What role does faith play in the Christian life?
Faith is central to the Christian life: it prompts the whole daily walk, guides believers not only into salvation but all through their Christian experience, and enables them to recognize and deal with sin by believing what God says. Apart from believing what God says, sin is not known as sin.
Les explains that faith is the one-word answer for how we recognize and deal with sin. Unless we can believe what God says about certain activities or acts, we do not know that they are sin; but when God says it and we believe it, then we know what it is. He says our whole daily walk is prompted by faith in God. Quoting Romans 3:23, he notes that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and he calls believing that about ourselves the first step in salvation—taking God at His Word concerning myself and concerning you. Faith, then, is that which guides us not only into salvation but all through our Christian experience, based on what the book says, not what someone else says. He adds that he does not have to condemn this or that, because as soon as people get into the book and see what it says by faith, they will take appropriate action.