Eph. 2:8c

8c (Faith) is the gift of God.

It is a gift, indeed. All people have the potential to believe. That is universal. Faith as we know it is not to be found on this earth, except in people. I think the potential, the ability and the desire to have faith is uniquely human.

Intuitively, I know that I can believe in a power of some kind that can help me to live. This is not a weakness, in my estimation, but a phenomenal strength. It is what makes me a worshiping being – I am fashioned to be a worshiper of a power greater than I am.

Looking at it this way, I freely admit that I have within my psyche the potentiol if not the will to believe. But that does not make me a believer. I must choose whom I will worship. People have been choosing their deities from time immorial in all cultures. We human beings can choose among a bewildering variety of “gods,” depending on the culture. I know of no culture that does not create "gods" of some kind or other for people to believe in.

So the potential to believe is, as I understand it, the remnant of the image of God that marks every human soul. In that way we might affirm, correctly, that faith is a gift from God.

I believe, however, that this passage of Scripture goes beyond that. Paul writes that the faith he is talking about is “not of yourselves.” In other words, belief in Jesus is not something that I conjure up for myself, it is as Paul clearly declares, “It is the gift of God.” If that is true, and I know it is, then God encourages me to place my faith in Jesus Christ. This implies that I can not, on my own, become a true believer. So if I do believe in Jesus, that is a gift from God.

Paul clarifies this even further by writing that the work to believe is itself a gift of God. If faith in Christ is something that I figure out and work to get it, it is faith by works. That is the whole point here. We are saved by grace. And the most fundamental grace is the gift of faith that points me to Jesus.