God is not asking you to make a decision for Jesus. Or to choose Christ. Or to think things through and change your opinion.
In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul doesn’t even command people to have faith. Doesn’t present people with a decision to choose faith. Doesn’t even invite people to exercise faith. Anywhere. He just declares what God has done for all people in Christ, and tells us faith comes to us from the outside through hearing that message.
That’s because faith is not something you create in yourself. It’s not a decision you make. It doesn’t arise from your own reasoning, deliberation, or feelings. It’s something given to you as a gift by the Holy Spirit, through the Word of the Gospel.
faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Rom 10:17)
In the Gospel, God isn’t giving you a choice—he’s giving you a gift.
Life is not a big test, for God to see if you will “make the right decision.” Life itself is a gift. And that gift has the purpose of leading to even more gifts for all eternity:
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:7)
Faith is not a decision that creates reality, but a receiving of a reality already created.
In Jesus, God has forgiven your sin, and given you his righteousness—the Bible calls this “justification.”
In Jesus, on the cross, God justified you: he forgave you and gave you his righteousness.
Faith is not something that creates this reality. God’s gifts are objective, they don’t depend on you. Faith is nothing more than reception of what he has already given you.
If justification wasn’t already true and given to you… If the gift was only created as a response to “faith,” something that comes after… then faith would be something more—something different, something else than simply “receiving” what is already true. In that case, faith would be a work, or some kind of positive quality within you.
But that isn’t what faith is at all.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2:8-9)
Justification is God’s gift to you. And so is faith. Not decision, but donation. Not grift, but gift.
The place where you know for sure God gives this gift is church. That’s why there’s opportunities every week to attend in person or, if that’s not possible, online:
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