Word studies · Greek · Strong's G4102
πίστις · pístis · appears 242 times in the New Testament
In one line: Trusting reliance on God, not just believing facts about Him.
Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1
Faith is confident trust in God and reliance on Christ, not mere intellectual assent — the settled conviction that God is trustworthy even when the outcome is unseen.
In the New Testament, faith names the posture of trust by which a person receives God's promises and is united to Christ. It moves from being persuaded about who God is to personally relying on Him, and Paul treats it as the means, not the merit, by which salvation is received.
Pistis comes from the verb peithō, “to persuade” or “to win over.” The noun carries the sense of having been persuaded into a settled conviction — it describes both the trust a person places in someone and the trustworthiness that earns that trust, which is why the same word can describe God's faithfulness and ours.
English “faith” can sound like a private feeling, but pistis in the Greco-Roman world was a public, relational word used for the loyalty between allies or the reliability of a business partner. Applied to God, faith is less a feeling to work up than a relationship of trust to lean into.
Pistis (G4102) is one of the most frequent abstract nouns in the New Testament, occurring 242 times.
Faith stands at the center of how the New Testament describes a right relationship with God: Paul contrasts it with earning righteousness by law-keeping, and Hebrews defines it as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” It's the thread connecting Abraham's trust in God's promise to the Christian's trust in Christ.
When circumstances make God's promises hard to see, faith invites you to keep trusting His character rather than waiting for certainty. Name one promise of God you're leaning on today, even if you can't yet see how it will be fulfilled.
persuasion, i.e. credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly, constancy in such profession; by extension, the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself
When Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those following Him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.
Matthew 8:10When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.
Mark 2:5When Jesus saw their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.
Luke 5:20By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know has been made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through Him that has given him this complete healing in your presence.
Acts 3:16Through Him and on behalf of His name, we received grace and apostleship to call all those among the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.
Romans 1:5so that your faith would not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
1 Corinthians 2:5Press and hold faith in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.