What Mark 11:22 Really Means
Does Mark 11:22 tells us to have faith in God or to have God’s faith (the faith of God, or the “God-kind of faith”)? Be prepared for some interesting twists and turns in the road as we go on a quest to see what Mark 11:22 means and how it applies to us today. I think that both traditional people and “word of faith” people might find that interpreting Mark 11:22 is a lot harder than it appears at first. The answers will matter a lot. Based on what we find, we could either conclude that faith is a spiritual force that you can use without God’s direct involvement because you’re using His faith, or that any use of “faith” has to depend on God, toward whom your faith is directed. We’ll discuss that more at the end. I could just state my conclusion, but I’d rather show you an example of the process you can go through to solve such questions yourself if you want to take the time. This is the first of several in-depth articles in this book about individual verses. These “one-verse” articles are for people who want deep studies on these verses. You can still receive your healing without reading such articles; I just thought that someone needed to explain these verses because of the different interpretations out there.
There are actually four possibilities that could be declared the winner. (1) Have faith IN God, (2) Have faith OF God, (3) A third meaning that doesn’t match either of those two, (4) The text is so difficult that no firm determination is possible.
So let’s start on our “road trip” to find out what Jesus was exhorting us to do.
What Does Mark 11:22 Say in Different Translations?
The King James Version has the familiar, “And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.” Almost all modern translations agree. (We’ll leave aside the paraphrases, as they won’t help us get to the literal meaning of the Greek. They leave us with someone else’s interpretation of original words that are never known to the reader. We would not tell someone, “Thus-and-such is the definitive meaning because the Message Bible (which should really be called the Message Paraphrase) reads that way and the Message Bible is the Word of God.”) Notably, Young’s Literal Translation is an exception that says, “And Jesus answering saith to them, Have faith of God.”
So by taking some time to read a number of different translations (which is easy to do online), we should be able to reach a conclusion. The score is overwhelmingly in favor of “Have faith in God” to the point that the exception (Young’s Literal Translation) proves the rule. There seems to be little doubt that “Have faith in God” is the intended meaning of Jesus’ words. Do we really need to go any farther?
Before declaring “Have faith in God” the winner right now, we should at least try to investigate the original Greek, given that it is the literal Greek translation that says “Have faith of God.” How will we know for SURE that all these translations are proper based on the original Greek unless we check it out for ourselves? It’s never convincing to take anyone else’s word for anything. But given the preponderance of “Have faith in God” in almost all translations, it would take some serious convincing that that Greek could mean otherwise.
What Does Mark 11:22 Say in the Greek?
Young’s purpose was to show exactly what the literal Greek said without adding any spin to it. Was he onto something that almost all other translators missed, or is there some reason that the other translators were sure that Jesus meant to “have faith IN God” if the literal words were “have faith OF God?” Greek nuances can reveal things that the English reader might not notice. Maybe even English translators might not notice some things, given how they botched the Hebrew in Isaiah 53:4 that should say that Jesus has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains as opposed to saying that He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
So let’s consider the actual Greek for the words “have faith in God” (or “have faith of God.”)
If you just use a brute-force Concordance-based approach, you will find that the words cited are forms of words that would say “have faith God” (echo pistis theos) if you just mashed them together. This does not seem to prove either the “in” side or the “of” side – does it disprove BOTH sides? There is no Greek word for “in” but neither is there a separate Greek word for “of.” We’ve gotten our first indication that this ride might get a little bumpier than we originally thought.
The problem is that using a concordance is not a strong enough method to resolve this kind of issue because it does not show you the precise letters used in each word. For example, the past, present and future tenses of a certain word will all show as the same Greek word when you use a concordance. (To make matters even more interesting, Greek has an Aorist tense with no English equivalent – it indicates only the occurrence of something without regard to a past, present or future tense!) One Greek word could be translated as more than one English word. Greek and English words don’t map one-for-one and the order isn’t always the same either. We’ll have to look to the actual Greek text and the precise forms of the words used if we want more insight, and that will take some more effort.
So a trip to a Greek interlinear Bible or a copy of the original Greek text will be the next step to shed some light on this. We find that the phrase is echete pistin theou when we get precise about the Greek words. The first, echete is the present active imperative of echo, meaning “have” as a command – no big surprise there. The second, pistin, is a derivative of pistis (faith) and the third, theou is the genitive (possessive) form of theos (God). So theou means “of God,” not “in God!”
