What is the difference between “believe ON” and “believe IN”? Or is there a difference? Why are these terms different for the same concept? Or are they the same? I guess to most people, they could care less. However, if they have the same meaning then there is a great contradiction here.
If they are different, then there is something here that we haven’t seen before. It’s not a wonder most people don’t study and try to understand the bible for themselves, it takes a bible scholar with a doctorate degree to understand some of it. So people just leave the interpreting to the guys with the credentials and accept what they have to say as God-sent truth.
According to Jesus, Everlasting Life is obtained by keeping the commandments and doing good works. According to Paul, salvation is merely believing and one cannot be saved by good works which we have done, but belief is “accounted for righteousness“. In other words, believing MAKES you righteous, without you having to live righteously. According to Paul, it is “Christ’s” righteousness, that when you believe in him, you take on HIS righteousness.
Jesus says in one of the gospels, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” So in this place it seems that Jesus is agreeing with Paul in that all you have to do is believe. Weather or not he actually said those exact words is a different story. However, I suppose that the only way to actually keep Jesus commandments in the first place is you have to believe in his teachings.
If a person wanted to find out for himself how to be saved just by reading the Bible, he would get pretty confused, because both Paul and Jesus taught exactly opposite concepts. But then you have different pastors, preachers or priests that have different opinions on the subject. What is it, by works of righteousness or just believing?
Another thing. Why did Jesus almost always use the term “everlasting life” and not salvation? I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I can pretty much just guess as good as the next guy. But do the guys with all the credentials have the answers? Don’t they just make educated guesses too?
Do you Know or Do You Just Believe?
What it all comes down to since you don’t have enough information to actually “prove” much one way or the other, is that you have to believe in something to be the truth — you don’t really know for sure. The next guy also has something that he believes to be the truth. But they can’t both be right. One has to be right and the other has to be wrong.
Believing is something that we do when we don’t have enough tangible facts to back something up. Like we say, “I believe in God”, because we’ve never seen him, but something deep inside says that he exists and everything around us tells us that this all couldn’t have happened by accident. That’s all good.
But when it comes to basic concepts that we should know for sure we should not have to just believe. We should know for certain things, because we have it in black and white. It should be written down in no uncertain terms. This is not believing, it is knowing, it is seeing and having certainty. Believing is not knowing and knowing is not believing, they are mutually exclusive.
John the apostle said,
These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life. (1Jn 5:13)
He didn’t say that “ye may believe”, but that “ye may know”. The first verse basically says one has to believe that Jesus is the “Christ” (or Messiah) — first contradiction. Verse 2 says who keeps his commandments are God’s children. Notice that he doesn’t say that keeping the commandments are not a requirement for salvation, but believing Jesus is the Messiah is — second contradiction.
In verses 4 and 5 an overcomer is on who “believes” Jesus is God’s Son. Overcoming is doing something, not merely believing. What this is really saying is that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity — God the Son. Third contradiction.
Verses 7 and 8 are proven forgeries. Here the “corrector” inserts words to make it look like the Bible supports the doctrine of the Trinity — worse than a contradiction, it’s just a plain lie!
I could go through and cover the rest of the verses, but verse 20 is just a lie that sums up the rest. He is basically saying that “his Son Jesus Christ” is God and that we have eternal life because of him.
There are basically 3 untruths here in 1 John 5:
-
- Jesus “Christ” is the Messiah,
- Jesus is God or “God the Son” of the “Trinity”, and
- Jesus is the reason we have eternal life. The reason IS:
- our righteousness,
- our doing the will of God,
- and our works of righteousness.
Jesus declared: “Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free” It is IMPOSSIBLE to know that Jesus was actually the Messiah; it is IMPOSSIBLE to know that Jesus actually died; it is IMPOSSIBLE to know that God actually raised Jesus from the dead. Dishonest men can write anything in an old book that is impossible to prove.
But it IS POSSIBLE to know that your own works are righteous; it IS POSSIBLE to know that you are doing the will of God; it IS POSSIBLE to know you are doing works of righteousness. Those are things that are cemented into your very soul. When you read them you know they are true.
How could it be possible that believing anything be a requirement for “Everlasting Life” OR “Salvation”?
Remember, belief is required to be deceived. Jesus may never have died; God may never have raised him from the dead. Plus, Jesus NEVER made believing in things a requirement for salvation (there are however, many interpolations in the Gospels).
