On Affirmations of Faith

The dictionary defines affirmation as, “The assertion that something exists or is true. Something that is affirmed; a statement or proposition that is declared to be true.”

Affirmations imply knowledge, understanding, certainty, and conviction. Affirmations mean very little unless they reach to the point of identification and involvement.

Knowing what one believes and why is a must for every genuine Christian, in fact, it is a biblical mandate. An Affirmation of Faith is no affirmation at all unless God and His truth have become experiential and they have utterly gripped you.

Superficiality and confusion as to what we believe are at the root of moral and spiritual calamity in Christian experience, and of weakness and worldliness in the life and witness of the church.

I know, what is true of many is not representative of the entire Christian community.

Knowing where we ought to be (we learn that in Scripture) and getting there requires us to first take stock of where we currently are. Truth be told, most of us need a dynamic renewal of faith – faith that more nearly squares with biblical faith. With this in mind, we set before ourselves the task to explore the Affirmations of things most surely believed because we are the God’s people, individuals who declare ourselves to be believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Affirmations are More than Phrases

If our exploration of the Affirmations of our Faith is to be realistic and fruitful, we must be certain and clear about our terms.

Affirmations are not just:

•      Theological propositions, though they do come from the Bible and can be supported by many Scripture references.
•       Statements of Christian doctrine, not even the ones declared to be fundamental.
•       Assumptions on which rest the realities of Christian experience.
•       Axioms of Christian experience.
•       Crucial declarations of a Confession of Faith

They are more than declarations of truth.

The Affirmations of Faith must be a matter of living experience. The affirmations of our faith are much more than something conceptual; they must be something experiential. Therefore, the Affirmation of Faith is, the declaration of truth, the acceptance of truth, and a commitment to truth.

There is always a need for an intense awareness of the intentional inherent in the truth. Here is what I mean, it is important to declare and to believe. For example, God sent his Son. That, however, does not say enough, does it? God sent his Son into the world to save sinners. I am in the world and hence the object of God's saving concern. I must make some response to that saving concern in the Son. One can never affirm the truth of the incarnation meaningfully without involving oneself in the divine intention and redemptive potential of the incarnation. To say, I believe that the Word became flesh without yielding my life to the grace and truth of Christ and without being captured by the compassion of that grace for lost sinners would be as hollow as sounding brass.

The Sure Foundation

If the Affirmations of our Faith are to be valid and satisfying, they must rest on the truth of the biblical revelation. The Christian faith is a biblical based faith. The New Testament, which is a confirmation and fulfillment and interpretation of the Old Testament, is an authentic record of God's saving work in Jesus Christ. This means that the realities on which our faith rests are those revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures.

This emphasis on the truth of the biblical revelation is the matured conviction that the Bible is the Word of God, the inspired, infallible, inerrant revelation of God. Can there be any other foundation on which we can base Affirmations having to do with God and His self-disclosure to man, an Affirmation having to do with man created in the image of God, and Affirmations having to do with man's relationship to God through Christ? This is what the Bible is all about. This is the revelation of truth which becomes experiential by faith.

The Affirmations of Faith rest on:

•      Truth that has both authority and relevance.
•      Truth that is both realistic about the plight of lost sinners and God's wrath against sin.
•      Truth which is optimistic about God's power to create the new man in Christ.

The truth of the biblical revelation breathes the reality of the living encounter of God and man through Christ by the Spirit. Therefore, on this foundation we have the authority of truth, the reality of redemptive experience, and the certainty of the living Christ as the Lord of life and death. The Affirmations of Faith find their theological content and meaning in the Word of God and in the Gospel of Grace. We turn to the Bible to find the authoritative source of the true knowledge of God and the authoritative pattern for Christian living. Jesus said in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (see also Psalm. 119: 1-16, 33-40, 89-90, 105).

Faith in God

The Affirmations of Faith are first and foremost the expression of faith. Their validity is the reality of the living God himself. They are not merely a projection of subjective reasoning or aspiration.

Rather, they are convictions confirmed by:

•      Knowing God and His forgiving love.
•      By union with Christ in the power of his resurrection.
•      By finding direction through the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

The centrality and primacy of faith are never to be forgotten.