Whoa. This is a bit of a shocker to anyone who isn’t reading Young’s Literal Translation, which I doubt many people use for bedtime reading due to its hyper-literal wording. The Greek at least appears to mean “Have faith of God” or “Have God’s faith.” We can at least rule out two sometimes-suggested translations, “Have the faith of God” or “Have the God-kind of faith” because the word “the” is not found in the Greek, and the word “kind” is not there either. If Jesus had said, “Have the faith of God,” the Greek would have read echete pistin tou theou instead. Am I sure? Can I test my speculation on this? Yes! The King James translators actually DID translate pistin tou theou into “the faith of God” in Romans 3:3 (tou is a Greek “definite article” that we would translate as the).
However, we have at least determined two things. The word in is not found in the original Greek, and the word used for God (theou) refers to God possessing what came immediately before it, in this case, faith. The word of would be implied. So it now appears that “have faith of God” would be preferred to “have faith in God.”
We have several different ways to test our hypothesis. The first is to check the Greek for ourselves elsewhere where theou, the genitive form of “God” appears with other words and see what we find. Are other words before theou also considered “of God” or “God’s?” The second is to look at passages with a phrase translated “in God” to see whether these match the one in Mark 11:22 or contain different wording. The third is a quick sanity check with an interlinear Bible to see if its author agrees with the conclusion “have faith of God” and the fourth is another quick sanity check where we compare our findings to what other scholars and commentators have found, lest we have been found to have missed something obvious. Once we have done these, we can determine what further steps might be necessary.
How Other Passages Containing the Word Theou Are Translated
Theou appears in so many places that it would be exhausting to list them all. But at least let’s just pick some sections at random and see how the King James translated passages with a word followed by theou or tou theou. We’ll try to pick enough to see if there is a pattern and to see if there are any exceptions to the rule. (Some verses have more than one instance of theou; they are not typos below.)
Matthew 5:3 God’s throne
John 8:47 God’s words
Acts 23:4 God’s high priest
Romans 8:33 God’s elect
Romans 10:3 God’s righteousness
Romans 13:6 God’s ministers
1 Corinthians 2:14 Spirit of God
1 Corinthians 3:9 God’s husbandry
1 Corinthians 3:9 God’s building
1 Corinthians 3:10 grace of God
1 Corinthians 3:16 temple of God
1 Corinthians 3:16 Spirit of God
1 Corinthians 3:17 temple of God
1 Corinthians 3:17 temple of God
1 Corinthians 4:1 mysteries of God
1 Corinthians 4:20 kingdom of God
1 Corinthians 6:9 kingdom of God
1 Corinthians 7:19 commandments of God
1 Corinthians 7:40 Spirit of God
1 Corinthians 10:31 glory of God
1 Corinthians 10:32 church of God
1 Corinthians 11:7 glory of God
1 Corinthians 11:16 churches of God
1 Corinthians 11:22 church of God
1 Corinthians 12:3 Spirit of God
1 Corinthians 14:36 word of God
1 Corinthians 15:9 church of God
1 Corinthians 15:10 grace of God
1 Corinthians 15:10 grace of God
1 Corinthians 15:15 witnesses of God
1 Corinthians 15:34 knowledge of God
1 Corinthians 15:50 kingdom of God
2 Corinthians 1:1 will of God
2 Corinthians 1:1 church of God
2 Corinthians 1:2 grace of God
2 Corinthians 1:19 Son of God
2 Corinthians 2:17 word of God
2 Corinthians 2:17 sight of God
2 Corinthians 4:2 word of God
2 Corinthians 4:2 sight of God
2 Corinthians 4:4 image of God
2 Corinthians 4:6 glory of God
2 Corinthians 5:1 building of God
2 Corinthians 5:18 of God
2 Corinthians 5:21 righteousness of God
2 Corinthians 6:1 grace of God
2 Corinthians 6:4 ministers of God
2 Corinthians 6:7 power of God
2 Corinthians 6:16 temple of God
2 Corinthians 7:12 sight of God
2 Corinthians 8:1 grace of God
2 Corinthians 8:5 will of God
2 Corinthians 9:14 grace of God
2 Corinthians 11:7 gospel of God
2 Corinthians 13:4 power of God
2 Corinthians 13:4 power of God
2 Corinthians 13:14 love of God
Galatians 1:4 will of God
Galatians 1:13 church of God
Galatians 2:21 grace of God
Galatians 3:21 promises of God
Galatians 3:26 children of God
Galatians 4:7 heir of God
Galatians 4:14 angel of God
Galatians 5:21 kingdom of God
Galatians 6:16 Israel of God
Ephesians 1:1 will of God
Ephesians 2:8 gift of God
Ephesians 2:19 household of God
Ephesians 2:22 habitation of God
Ephesians 3:2 grace of God
Ephesians 3:7 grace of God
Ephesians 3:10 wisdom of God
Ephesians 3:19 fullness of God
Ephesians 4:16 Son of God
Ephesians 4:18 life of God
Ephesians 4:30 Spirit of God
Ephesians 5:1 followers of God
Ephesians 5:6 wrath of God
Ephesians 5:21 fear of God
Ephesians 6:6 will of God
Ephesians 6:11 armor of God
Ephesians 6:17 word of God
Titus 1:1 servant of God
Titus 1:1 God’s elect
Okay, that’s enough…we could go on and on with this. We have seen two things here:
