Faith and Allegiance

The Greek word translated faith is “pistis”. The related verb is “pisteuo”. It is often translated as “believe”. In his book called Salvation by Allegiance Alone, Matthew Bates explains that the word “pistis” is much broader than faith, although it sometimes does mean faith. He explains that the pistis has three dimensions.

• intellectual agreement
• proffessed fealty
• enacted loyalty.

Bates says that intellectual agreement with the gospel is not enough. God expects allegiance to Jesus.

I would put it this way. The Greek word for faith included the following elements.

• Intellectual assent to the truth of the gospel
  Jesus is the son of God.
  He died on the cross,
  rose from the dead
  and ascended into the spiritual realms.
  He is now seated at the right hand of the father,
  far above all spiritual authority.
  The person choosing to follow Jesus must believe these facts about Jesus are true. This is belief.

• Trust in the reliability of God
  We decide to trust God
  He can be trusted to do what he says he will do.
  He is good, so he will do good things.
  He has the power to do what he says he will do.

• Transferring allegiance to Jesus
  We are saved by giving our full allegiance to Jesus.
  We renounce all other loyalties,
  to the world and to the spiritual powers of evil.
  We give ourselves to be be subjects of Jesus.

We can give allegiance by declaring, “Jesus is Lord” or “Jesus is King”. This is a bit problematic, because the words “Lord” and “King” do not have much content in the modern world. We also declare our allegiance by baptism. That is why baptism is so important for getting free from the spiritual powers of evil. We are declaring to them that we now belong to Jesus. A person being baptised is renouncing any loyalty to them.