The word gets used as a badge, as though it marked which building a person walks into on which day. The scriptures use it for something else. They describe a believer by what is inside and what comes out.
The Torah: trust, then a life built round it
The first believer in the Torah is not described by a rite.
He believed in The Lord God; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness.
Abraham trusted Him, and the trust was what counted. Then comes the shape of a life: hear that He is one, love Him with all your heart and soul and might, keep His words on your heart, teach them to your children, speak of them sitting and walking and lying down and getting up (Deuteronomy 6:4–7). And the three-line summary: act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with Him (Micah 6:8).
The Gospel: the one who does it
A scribe asks which command is first. Jesus the Messiah answers with Deuteronomy 6:4, and the scribe agrees that loving Him and loving your neighbour matters more than all burnt offerings (Mark 12:32–33). Jesus tells him he is not far from the Kingdom (Mark 12:34). The scribe had not changed sect. He had answered well.
Then the Messiah is blunt about the gap between saying and doing.
Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my “Father” who is in heaven.
The house on rock is the one that hears the words and does them; the house on sand hears and does not (Matthew 7:24–27). He tells his companions to believe in the Lord God (John 14:1). And James, his brother, writes the same thing as an argument: faith with no works is dead, as a body with no breath is dead (James 2:14–26).
The Recitation: the same list
Chapter 23 opens with a description and it reads like a checklist.
Certainly will the believers have succeeded:
They who are during their prayer humbly submissive
And they who turn away from ill speech
And they who are observant of the purifying alms
Chapter 8 says believers are those whose hearts stir when He is mentioned, whose faith grows when His signs are recited, who rely on their Lord, who pray, and who spend from what they were given (The Recitation 8:2–4).
Chapter 49 says they are those who believed and then did not doubt, and who strove with what they had (The Recitation 49:15). And chapter 2 puts the creed in one sentence, with a line in it that people skip.
The Messenger has believed in what was revealed to him from his Lord, and the believers. All of them have believed in The God and His angels and His books and His messengers "We make no distinction between any of His messengers."
No distinction between any of His messengers. Not a ranking. A refusal to rank.
Whatever you were born into
None of us chose the house we were born in. The Recitation has an instruction for the moment a message arrives confirming what you already hold: believe in what has been sent down confirming what is with you, and do not be the first to reject it (The Recitation 2:41).
It says some knew a scripture as they know their own children and still turned from it (The Recitation 2:89–91). It says the covenant taken from the prophets themselves was that when a messenger comes confirming what is with you, you believe and support him (The Recitation 3:81).
And then it says this, which takes the heat out of a great deal of arguing: to each community a law and a method was prescribed, and had He willed He would have made everyone one nation, so race to good (The Recitation 5:48).
That is not a call to abandon what your parents taught you. It is a call not to shut a door He may have opened.
So what is a believer
Reading all four together, the same five things keep appearing.
- Trust in Him, counted before anything is performed (Genesis 15:6).
- Love of Him with everything, and of the person next to you (Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:33).
- Prayer, and giving from what you were given (The Recitation 23:2–4).
- Doing, not only saying (Matthew 7:21, James 2:26).
- No messenger of His set against another (The Recitation 2:285).
None of it is achieved alone. The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that believers rely on their Lord (The Recitation 8:2), and the Lord God revealed to us through the Gospel preached by the Messiah that the Kingdom is entered by doing His will rather than by claiming it (Matthew 7:21).
Faith shows up in what a person does, by His permission and His mercy, and perhaps that is the only test any of us can apply to ourselves.
Questions people might ask
Do I have to be part of a religion to be a believer?
The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that whoever believes in The God and the Last Day and does right, whether Jew, Christian or Sabian, has a reward with their Lord and no fear (The Recitation 2:62). Belief is measured by trust and by deeds.
Is believing enough on its own?
James says faith without works is dead (James 2:17). The Recitation always pairs belief with doing right. Trust is the root; a life is the fruit.
What is the shortest description of a believer?
Micah's: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).