1. In our sample, Theou always refers to God’s or of God (which mean the same thing).
2. There are no exceptions in our sample where in God could be considered the correct translation.
So far it looks like we have a conclusive case that “have faith of God” (“have God’s faith”) has to be the literal Greek translation, despite what almost all the English translations say. So we’ve done a complete “180” from our original leaning.
But what if the phrase could have been translated in God somewhere else and we just missed it? Well, let’s test that. Does theou appear in any “in God” verses?
Other Places Where “in God” Appears
Here are some other places where “in God” is the English translation and the Greek words that were behind that translation:
Matthew 27:43 epi tou theon
Luke 1:47 epi theo
John 3:21 en theo
John 14:1 eis theon
Acts 16:34 theo
2 Corinthians 1:9 epi theo
1 Timothy 5:15 epi theon
Titus 3:8 theo
1 Peter 1:21 eis theon
1 Peter 1:21 eis theon
1 Peter 3:5 epi theon
Not once does the word theou appear when the English translation is “in God” – outside of the subject verse, Mark 11:22.
This seems to be convincing further proof that “faith of God” or “God’s faith” is the preferred translation, not “faith in God.”
Do Greek Interlinear Authors Agree?
It depends. A quick check shows that a certain Greek interlinear Bible quotes “Be ye having belief OF-God” in Mark 11:22. However, another Greek interlinear Bible just says “Have faith in God” because it is simply superimposing the Greek and English words without trying to get into the particular nuances of each concordance word. It is interesting that “OF-God” was at least noted in the first one. So it looks like we are still on track to declaring “Have faith of God” the clear winner.
Do Other Scholars and Commentators Agree?
Other commentaries that were written long before people were preaching “word of faith” doctrine are in general agreement that the Greek is literally “Have faith of God” or “Have God’s faith.” In light of the study on the Greek words above, it would be easy to see why that would be their conclusion. So if we’ve even got the traditional denominational scholars on our side, what could possibly stop us now from declaring “Have faith of God” to be the plain winner?
The nagging thought is that maybe all the different translators knew that the literal rendering was “Have faith of God” but for some reason unknown to us so far, they all agreed that “Have faith in God” was the correct English rendering of that thought, though so far it seems hard to see how they could conclude that.
Maybe it’s a case (and it wouldn’t be the only one) that the translators knew what it really said but thought, “It can’t really mean that!” so they put their own spin on it. It might be like Phebe, the deacon in Romans 16:1 where the translators couldn’t handle a woman being a deacon even though the word diakonos used of male deacons was used of her, so they translated diakonos as the English word servant.
We find in our perusing that one particular author that many others look to, the renowned Greek scholar A. T. Robertson, did not agree with the “Have faith of God” translation, even though he admits himself that the Greek is genitive (possessive) – which would lead one to believe that “Have faith of God” is literally correct.
How could he deny what seems so clear above? His take was that Mark 11:22 is an “objective possessive” where the usual possessive meaning is different. As an objective possessive, the noun is actually the OBJECT of the statement, which would mean that we should have faith in God, faith toward God, etc., as opposed to having faith belonging to God. So our first question is, “Did Robertson discover some unique order of Greek letters that identifies an “objective possessive” sub-form of the “possessive” form and we somehow missed it in our research above? Or did he just do what so many commentators have done with Paul’s thorn – start with their conclusion and work backward?
Is There Really an Objective Possessive?