(1) Affirmations are not propositions to be proved by logic. They are not like the mathematical formula easily demonstrated. They are not established criteria that fit and resolve every problem. They are not spiritual logistics to guarantee moral adequacy and Christian growth. In other words, Affirmations are not a surefire defense against doubt, an unanswerable argument to rout the atheist, or scientific arrangement of data to prove the miracle of answered prayer.

(2) Affirmations of Faith are in every way harmonious with the faith – with awareness of God, with the experience of his forgiveness and discipline, with abiding in Christ, with the consolation of the Spirit, with confidence in the Christian hope. Always the prerequisite is faith, Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Heb. 11:6). Faith – working through love – is the essential ingredient of one’s experience with God. Man must believe in God, he must place our faith or trust in Him, or else he never know God and will be forever separated from God.

The strength of deep convictions about the reality of God in Christ and all the wondrous realities of being hid with Christ in God are determined by the attitude of faith. The words according to your faith (Matt. 9:29) are the principal of applied Christianity, as well as the clue to salvation by grace. Faith is the condition of certainty and understanding about being in Christ and being for Christ in the world.

The demand for faith and the promises of faith are better understood when we remember what faith is. It has been described as saying yes to God. In other words, faith is not negation, but affirmation. Faith is not without knowledge, but goes beyond knowledge, it transcends knowledge. It dares to believe more than is now known and then discovers that what was unknown is real. Its very nature is trusting commitment, not with respect to a guess or an idea, but trust and commitment in response to the eternal God revealed in Christ. And then there is substance and assurance. There is the proof of God and the experience of God's love and the newness of life in Christ. This is the way of faith. The affirmations of faith must be from faith onto faith; they begin with faith and they live by faith.

(3) Faith may not be easy. We must remember that faith may involve intense struggle. What better example from the Scriptures than Job? What better example than C.S. Lewis? Brilliant but atheistic in his youth and university years, searching for joy but not finding it in indulgence or achievement, searching for truth and finally convinced that God was searching for him – his struggle was resolved in the joy of Christ. Since then his books have been a witness to skeptics and a brace for believers.

Faith is not without conflict and pain. Faith is not blind to reality such as evil in the world, hypocrisy in the church, weakness and infidelity in oneself, revolution in society, and change in the whole human situation. But the affirmations of faith focus on him who does not change but who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). The Christian with this kind of faith will not be skeptical, cynical, or in love with the world.

Identification and Commitment

As previously stated, Affirmations call for identification and commitment on the part of the Christian. We identify with what we believe; we commit ourselves to what we believe. This simply emphasizes the fact that Affirmations of Faith are not abstractions. They are personal involvements. Faith without such involvement is spurious and unrealistic. This is uniquely true with respect to Christian faith. The Christian cannot be separated from involvement in living the faith, which in the truest sense means identification with and commitment to Christ.

I have also said that Affirmations of Faith aren’t real until they become experiential. Until then they are just verbal formulations of doctrine or creed, assertions of truth but not affirmations of faith. They come alive when they become personal. They become personal when the Christian is so identified with the spiritual realities involved and so fully committed to them that they affect the whole field of his relationships. The reality of Affirmation is involvement. It captures the Christian, regardless of consequences.

The very meaning of belief gives us a clue as to the necessity for identification and commitment. To believe something is to live by something, to live by what one believes. This declares that faith cannot be separated from the deepest levels of experience. Actually, faith binds one to the object of faith. Our faith in Christ binds us to live under his lordship and to live by his teaching.

Here we see the basic problem confronting the church. There is too much discrepancy between the faith declared and the faith lived. Whereas the nature of faith calls for the closest and strongest correlation between faith affirmed and faith demonstrated. The greatest weakness in the cause of Christ is the lack of correlation between the confession of faith and the character of the Christian. Affirmations of Faith demand a new awareness that there must be affinity between a person and his beliefs.

The affirmations of faith must fit life, adjust to change. We live in a changing world of new ideas, new things, new issues, new dimensions, and new relationships. The new aspects of our human situation do not call for new Affirmations but rather the adaptation of our beliefs to all the radically different issues and questions to which we are related and from which we cannot escape. This can be done, For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12). Our Affirmations must stand the test of life's failures and changes, discoveries and calamities. They must be adequate when all defenses are down and when one is face-to-face with stark reality.

Our Affirmations can never be the static experience of a dying faith. They must be the creative force for continuing quest, a quest for more truth and a striving for greater faith, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2).


Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Christian Standard Bible.