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Faith denotes confidence in something or someone, and reliance upon such. A missionary was once struggling in his hut to find a word or phrase for faith in the native language of the locals, but to no avail. While he was yet seeking, one of the natives ran in and sat down in a chair and said. “Oh how good is to rest all my weight in this chair.” The missionary then realized a way to describe faith.

However there are two kinds of faith, qualified and unqualified faith. Everyone lives by faith to some degree, including driving a car on a divided highway, or the food we may purchase, but this is faith that is qualified to certain degree, that is, such as varying degrees of warrant based upon evidence. In this is actually the faith we see in the Bible. It is God who took the initiative to manifests itself before man, from Adams to Abraham to Moses and so forth, and whose faith He attested to, and which then was passed on by others who knew them. This in turn was placed in writing, faith in which resulted in the realization things promised in that word.

Christianity, true Christianity, is not simply the result of men passing on stories, but of God attesting to the veracity of those words, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in those who trust and obey his words.

The church that is the pillar and ground of the truth is called the “Church of the living God,” as it manifests to varying degrees effects that attest to a cause, with obedient believers realizing effects and graces which correspond to the claims of Scripture, and are contingent upon faith and obedience thereto. This includes the often dramatic transformation that results when a contrite sinner repents and places all his confidence in Jesus Christ to save him from his sins, and the many manifestations of His providence done as a result. And which also includes the grace to respond to the negative things in a way as to form better character.

Of course effects of faith and not unique to Christianity, as the flesh has its counterparts, while even the magicians of Egypt duplicated Moses first three miracles, (Ex. 7:11,22; 8:7) but i see the the scope and degree of effects in relation to their cause and means of realizing such as serving to set New Testament Christianity apart.

As regards justification, this is appropriated by God-given faith, when a person yields to God and calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus, (Rm. 10:9,10) salvific faith being reliance upon and confidence in Almighty God, that he can and will have mercy upon the repentant soul who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the divine son of God, that He died for sinners and rose again.(Rm. 4:21-25)

In contrast, those who hold to a gospel of works trust that God will save them on the basis of the merit of their works, thus they trust in a God whose is not so holy as to preclude man from ever becoming worthy of eternal life apart from perfectly keeping the law, or they suppose they do, the needed righteousness of which is never abrogated, (Rm. 8:4) and thus have faith in their own own worthiness of eternal life. (Rm. 10:3) (A variant to this is a class of souls which erroneously believe that God is not so just as to preclude man from saving himself apart from the need for an atonement, specifically that of Christ, but will save them simply because He is merciful, although they usually also trust that their works will help.)

In Biblical salvation, while a response of faith is necessary to be saved, it is not by any merit of the faith response and other works that follow that one is justified, but it is faith which is counted for righteousness, yet a faith that is manifest by works of faith. The danger of the Galatians here was that of assenting to a gospel of works-righteousness, of justification by merit, and by so doing they would have effectively forfeited that which faith in Christ had appropriated.