The Cause and Effect of Faith

Many people do not differentiate well between the cause and effect of having faith, and often confuse the two. Most of the time the Bible talks about faith, it refers to the effects of faith – not its cause. Faith has one cause (indicated in Mark 11:22-24), which produces a myriad of effects, which the Bible refers to as the fruits of the Spirit. Therefore it is only when a person has faith correctly (causal faith), that he is able to produce the fruits of the Spirit (faith effects).

Now a consequence of the confusion between the cause and effect of faith, is that people try to mimic the effects of faith in order to achieve righteousness. Therefore when God commands people to act righteously, the vast majority try to do so directly, and fail just like the Jews, who tried to mimic the commandments written down in the law of Moses, rather than perform causal faith, to produce its righteous effects. That is what the following scripture means:

Romans 9

30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;
31 but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.
32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone."
33 As it is written:
   "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble
      and a rock that makes them fall,
   and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

One other thing, a lot of people refer to the following scripture for instruction on having causal faith:

Hebrews 11

1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

They are wrong! The above is just one of many faith effects, and trying to mimic it (by performing the above action directly) will not produce other faith effects. The following scripture indicates as much:

Matthew 7

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Therefore directly believing in God and in the hopes of the saints, does not save anyone. What saves a person is causal faith, which produces the above and other faith effects.