So we check the actual Greek letters in a Greek text and an interlinear Bible. No, there is no difference! The word theou in Mark 11:22 is exactly the same word theou used elsewhere in similar contexts and there is no special “objective possessive” form as far as the Greek lettering goes. Marijuana was not legal in the day of Robertson, so we can’t assume that he was smoking weed when he came to his conclusion. So how else can we explain his “objective possessive” claim? Maybe we should at least do more study of the places in Scripture where “of God” appears and see if there is anything that could remotely hint at Robertson’s “objective possessive” argument. Given his reputation for thorough Greek scholarship, he might have checked more cases than the collection of verses above that we looked up. We owe it to ourselves to check – was he onto something we missed or was his denominational background coloring his conclusion, as so often happens with popular seminary reference books? We’ll broaden our search and find out once and for all whether Robertson saw something we missed.
We start by thinking: What could be an “of God” case where such an argument could be made? Anything physical could probably be ruled out, but what about something else intangible? What about love? We find the same genitive construction in Romans 8:35, where nothing shall separate us from the “love of Christ.” That would mean Christ’s love, so we’re still OK. Ephesians 3:19 is a prayer that we would know the “love of Christ.” That genitive construction also means Christ’s love, and we’re still OK.
Next, the phrase “fear of God” comes to mind. So we search for verses that contain the phrase “fear of God” and come across Romans 3:18, 2 Corinthians 7:1 and Ephesians 5:21. A quick concordance check shows the general words phobos theos for fear of God instead of pistis theos for faith of God, which makes it seem that we have found a fly in the ointment, as the usages seem to match. So we drill down to the actual Greek text and now we find that the actual word forms in those verses are ALSO exactly the same as the word forms in Mark 11:22. How about “fear of the Lord” in Acts 9:31? Same thing.
Uh-oh. Now we have a problem. We were on the verge of declaring “Have faith of God” the runaway winner, but it actually appears that we have found a Robertson-claimed “objective genitive” when we did our own research. We were about to write a nice paragraph matching a popular teaching about how “Have faith of God” means that you should have God’s faith – the kind of faith that He uses while running the universe. But now it seems that to be consistent, we would have to add that we should have the “fear of God,” which means that we should have “God’s fear” – the kind of fear that He uses while running the universe. Yes, have the God-kind of fear! That might not go over very well, for good reason.
Maybe that’s a special outlying case. Let’s try “knowledge of God” and see what happens. We look up Colossians 1:10, 2 Peter 1:2 and 2 Corinthians 10:5 and see that the same genitive form in Mark 11:22 is used. But it seems a bit of a stretch to say that we should increase in God’s knowledge, which is infinite and unobtainable for us. It would seem that this “genitive” really means knowledge about God. This whole genitive thing is getting more complicated than we wanted, as we now have two cases contradicting that “Have faith OF God” means to literally have God’s faith.
We could look for a long time for all the other things that could possibly be “of God,” but so that we can finish this in some reasonable amount of time, maybe we can take a shortcut and perhaps show that fear was a special case that doesn’t apply when faith is involved. (By the way, it’s the same Greek word for fear, phobos, from which we get the English word phobia, which would be used for other types of fear. While “reverential respect” can be implied, it’s a much deeper respect than people realize given the word that is used. I am NOT saying, though, that a believer should run around thinking, “Oh, no, it’s GOD! I’m AFRAID! Freddie, Jason and Chucky are probably right behind Him!”)
So let’s simplify things by restricting our search to cases where faith is involved. That would make sense because Mark 11:22 talks about faith. Let’s find other genitive constructs involving the word faith and see if we can draw the same “faith of God” conclusion we thought we had settled on in Mark 11:22.
Our first stop will be James 2:1, which tells not to have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. It seems dubious that “Christ’s faith” could possibly have “respect of persons” as He showed no personal favoritism when He walked the earth. So this would lean toward talking about our faith IN our Lord Jesus Christ.
Next we have Galatians 2:16, which we should look at in its entire context. “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Are we justified by Jesus’ faith? No, that doesn’t seem reasonable, because everyone would be saved if it only depended upon His faith. You’re saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8), but it’s your faith that receives what God’s grace has provided. The next phrase, “even as we have believed in Christ” ties back to the phrase in question. So here we have a very strong case that “faith of Jesus Christ” does refer to “faith IN Jesus Christ.” This is starting to swing the pendulum back toward a “Have faith in God” interpretation without the use of cannabis products. We’d better keep going.
Revelation 14:12 is next, where we read, “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Keeping Jesus’ faith doesn’t seem like a good explanation; it would seem once again that this refers to faith IN Jesus. Let’s keep digging.