But he DID, very explicitly, say that righteousness, doing the will of God and doing works of righteousness WERE requirements for salvation. Paul said the very opposite. Now, who are you going to believe? Paul or Jesus?
There are in depth articles about these very subjects on this site, backed by facts spoken by Jesus himself. It is very unlikely that John actually wrote these exact words.
Belief vs. Facts
That’s why things are written down. We use documents to prove that we own things; that we were born in a certain place at a certain time; that we are certified to drive a vehicle, etc. It’s the same with the bible. It’s supposed to be a document that proves something with facts. There is supposed to be proof there that documents that we have eternal life — but this is not the case with the bible.
It is not a matter of believing it is a matter of being able to prove it. You need facts based on Truth to be able to prove something. The bible is supposed to be a legal document that proves certain facts. Besides that, it is impossible to know that you have eternal life just from what is written in the Bible.
Forgery
Again, the bible is supposed to be a legal document that proves certain facts. But what happens if men come along and change some of the facts? This happens with our documents today. Men for certain reasons will create false documents, like a passport to make people think that a certain person is from a place he’s not really from. Or he may modify a birth certificate to make it look like the person is older or younger or born in a place he was not really born.
There are many motives why men do these things, but they are almost always dishonest and criminal reasons. So here we have the bible. It is also a document that is supposed to prove a lot of facts about things.
But men have come along through the centuries and changed things, taken things out and inserted things that were never there.
How We Know the Bible has been Tampered With
It has only been in the last 50 years that we have had computers and word processing software to be able to make documents nearly perfect. But hundreds of years ago when computers didn’t exist, men made changes to documents or manuscripts with a pen on a skin or crude paper or even stone or what have you.
The problem is that without the computing power that we have today, men would change some things but other things left unchanged, leaving contradictions and inconsistencies. This is one of the reasons that we know that the bible has been altered. Whenever something is changed in one place it almost invariably leaves an inconsistency or even a contradiction in other places.
What Does ‘Believe on’ Mean?
When a phrase says, “believe ON the name of the son of God“, it is different than, “believe what Jesus taught“. What does it really mean to “believe on the name”? If you think about it, you would find it really hard to define what this phrase actually signifies. But the phrase, “believe what Jesus taught” is very clear. But do they both mean the same thing? Not really.
One infers that you have faith that something that Jesus taught is true and you do those things and live by them. The other means what? What does it mean to “believe on” Jesus? What we have learned from listening to preachers is that it means that all you have to do is believe that Jesus is God and confess to the world that you believe God raised Jesus from the dead and you are “saved” from an eternity of Hell fire when you die. But is that really true?
If you really look at this it is actually a contradiction with what is written in other places in the bible. The two things are literally opposites.
One says only works of righteousness and doing God’s will can get you eternal life and the other says if you must confess that you believe God raised Jesus from the dead to get saved from Hell.
The basic difference is this: if you “believe ON” Jesus, then this means that you rely on him alone to justify you based on nothing at all but the fact that you confess to “believe on” him (but what does that mean?). Outside the Bible, I’ve never read the expression “believe ON”, unless it was someone quoting the Bible.
If you believe IN what Jesus taught, this infers that you accept what he said as truth and you therefore you live and do his teachings and God’s will. The two expressions are very different.
This is What Jesus Said:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. (Mat 7:21)
And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? (Luk 6:46)
When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: (Luk 13:25)
An unbeliever would not call Jesus “Lord, Lord”. Only a Christian would say that to him.
According to Jesus you have “to do God’s will” to enter into the kingdom of heaven”. Obviously, according to Jesus believing alone won’t get one into the kingdom of heaven. There were those who knew of him and believed on him because they said to him, “Lord, Lord”. James, the brother of Jesus, agreed with Jesus,
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? (of course not!) (Jas 2:14)
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. (faith without works can not save you) (Jas 2:17)
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. (Jas 2:19)
Conclusion:
The two things: “believing ON” and “believing IN” (what one says), are really very different. They can’t both be true. Where there is contradiction or inconsistency, that’s how you can tell man has tampered with the bible. So which one is the real Truth and how do you decide which is real and which has been forged?
Next: More Articles 1 | An Ex-Christian’s Letter to God