School class early this morning and had the opportunity to discuss Christian maturity with the teacher. As we chatted, we wandered off into the subject of faith.

For the next few posts, I hope to delve a little into the concept of faith, and its real world applications for our lives.

He had told me there are a number of Greek words in the New Testament that are translated “faith” in our English Bible, and I let him know I thought otherwise.

So I came home and did a quick study, using the Blue Letter Bible web site. The following table gives a summary of the New Testament Greek words used when describing our English word “faith”.

Strongs #	Greek	Transliterated	English Equivalent
New Testament (Greek) for “faith”
G571	ἄπιστος	apistos	that believe not, unbelieving, faithless, unbeliever, infidel, thing incredible, which believe not
G1680	ἐλπίς	elpis	hope, faith
G3640	ὀλιγόπιστος	oligopistos	of little faith
G4102	πίστις	pistis	faith, assurance, believe, belief, them that believe, fidelity
G4103	πιστός	pistos	faithful, believe, believing, true, faithfully, believer, sure not tr
G6066	ὀλιγοπιστία	oligopistia	littleness of faith

faith 4

I’m glad he challenged me to look it up and I think we were both sort of correct.

The root word found in each of the above greek words is pistos/pistis, and when checked in that web site I like (see above), both are derived from the Greek word “peíthō”.

Strong’s Definitions

πείθω peíthō, pi’-tho; a primary verb; to convince (by argument, true or false); by analogy, to pacify or conciliate (by other fair means); reflexively or passively, to assent (to evidence or authority), to rely (by inward certainty):—agree, assure, believe, have confidence, be (wax) conflent, make friend, obey, persuade, trust, yield. (Boldened words will be topics for next few blogs)

As our study progresses into each of the greek terms defined above, I would like to explore the concept of faith.

For the short term, I would like to consider the root word peíthō, as it is the most interesting of the greek words above, primarily since it has been the word I have been recently studying.

Watch for my next post – I hope you will AGREE to come visit.

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Thanks again for coming to visit. I hope you found something of interest in this post and would appreciate a comment, to begin a discussion.

2 thoughts on “Faith – Introduction”

I love Blue Letter Bible! I use the the app on my phone daily and the website when I’m on my MacBook.
I read a book recently on Faith that really changed my way of thinking. It was called Lessons on Faith by A. T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner. The author has a interesting style of writing, but it also did come from a different time (1800’s). Here is a short quote from the book.
“Thus it was that “by the word of the Lord” all things were created. He spoke the word only, and it was so. The word spoken, itself, produced the thing. Thus it was in creation. And thus it was in redemption. He healed the sick; He cast out devils; He stilled the tempest; He cleansed the lepers; He raised the dead; He forgave sins–all by His word. In all this, also, “He spoke, and it was done” Ps. 33:9.”
“And so He is the same yesterday and today and forever. Always He is the Creator. And always He does all things by His word only. And always He can do all things by His word, because it is the very characteristic of the word of God that it is possessed of the divine power by which itself accomplishes the thing which is spoken.”
“This is why it is that faith is the knowing that in the word of God there is this power, the expecting the word itself to do the thing spoken and the depending upon that word itself to do that which the word speaks.”
The idea of depending on Gods word to do what it says really changed my experience.
God Bless Brother

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consideringthebibletogether says:

2020-06-29 at 12:11 pm

Blue letter bible is the best. Good thoughts on faith. I love psalm 33:9. Nothing tween the speaking and the doing…

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