Romans 3:22 talks about the righteousness of God that is by faith of Jesus Christ. We could think of an Old Testament Scripture (not in Greek) that the just shall live by his faith (Habakkuk 2:4). So it would seem that it would be YOUR faith in Christ that would be required to receive the righteousness of God, not Jesus’ faith. And again, if it were all up to Jesus’ faith, everyone would be righteous. So we have to consider “faith in Jesus Christ” the preferred meaning in this verse as well.
Next, Ephesians 3:12 tells us that we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him (Jesus). Once again, it seems that “faith of” means “faith in” because it isn’t Jesus’ faith that gives you that access – it’s yours. (I’m not negating that Jesus is the Author and the Finisher of your faith; I’m just stressing that it is indeed your faith, not His faith, that gets the job done.)
What about Galatians 3:22, where the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe? It looks like faith IN Jesus Christ would be the preferred meaning, though someone could dispute that.
Galatians 2:20 is a little less clear, where Paul lives by “the faith of the Son of God.” Habakkuk 2:4 might again tip us toward faith IN the Son of God. Also, the word the in “the faith” doesn’t appear in the Greek, which is actually somewhat convoluted in this verse, so living “by faith of the Son of God” appears to be the intention. I suppose that you could still go either way on this verse without the word the; I wouldn’t stake my life on “by faith of the Son of God” having to means “by faith in the Son of God.” We’ll actually “park” Galatians 2:20 until the separate discussion What Galatians 2:20 Really Means.
Romans 3:3 (where Paul asks if their unbelief will make the faith of God without effect) might be construed either way, but you’d have to strain a bit to emphasize that it would be the faith of God in YOU that could be without effect if you believe that this means God’s faith, as it would be impossible for God’s own faith to be without effect – if you can even prove that God uses faith, which I believe you’d be hard-pressed to do. (You can read my whole separate article on that issue!)
Are there any other Scriptures that might add to this discussion? Well, Acts 20:21 talks of “faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is clearly faith with the Lord Jesus Christ as its object, not the faith OF the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 26:18 has Jesus Himself referring to “them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” So making Jesus or God the OBJECT of faith certainly can be seen in the New Testament.
Now what do make of this mess? It appears now that the only proper conclusion is that when it comes to FAITH, “Have faith in God” is the proper translation, and Robertson and all the translators were right after all. Maybe they did the same kind of studies, which would have taken a LOT longer in a pre-internet era. There actually IS an objective possessive, and that fact has enabled us to possess an objective view of Mark 11:22.
Stand-Alone Faith or Faith in God/Jesus?
But before we declare “Have faith in God” the winner after all, let’s look at what else we can find about faith in Scripture and its relationship to God and Jesus. After all, we thought we were right a couple times before and then had to switch completely.
In the places where Jesus told people, “According to YOUR FAITH Be It Done unto You” was He talking about their great faith level in general or their faith in Him as the Anointed One?
For example, blind men came to Him asking for their sight and He asked them if they believed that He was able to do it. They said “Yes,” and they got their sight. Jesus said, “According to your faith be it unto you” (Matthew 9:29). Their faith was clearly in Jesus and in His ability to perform the miracle. It was not a general “faith.”
We can study the other stories, as they are all included in the link above. We have to reach the conclusion that their faith was in Jesus’ ability to perform the miracle, it was not just “faith” in a general sense, as there is no record that they exercised faith for anything else.
Their faith was in Jesus.
This brings us to another area of research – the nature of faith itself. Is it a force like electricity or gravity, or must it always be tied in with Jesus’ ability, promises or statements or God’s ability, promises or statements? The implications are huge. Denominational authors, especially ones with “heresy hunter” websites, will accuse you of being occultic and UNSAVED if you suggest that faith is a force. (I have a separate article just about that topic, too.) They are always quick to claim that the Greek word for faith (pistis) refers to a trust or confidence in the Lord and not to something that you can do on your own.
If we determine that faith must always have God or Jesus as its object, we can crown “Have faith in God” the winner. Otherwise, we might have to rethink our position yet again!
What is Faith?
Because the word faith only occurs 245 times in the New Testament, we’ll need to look at all of the cases so that we don’t fall into the same trap we did above where we piled up the references only to find out that we had missed something important with references we missed. For the sake of space (and the reader’s sanity), we’ll try to categorize the results of this new search.
