An excerpt from "Compelling Truth.org" entitled, "What is faith in Jesus? What does it mean to have faith in Jesus?" states: "In order to understand what it means to have faith in Jesus, we must first understand the nature of faith itself. Faith contains three elements: knowledge, assent, and trust.
Firstly, faith contains the element of knowledge. Faith must have content. There must be something or someone to have faith in. It is popular to say things like "have faith" or "believe" but these sayings are ambiguous, and even meaningless, until we define in what or whom we have faith. To have faith in Jesus, we must first have some knowledge about who He is. In order to have faith in Jesus we must know that He is the Christ, the promised Messiah, who came to earth to save His people from their sins (John 1:41; Matthew 1:21). We must believe that Jesus is God's only Son (John 3:16) who took on human flesh (John 1:14), lived a life of perfect loving obedience to God the Father (John 4:34; Hebrews 4:15), willingly sacrificed His life by dying on the cross for our sins (Philippians 2:8), rose triumphantly from the grave after three days (Matthew 12:40) and is now seated in heaven at the right hand of God (Acts 2:33) from whence He will return to judge the world (Acts 1:11; John 5:28–29) and to bring to glory all who eagerly await His coming (Colossians 3:4; Hebrews 9:28). Our knowledge of Jesus need not be exhaustive, nor can it be (Colossians 2:3; 1 Corinthians 13:9), in order for us to believe in Him. However, we do need to know some essential truths about who He is and what He has done (John 20:31).
Secondly, faith contains the element of assent. To assent means to agree that the knowledge we have is true. Now, we may be tempted to stop here and think we have arrived at a complete definition of faith. However, having knowledge about who Jesus is and even assenting to that knowledge does not mean a person has faith IN Jesus. For example, the Devil and demons know who Jesus is and even acknowledge who He is (Matthew 8:29; Mark 1:24; James 2:19) but they do not believe IN Him, which brings us to the final element.
Thirdly, faith contains the element of trust. To have faith in Jesus means to trust Him. To have faith in Jesus means to rely on Him and resign oneself to Him. Those who have faith in Jesus rely on Him as Savior (John 4:42; Titus 3:4) and resign themselves to Him as Lord (Romans 10:9). To trust in Jesus means to believe that His death was accepted by God as payment for your guilt and sin (Colossians 2:14), that His perfect life and righteousness has been credited to you on the basis of your faith in Him (Romans 3:21–22). To trust in Jesus is to believe that His teachings and promises are true and to resign ourselves to follow Him and live for Him (Matthew 10:37–39; 16:24–25; Romans 12:1; Philippians 1:21)." This article may be viewed at: What is faith in Jesus?/compellingtruth.org
Reference: Romans 3:26
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