15. St. Augustine stated that the Old Testament patriarchs like Abraham were saved by faith in Christ who was yet to come. All Old Testament threads converge on Christ. God guarantees His love by sending Christ to us thus Christian faith is faith in a perfect love; love that has the power to change the world.
16. Christ died for our sake. Because of this, Christ’s love for us is true and reliable. By contemplating His death, our faith should grown stronger; receiving such a dazzling light that we can believe completely in His love. His self-gift of embracing death for our salvation overcomes every suspicion I might have so that I can trust Him completely.
17. “Precisely because Jesus is the Son, because He is absolutely grounded in the Father, He was able to conquer death and make the fullness of life shine forth. Our culture has lost its sense of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world.. . But, if God could not act in the world, His love would not be truly powerful, truly real. . .It would make no difference at all whether we believed in Him or not.”
18. We need someone trustworthy and knowledgeable where God is concerned. Christian faith turns to Christ as our authority. Faith sees things as Jesus sees them. Jesus IS the one Who makes God known to us. St. John brings out the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus in order to truly know and trust God the Father. We believe what Jesus tells us to be true. We believe in Jesus when we welcome Him into our lives. Christian faith is faith in the Word of God made man. It is faith in a God who entered our human history. He loves us completely and passionately and He love our world, so that He is constantly guiding it and us to Him.
Dr. Linda L. Powell 