6 cases where Jesus referred to no faith or little faith when the case involved trusting Him and His words or God and His words. (Matthew 6:30, Matthew 8:26, Matthew 14:31, Mark 4:40, Luke 8:25, Luke 12:28)
1 case where Jesus referred to no faith or little faith where the matter was not completely clear from the context (Matthew 16:8)
14 cases where Jesus commended someone for faith to receive a miracle from Him or where faith was declared to be related to that miracle (Matthew 8:10, Matthew 9:2, Matthew 9:22, Matthew 9:29, Matthew 15:28, Mark 2:5, Mark 5:34, Mark 10:52, Luke 5:20, Luke 7:9, Luke 7:50, Luke 8:48, Luke 17:19, Luke 18:42)
32 cases where faith is mentioned in connection with God, God’s power, Jesus , Jesus’ name or Jesus’ blood (Acts 3:16 [2 cases], Acts 20:21, Acts 24:24, Acts 26:18, Romans 3:3, Romans 3:22, Romans 3:25, 1 Corinthians 2:5, Galatians 2:16 [2 cases], Galatians 2:20, Galatians 3:22, Galatians 3:26, Ephesians 1:15, Ephesians 3:12, Philippians 3:9, Colossians 1:4, Colossians 2:5, Colossians 2:12, 1 Thessalonians 1:8, 1 Timothy 1:14, 1 Timothy 3:13, 2 Timothy 1:13, 2 Timothy 3:15, Hebrews 6:1, Hebrews 12:2, James 2:1, James 5:15, 1 Peter 1:21, Revelation 2:13, Revelation 14:12)
14 cases where faith is connected with something that God said (Romans 4:9, Romans 4:11, Romans 4:12, Romans 4:13, Romans 4:16, Romans 4:19, Romans 4:20, Hebrews 11:8, Hebrews 11:9, Hebrews 11:11, Hebrews 11:17, Hebrews 11:28, Hebrews 11:29, Hebrews 11:30)
1 case where faith is connected with the gospel (Acts 14:9)
1 case where Jesus spoke of faith to change physical reality and mentioned a matter involving trust of Him/His words or God/God’s words (Matthew 17:20)
3 cases where Jesus spoke of faith to change physical reality and did NOT mention His or God’s involvement explicitly (Matthew 21:21, Luke 17:6, 1 Corinthians 13:2)
1 case where the verse is the one in question, so it will have to sit out for now (Mark 11:22)
18 cases of other benefits obtained by faith without specifying God or Jesus (Acts 15:9, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:2, Romans 9:30, Romans 9:32, Romans 10:6, Galatians 3:2, Galatians 3:5, Galatians 3:14, Galatians 3:24, Galatians 5:5, Ephesians 2:8, Philippians 3:9, Hebrews 6:12, Hebrews 11:7, James 2:24, 1 Peter 1:9, 1 John 5:4)
123 cases where faith is spoken of in a general sense (Matthew 23:23, Luke 17:5, Luke 18:8, Luke 22:32, Acts 6:5, Acts 6:8, Acts 11:24, Acts 14:27, Romans 1:8, Romans 1:12, Romans 1:17 [3 cases], Romans 3:27, Romans 3:28, Romans 3:30 [2 times], Romans 3:31, Romans 4:5, Romans 4:14, Romans 4:16, Romans 10:8, Romans 11:20, Romans 12:3, Romans 12:6, Romans 14:22, Romans 14:23 [2 cases], Romans 16:26, 1 Corinthians 13:13, 1 Corinthians 15:14, 1 Corinthians 15:17, 2 Corinthians 1:24 [2 times], 2 Corinthians 4:13, 2 Corinthians 5:7, 2 Corinthians 8:7, 2 Corinthians 10:15, Galatians 3:7, Galatians 3:8, Galatians 3:9, Galatians 3:11, Galatians 3:12, Galatians 3:23 [2 cases], Galatians 3:25, Galatians 5:6, Galatians 6:10, Ephesians 3:17, Ephesians 6:16, Ephesians 6:23, Philippians 1:25, Philippians 2:17, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 1 Thessalonians 3:2, 1 Thessalonians 3:5, 1 Thessalonians 3:6, 1 Thessalonians 3:7, 1 Thessalonians 3:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:8, 2 Thessalonians 1:3, 2 Thessalonians 1:4, 2 Thessalonians 1:11, 2 Thessalonians 3:2, 1 Timothy 1:4, 1 Timothy 1:5, 1 Timothy 1:19 [2 cases], 1 Timothy 2:7, 1 Timothy 2:15, 1 Timothy 4:6, 1 Timothy 4:12, 1 Timothy 5:12, 1 Timothy 6:11, 1 Timothy 6:12, 2 Timothy 1:5, 2 Timothy 2:18, 2 Timothy 2:22, 2 Timothy 3:10, Titus 1:1, Titus 2:2, Philemon 1:5, Philemon 1:6, Hebrews 4:2, Hebrews 10:22, Hebrews 10:23, Hebrews 10:38, Hebrews 11:1, Hebrews 11:3, Hebrews 11:4, Hebrews 11:5, Hebrews 11:6, Hebrews 11:13, Hebrews 11:20, Hebrews 11:21, Hebrews 11:22, Hebrews 11:23, Hebrews 11:24, Hebrews 11:27, Hebrews 11:31, Hebrews 11:33, Hebrews 11:39, Hebrews 13:7, James 1:3, James 1:6, James 2:5, James 2:14 [2 cases], James 2:17, James 2:18 [3 cases], James 2:20, James 2:22 [2 cases], James 2:26, 1 Peter 1:5, 1 Peter 1:7, 2 Peter 1:1, 2 Peter 1:5, Jude 1:20, Revelation 2:19, Revelation 13:10)
