This note is interpretation, not translation. It is about one verse, 2 Corinthians 4:13, and what it says faith is. Jon learned this verse from the teaching of Charles Nieman, and the credit for it is his. The note sets out what the verse says in the Greek and where it comes from; it does not quote Nieman, and anything here beyond the verse is the note’s own.
The verse.Echontes de to auto pneuma tēs pisteōs, kata to gegrammenon, Episteusa, dio elalēsa, kai hēmeis pisteuomen, dio kai laloumen. “Having the same spirit of faith, as it is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore we also speak” (2 Corinthians 4:13).
One word family. In Greek, “faith” and “believe” are one word: the noun pistis and the verb pisteuō. English has to use two, and this site often uses “trust” for both. So “the spirit of faith” and “we believe” are the same thing said twice, once as something held and once as something done.
“Having.”Echontes is a present participle: Paul speaks of it as something they already have, the way he says “having this ministry” (4:1) and “we have this treasure in jars of clay” (4:7). Faith here is not something worked up for the occasion. It is held.
“The same spirit of faith.” The same as whose? As the one who wrote the line Paul is about to quote. “Of faith” says what kind of spirit it is: one marked by faith. Whether Paul means the Holy Spirit, who gives faith, or a disposition of faith in the believer, the Greek does not settle. A chapter earlier he says “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (3:17), and elsewhere he names “the spirit of adoption” (Romans 8:15) and “a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
“As it is written.” Paul is quoting Psalm 116:10 (115:1 in the Greek translation), word for word from the Greek: Episteusa, dio elalēsa, “I believed, therefore I spoke.” The psalm is a man brought back from death: “the cords of death surrounded me” (116:3), “You have rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling” (116:8). Then, “I believed, therefore I spoke; I was greatly afflicted.” The Hebrew is he’emanti ki adabber, and ki can mean “for” or “when,” so the Hebrew can also be read “I trusted, even when I spoke: I am greatly afflicted.” Paul quotes the Greek. Either way it is a man who kept trusting under the threat of death and was brought through.
“Therefore.”Dio makes the believing the reason for the speaking. The speech comes out of the faith; it does not come first and produce it.
“We also believe, and therefore we also speak.” Both verbs are present tense, and both are ongoing: we keep believing, so we keep speaking. Paul puts himself and his companions in the psalmist’s place. And he says what it is they believe, in the next verse: “knowing that the One who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and present us with you” (4:14). What they speak is the good news: “we do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus the Anointed as Lord” (4:5).
The setting. Paul says it in the same place the psalmist did. “We are pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair” (4:8). “We who are alive are always being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be shown in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you” (4:11–12). A man facing death believes the One who raises the dead, and so he speaks. Then: “so we do not lose heart … we look not at what is seen but at what is unseen” (4:16, 4:18).
What the verse says faith is. Faith is held: “having.” It is a spirit: “the spirit of faith.” It is the same in the psalmist and in Paul: “the same.” It rests on what God has done and will do: “the One who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us.” And it speaks: “therefore we speak.” Paul says it the same way in Romans: “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith that we proclaim” (10:8), and “with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses to salvation” (10:10).
A choice, and granted — Charles Nieman’s teaching, and Jon’s. Jon remembers Nieman teaching that belief, at the bottom, is a choice. Jon puts it this way: a choice, and a choice that is granted. And he adds that you do not need to understand something to choose to believe it. Scripture speaks of believing as something people are told to do: “change your minds and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15), and to Thomas, “do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20:27). Moses sets the choice before Israel: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; so choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19), and in the same chapter, “the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (30:14). Paul reads that very passage as faith: “the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith that we proclaim” (Romans 10:6–8). And it is granted: “it has been granted to you … to believe in Him” (Philippians 1:29), and the way it is given is the word: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of the Anointed” (Romans 10:17). On understanding: “trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). Abraham “obeyed and went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). Mary asked, “how will this be?”, and then said, “let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:34, 1:38). “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). And a father who could not untangle his own heart cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Abraham — at Jon’s pointer. Abraham is scripture’s first picture of it. After he rescued Lot, the king of Sodom offered him the goods, and he refused: “I have lifted my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, so that you will not say, I have made Abram rich” (Genesis 14:22–23). He said it out loud, and his reason was the One he trusted: the Possessor of heaven and earth would be the one to make him rich, not the king of Sodom. The next words in the book are God’s: “After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: Do not fear, Abram; I am your shield, your reward very great” (15:1). And in that chapter, “he believed the LORD, and He counted it to him as righteousness” (15:6), the verse Paul builds Romans 4 and Galatians 3 on. The word for “made rich” (Hebrew he’esharti, Greek eploutisa) is from the root of Laodicea’s “I am rich” (Revelation 3:17) and of Ephraim’s boast behind it.
Then Isaac. Told to offer his son, Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there and worship, and we will come back to you” (Genesis 22:5). In the Hebrew both verbs are “we”: we will worship, we will return. When Isaac asked where the lamb was, he said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (22:8). Genesis gives his words; Hebrews gives what he believed when he said them: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only son … reckoning that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, in a figure, he did receive him back” (Hebrews 11:17–19). It is this verse lived out. Abraham believed the God who raises the dead, and therefore he spoke. Paul says it of him too: he believed “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist” (Romans 4:17), and “did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, fully convinced that what He had promised He was able also to do” (4:20–21).
In this book. Those who belong to the Lamb overcome the accuser “by the blood of the Lamb and by the message they testified to, and they did not love their lives even up to death” (12:11): the believing speak, as Paul did, with death in view. The messenger tells John that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (19:10), the same shape in the Greek as “the spirit of faith” (to pneuma tēs prophēteias, to pneuma tēs pisteōs). And at Pergamum, where Antipas was killed, they “did not deny your trust in me” (2:13).