Many people expect the answer to be: because the evidence is strong, because Christianity makes sense, because the Church says so, or because faith will improve your life.

But none of these things give faith.

The Bible gives a deeper answer, with two parts.

It says you should believe in Jesus because God tells you to. At the beginning of Mark’s Gospel Jesus says:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

But this very faith that God commands is given to you as a supernatural gift:

⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

And so you cannot reason yourself into faith. Here’s some examples of what that means:

• You don’t establish by reason that the Bible is true, and then decide to trust the God who speaks it.
• Arguments against evolution won’t give you trust that the Bible is true and Jesus died for you. These things are certainly interesting. And they can be encouraging for someone who already has faith. But none of them create faith, nor even sustain faith.

Faith is not something you manufacture inside yourself. It is something God creates as he shows you Christ crucified for your sins. You only believe in Jesus because God gives faith through the Word of Christ. The Bible is unambiguous about this:

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

This isn’t saying that the word of Christ is the source of information that we use to reason our way into faith and make a decision to believe. Instead, the word of Christ is the way that God gives Christ’s work on the cross to us:

¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21)

The word gives you Christ himself. On the cross Christ took your sin and gave you his righteousness. Through God’s Word he gives that to you personally. Part of that giving is to create faith within you to believe it.

So the real answer is not “try harder to believe”

The answer is: hear Christ. Look to Christ crucified. Receive what God is giving you there.

That is why the Bible does not appeal to your reason to argue you into faith. It points you outward to Christ, and to the Word and Sacraments through which he gives himself to you.

If you live near Greater Manchester, come and receive God’s means of grace at Manchester Lutheran Church every Sunday. Join us at 10:45am for coffee and 11:00am for the service: https://mcrlt.ch/sundays/

If you live outside Greater Manchester, you can receive God’s means of grace online with the Confessional Lutheran Church every Wednesday at 6:00pm: https://lutheran.ch/online-service/