27 cases where “faith” or “the faith” refers to Christianity in general (Acts 6:7, Acts 13:8, Acts 14:22, Acts 16:5, Romans 1:5, Romans 14:1, 1 Corinthians 16:13, 2 Corinthians 13:5, Galatians 1:23, Ephesians 4:5, Ephesians 4:13, Philippians 1:27, Colossians 1:23, Colossians 2:7, 1 Timothy 1:2, 1 Timothy 3:9, 1 Timothy 4:1, 1 Timothy 5:8, 1 Timothy 6:10, 1 Timothy 6:21, 2 Timothy 3:8, 2 Timothy 4:7, Titus 1:4, Titus 1:13, Titus 3:15, 2 Peter 5:9, Jude 1:3)
3 other cases (Romans 10:17, 1 Corinthians 12:9, Galatians 5:22)
The categories are somewhat arbitrary and you could probably question some individual entries, but it’s enough to get a ballpark count of the verses. (In cases like Matthew 17:20, it also depends on which translation you’re using, as different Greek manuscripts alter the count slightly. Different translations used different primary Greek manuscripts!) Also, most of the benefits described above without an explicit reference to Christ could not have been obtained without Christ’s ratification of the New Covenant for us.
So what do we make of all this? It seems that sometimes faith is referred to as something impersonal, but at other times it is directed toward God. Is it implicit that it is directed toward God at all the other times, or do we all possess faith and have the ability to use it for God or use it to our own destruction?
Romans 12:3 makes it clear that every man (not just the believer) has the measure of faith. So an unbeliever has faith, but he is not saved! He has the God-given capacity to believe unto salvation if he so chooses. (See Can an Unbeliever Exercise Faith?.)
Once again, things are not as clear-cut as we would like them to be! But how about this – why don’t we ask the Bible itself what faith is?
Hebrews 11:1:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
So is faith a substance like carbon, oxygen or gold? This verse has been used to teach that, but that’s why we should check everything in a concordance before we run around preaching it! We find that the word for substance actually is translated confidence three times out of the four other times it’s used in the New Testament. Thus, faith is the confidence (assurance) of something hoped for, but not a substance that you can add to your Periodic Table of the Elements or hold in your hand.
So by its most basic definition, faith is being sure of something that your five senses don’t tell you, but it is not necessarily directed toward God or Jesus. That actually is obvious once you think about statements like the one Paul made to the jailer in Philippi: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, you and your household.” If belief in Christ were implicit in the definition of faith, no one in the Old Testament, including the “faith heroes,” could have ever exercised faith, and Paul’s exhortation to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” was redundant – he could have just said “Believe!” Instead, he told the jailer where to direct his faith.
How does this affect our take on Mark 11:22? Does this contradict “Have faith in God?” No. If faith were implicitly a trust in God, Jesus could just have said, “Have faith!” and “Have faith in God” would have been implicit – and redundant when He actually said it. But He had to specify where faith should be directed – to God! Too many people, including Christians, have plenty of faith in the bad things the devil can bring their way and not enough faith in God.
