What does "Faith Alone" mean?
Here's the answer:
"Faith alone" means that God forgives sinners through the belief in Jesus as the one who died for us, and not by what we do or how we behave.
Sometimes we think that God is mad at us when we are bad and happy with us when we are good. The truth is that God loves us all the time, and He does not change His feelings based on what kind of day we are having. And that is a very good thing! God created every single person on earth with the hope that He could have friendship with each person. There is only one problem—sin. You see, God is holy—He never ever sins. He is goodness. And sin (evil) and holy (goodness) cannot be together at the same time. Let me show you an example.
If you walk in to a dark room, it is only dark. If you turn a bright lamp on, the room is only light. You see, a room cannot be both completely dark and completely light at the same time. This is how it is with God. God wants to be friends with a person, but their sin and His holiness cannot mix—so that is a pretty big problem. But guess who fixed the problem?
If you answered "God," you are correct! He wanted friendship with you and me so strongly, He sent His Son Jesus down to earth to live a perfect life (Jesus never committed even one sin) and then to die for our sins on the cross, defeating sin forever! God said that whoever believes in Jesus as our Savior (the one who took the punishment for our sins) shall live forever and can be friends with God! You see, it is by God’s grace through faith alone that we are saved.
God did not say, "Believe and do nice things for people and you will be saved." And He did not say, "Believe and be good and then you will be saved." He simply told us to believe. When we ask God to forgive our sins because we believe that Jesus died for us, God immediately says yes. At that point we are friends with God. As we continue to get to know God better by reading about Him in our Bible, we find that we start to become the people God created us to be. In other words, we become more kind and we want to obey God’s commands. We still mess up from time to time, but thankfully God will forgive us, always loves us, and saves us when we put our faith in Him.
Bible Truth
"God's grace has saved you because of your faith in Christ. Your salvation doesn’t come from anything you do. It is God’s gift. It is not based on anything you have done. No one can brag about earning it" (Ephesians 2:8-9).
"And if they are chosen by grace, then they can’t work for it. If that were true, grace wouldn’t be grace anymore" (Romans 11:6).
