Billy Graham on the nature of saving faith

Essentially trust that grasps Christ

THE POSITION

Saving faith is more than intellectual assent to the claims of Christ: it involves "our whole being," and he names the parts as will, emotions and intellect, all "surrendered to Christ." Elsewhere he says faith "actually means surrender and commitment to the claims of Christ." He includes the intellect, but says faith is more than intellectual assent and puts surrender and commitment at its core, which is trust. His three are faculties of the person rather than the classic knowledge, assent and trust, and the intellect stays among them, so the state is a lean.

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ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Evangelist of the citywide crusades from 1947 to 2005, ordained a Southern Baptist minister, founder, with L. Nelson Bell, of Christianity Today (1956) and convener of the 1974 Lausanne Congress. He is generally reckoned to have preached in person to more people than anyone before him and was the public face of postwar evangelicalism. This entry rests on sermon texts dated 1951 to 2005 that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association republishes on the Decision magazine website, his recorded Billy Graham Minutes, his daily devotions, interviews he gave to Time, Christianity Today, Newsweek and Robert Schuller, and the My Answer column that ran under his name. By the standard account the column was written with staff, so cells that rest on it say so.