But isn’t unbelief (apistia, or occasionally apeitheia) simply the lack of faith (pistis)? Despite appearances, the biblical use of the word unbelief really refers to hearing the Word but refusing to accept it and act on it. (This is proved in detail in the section What is the Difference Between Unbelief and Doubt?.) We can operate in misplaced faith in something that isn’t of God! In that case, it isn’t that we aren’t believing anything; it’s that we’re believing the wrong thing! (If all faith were in God, there would be no need for any Scripture to specify faith in God, as faith would be enough.)
1 John 5:11-13 tells us that we can believe (the main Greek word in the concordance is pisteuo, which is obviously related to pistis, or faith) on the name of the Son of God, and I’m glad that we can! But 2 Thessalonians 2:11 tells us that God will send strong delusion so that people will believe (pisteuo) a lie! It’s the same word! So your faith can be used to believe the truth or to believe a lie! So again, faith in and of itself is like electricity – you can use it to bless yourself or use it to hurt yourself. You can put faith a lie instead of in God, so God is NOT always the object of faith!
Further evidence of this is found in 1 John 4:1, where we are told not to believe (pisteuo) every spirit. If faith is only an act or an attitude directed toward God, this exhortation is meaningless and contradicts other Scripture! Obviously, you can believe (or have faith in) an EVIL spirit as well as God! So again, we see the neutrality of faith – it can be directed in a good direction or a bad direction.
As we saw in Romans 12:3, every person has faith, including the unbeliever. So Jesus could not sensibly have been telling His hearers that they should have faith in that sense. They already had faith, which was a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9). What kind of faith do you think God gives as a gift – Satan’s faith? Thomas’s faith? No, God gives “God’s faith” to everyone; there really isn’t any other kind. Satan’s version of “faith” is simply to take the faith that God gave you and run it in reverse to believe for what Satan wants you to have. In either case someone can believe and receive things he can’t see.
So Jesus could not have exhorted people to “have faith of God” in the sense of “have God’s faith,” because they already had it! That would make no sense. Where would they GET God’s faith if the command were to get it? From God? From Jesus? That couldn’t be so, because when the disciples asked Jesus to give them more faith, He didn’t do it. Instead, He told them what even a little faith would do. (See Luke 17:5-6.) Besides, Jesus said to “have faith of God,” not “get faith of God.” He wasn’t telling them what to get; He was telling them where to direct the faith that they already had. The “greats of faith” in Hebrews 11 could exercise faith because they already had it. We know that all men had the ability to believe (exercise faith) because God punished those in the desert who did not believe and act on what He said. If they had no ability to exercise faith, God was certainly unjust in punishing them by killing them off and rewarding the two men who chose to believe God by taking Him at His word.
So it was entirely logical for Jesus to exhort people to have faith IN GOD – He was telling them where to direct their faith. It would have been illogical for Him to command them to have faith whose source was God – because they already had it, as Romans 12:3 proves!
What Mark 11:22 Really Means
So the winner is: “Have faith in God.”
Jesus exhorted people to “Have faith in God” – to take the faith they already had and direct it toward God. As the next two verses unfold, that becomes important because Jesus’ statement in the next verse shows that you can have what you believe and say – so you’d better be believing and saying something consistent with God’s revealed will for you. Your faith in God is evident in the next verse when you believe that you receive when you pray. From whom could you possibly receive it? From God, who laid it up for you in Christ! (If it’s not something like healing that’s part of your inheritance, you have no business trying to believe that you receive it from God; you’re wasting your time.)
So despite the fact that the literal word-for-word Greek translation is “Have faith of God,” the traditional translation “Have faith in God” is the best one. Young’s Literal Translation makes no attempt to describe the doctrinal intention of any verse; its sole purpose is to transliterate the Greek words to show exactly what was written. As we have seen, there are traps involved with using only English, only a Greek concordance, or only certain verses from a literal Greek text. I hope that both the conclusion and the long process required to get it were helpful to you.
Implications
Does it really matter which way we translate this one verse? I think that it does. If you are only being exhorted to “use faith,” you can fall into the trap where you’re trying to have faith in your faith instead of faith in God. When you try to speak to a mountain, you’ll be trying to figure out if you can exercise enough “faith force” to actually move it, rather than trusting that God’s power will back your God-given authority. You don’t have the power to move a mountain, but you have the AUTHORITY to speak to it and expect God to back you as long as what you command is consistent with God’s Word.
You can end up with endless introspection (“Is my faith big enough to get this job done?”) as opposed to faith in God (“God is big enough to get this job done, and I believe that He backs His Word!”).
Now go HAVE FAITH IN GOD!
See also: