Faith That Saves… or Faith That Moves? | The Branch

"I believe God honors those who want to honor him. If you want to honor him in your life, it starts by pursuing him." - Pastor Anthony Lombardi

The episode opens with a question that is equal parts disarming and convicting. Pastor Matthew Johnson asks his co-hosts whether there is something in their lives they know is good and true but still do not do. The answers are lighthearted - bicycle helmets, seatbelts, stretching before a run, flossing the night before a dentist appointment. The laughter is easy and the honesty is immediate.

But the question is not really about helmets or flossing. It is a runway for something much more significant. Because the same dynamic that keeps a person from stretching after a run is the same dynamic that keeps a person from fully surrendering to God. Knowing something is true does not automatically produce the behavior that truth should generate. That gap - between knowing and doing, between belief and action - is exactly where this conversation lives.

Pastor Matthew frames it plainly: today's episode is about faith. Not faith as a buzzword or a feeling, but faith as a living, breathing, active reality that either shapes a person's life or exposes the absence of genuine trust in God.

The first major question Pastor Matthew puts to the table is one that has occupied theologians for centuries: what is the difference between saving faith and the everyday faith that produces obedience?

Pastor Chris Reed points to the Greek word pistus, the single word Scripture uses for faith across its many expressions. Whether faith appears as a spiritual gift, as the key to justification, or as the daily posture of a follower of Jesus, the word is the same. Pastor Chris argues that the line between saving faith and ongoing obedient faith is not a hard line at all. It is a spectrum. Saving faith is not a separate category from the faith that sustains and shapes a Christian's life. It is the beginning of it.

Pastor Matthew brings Ephesians 2:8-9 and James 2 into conversation with each other. Ephesians makes clear that salvation is by faith, not by works. James makes equally clear that a genuine, living faith will produce works. These are not contradictions. They are two angles on the same truth. And then there is Matthew 7:21-23, where Jesus warns that not everyone who calls him Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. The word Jesus uses for knowing - the intimacy of genuine relationship - is what separates those who are truly his from those who only claimed to be.

Pastor Chris frames the progression this way: a person is justified in the moment of genuine faith, and then sanctified - made more like Christ - over the rest of their life. Neither justification nor sanctification is the product of human effort. Both flow from a real, living trust in Jesus.

Pastor Matthew raises a question that carries real weight: has the church made saving faith too easy? Has the emphasis on grace alone, faith alone - rooted in the Protestant Reformation and shaped by Martin Luther's own tortured search for peace with God - produced a version of Christianity that is so thin it barely resembles what Scripture describes?

Pastor Chris traces Luther's journey honestly. Luther, an Augustinian monk who could never shake the weight of his own guilt, came to a passage in Romans that broke through - salvation is by faith alone, by grace alone. It was a genuine and important recovery of biblical truth. But Pastor Chris argues that the emphasis, over time, became detached from the fuller picture Scripture paints. The result, in many churches, is a version of belief that lives entirely in the intellect. A person acknowledges that Jesus is savior, and that is treated as sufficient - with no inner transformation, no growing desire to love and obey God, no fruit.

He uses a pointed illustration. A person can say they trust a parachute. The real test is whether they jump. Intellectual agreement is not the same as genuine trust. And genuine trust, when it is real, changes everything - not instantly, not perfectly, but really.

Pastor Anthony Lombardi puts it plainly. The early confession of the church was not simply "Jesus is savior." It was "Jesus is Lord." And he finds it very difficult to separate those two things. A faith that receives Christ's grace while rejecting his lordship is not a faith Scripture recognizes.

The conversation moves into practical territory. How does a person tell the difference between weak faith and no faith at all? Pastor Chris offers what he calls the simplest baseline: is there a genuine desire to know and love God? Not perfection. Not a flawless track record. But a real, persistent longing to pursue God - to receive his love and respond to it.

He has sat across from people in pastoral ministry and had honest conversations about whether they are actually Christians. Not to condemn, but because the evidence of the spirit's work in a person's life is not invisible. If there is no conviction, no desire to honor God, no pursuit of him in any form, that is worth taking seriously.

Pastor Matthew adds an important clarifying note: what a person does in the moment of sin matters enormously. A person of genuine faith recognizes sin for what it is and repents. Tolerating sin - being comfortable with ongoing disobedience and feeling no pull toward God - is a warning sign that goes deeper than backsliding.

Pastor Chris connects this to 1 John, where John says the person born of God cannot keep on sinning. He is not saying Christians do not sin. He is describing what happens internally when the spirit of God is genuinely at work. There is conviction. There is what Paul calls a godly grief that produces repentance. The spirit keeps drawing a person back. That is not human willpower. Pastor Chris traces it to Ezekiel 36, where God promises to give his people a new heart and put his spirit within them - so that they want to keep his ways. The desire to obey is itself a gift.

Pastor Matthew shifts to something more personal. He admits that even after decades of following Jesus and 26 years in pastoral ministry, he still struggles at times with fear and anxiety. He still feels the pull toward comfort and control. How does a person fight that?

Pastor Anthony's answer is straightforward: become aware of the tendency. Name it. Know where you are most likely to pull back from God's call. When a person can identify their own patterns - the pull toward comfort, the grip of control - they can take those things to God specifically rather than being ambushed by them.

He is also honest that this kind of awareness took him years to develop. He has been following Jesus seriously since he was eighteen years old, and it was only in the last six or seven years that he became purposeful about counteracting his own propensity toward comfort. The process is not fast. But it is real. And what accelerates it, he says, is when a person takes a step of obedience and sees God show up. That experience becomes fuel for the next step.

Pastor Chris brings Philippians 4:6-7 into the conversation. The verse is widely known and, he suggests, widely not lived. The pattern Paul describes - bringing everything to God in prayer, with thanksgiving, and receiving a peace that surpasses understanding - is not just for crisis moments. It is a posture for every day. Most Christians, Pastor Chris observes, do most of their life in their own strength and only bring God in when things fall apart. That is not the model Paul describes. The person who deals God into the ordinary moments of life is far better prepared when the extraordinary and frightening moments arrive.

Near the close of the episode, Pastor Matthew raises the story of Caleb and Joshua - two of the twelve spies sent into the promised land who returned with a different report than the other ten. He pushes back gently on the way these figures are often presented. They are not superheroes. They saw the same giants the other ten saw. They experienced the same reality. The difference was not that they felt no fear. The difference was that they had a different spirit inside of them.

Pastor Chris connects this directly to what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. The question for a Christian wrestling with fear is not whether they feel it. It is what they do with it. Caleb and Joshua looked at an impossible situation and chose to remember what God had promised and what God had done. They allowed faith - not their feelings - to determine their response.

Pastor Anthony closes with a challenge that is both practical and urgent. Whatever it is that a person listening knows God is calling them to - whether it is a step of repentance, a decision they have been avoiding, or an act of obedience they have been delaying - the time to take that step is now. Because until a person takes those steps, they will not see God move in the ways they are hoping for. And Pastor Matthew adds the consequence plainly: saying no to God is not just disobedience. It is missing out on the depth of intimacy, purpose, and assurance that obedience makes possible.

The Tree Church meets every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM at our Lancaster and Logan, Ohio campuses.

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