I find the term believer fascinating. Some of these intriguing facets include the frequency of its usage and its obfuscating usage.
If someone were to ask you, “What is the most common word Christians use to identify a follower of Christ?” What would you say?
My experience is that “believer” trumps Christian, disciple, saint, or any other New Testament designation for Jesus’ followers. Would it surprise us that at best it is relatively rare (about eight times) and at worst it never appears in the New Testament?
In the original language, pistos is an adjective that means faithful. When faithful refers to a man or woman, translators might render it as “believer.” Thus, “the son of a faithful Jewish woman” might become “the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer” (Acts 16:1).
What is happening is that in order to facilitate an easy English some translations will express pistos as a noun (“If you consider me to be a believer in the Lord,” Acts 16:15). Other translations will adhere to its adjectival nature (“If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord” ESV).
Still yet, some translations will insert believer into the text to facilitate an easy flow in the English translation without that idea existing in the original text. For example, “them” might become “believers” (Acts 16:4; 20:2).
By way of contrast, consider the frequency of the adjective agios (holy) in the New Testament when it refers to those in Christ. Like pistos, it too might be translated as a noun, namely “saint” (Colossians 1:2; Acts 9:13). Whether expressed as “saints” or “holy people” to designate God’s people, agios occurs over 40 times in just the epistles! Yet, how often have you heard someone call a Christian either holy person or saint?
So why does our usage invert the frequencies of “holy people/ saints” and “faithful people/ believers” as found in the New Testament? I suspect a popular contemporary theology as well as the desire to evade a holier than thou criticism play significant roles.
Another fascinating aspect about the term believer is its facility to support the fallacy of equivocation. What is equivocation? Equivocation occurs when someone shifts the definition of a word from one meaning to another meaning. This is an informal method of reasoning that contributes to supporting false conclusions.
What does this have to do with the term believer? First, when used in reference to Christ, by definition believer means the designated individual believes in Christ.
Here’s the rub. If someone believes Christ is who he claimed to be, does this automatically make that person a follower of Jesus? No! John 12:42 clearly points this out. And let’s not forget that the demons have no doubt about who Jesus is!
To be a follower of Christ involves more than just being confident that certain things about Christ are true. A belief in Christ resulting in a person becoming part of the body of Christ requires relying upon Christ. This is so much more than mere belief.
Now notice the sly shift in definition that can occur. Sometimes when people identify others as believers, what they mean is that those people are Christians, members of the body of Christ. Thus merely believing becomes equated with belonging.
While this might support one theological perspective regarding how people become followers of Christ, scripture describes becoming a disciple and becoming a saved child of God in Christ as requiring us to rely upon Christ through baptism, an act of faith (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:16; Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 2:12-13).
Believer. Yep, it is an interesting word.