Faith is of Two Kinds: Nominal and Real

The nominal faith is faith that accepts what it is told and can quote text after text to prove it. It’s amazing how nominal faith and nominal belief can weave these texts into garments, cloaks and curtains for the Church.

But there is another kind of faith: it is faith that depends upon the character of God. You will remember that the Scripture does not say, “Abraham believed the text, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” It says, “Abraham believed God” (Romans 4:3). It was not what Abraham believed, it was who Abraham believed that counted. Abraham believed God, and the man of true faith believes God and his faith rests on the character of God. The man who has real faith rather than nominal faith has found a right answer to the question, “What is God like?” There is no question more important. The man of true faith has found an answer to that question by revelation and illumination.

The difficulty with the Church now—even the Bible-believing Church—is that we stop with revelation. But revelation is not enough. Revelation is God’s given Word. It’s an objective thing, not subjective; it’s external, not internal. It is God’s revelation of truth. A man may believe that and believe it soundly and hold it to be truth. And yet he will have only an objective revelation of truth that has been objectively revealed.

  

Illumination

There is another way to find an answer to the question, “What is God like?” and that is by illumination. The man of real faith believes the Word, but it has been illuminated so that he knows what the Word means. That doesn’t mean that he’s a better Bible teacher. But it means that he has had what the Quakers call “an opening.” His heart has been opened to the Word. The given revelation is a means toward an end, and God is the end, not the text itself.

 

That’s why I never fight over a translation and get all worked up and steamed up over it. A text is a means to an end. Now, since there’s plenty of money and the printers will print anything, we’re making the mistake of thinking that if we get the Word said in a different way there’ll be some magic effect in that Word. We think that if it is read in the King James Version that’s OK, but if we get a new version, varying just a little, we have automatically received something new. It doesn’t follow!

The illumination is what matters and the Word of God is a means toward an end, just as roads are means toward destinations. A road is nothing in itself. Nobody ever built a road and fenced it in at both ends and planted posies along it and beautified it and said, “This is a road.” They said, “This is a way, a means toward somewhere.” The Bible is a whole series of highways, all leading toward God. And when the text has been illuminated and the believer of the text knows that God is the end toward which he is moving, then that man has real faith.

--A.W. Tozer