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Hello and welcome to the Ask NT Write Anything podcast, the program where we look at Jesus, the Bible and the Life of Faith.

I'm your co-host, Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm here as ever with...

With Tom Wright from Oxford in England.

Tom, it's always great to be with you going through the many questions people have, the good, the hard, the hairy,

the ones that even make us think. And we've got another batch of very good questions this

week covering the nature of biblical faith. Is salvation different in the Old Testament and the New

Testament? And do the Gospels predict the second coming of Jesus?

Or is that just found in the epistles and the book of Revelation?

So we've got so much we've got it can get into this week.

And let's do it.

Our first question from Ryan Hudson of Roanoke, Texas. I hope I said that correctly.

Ryan's question, I think this is a good one. He says, I am regularly taken aback that Christians

tend to conflate faith with belief in the New Testament so that salvation by faith comes to mean salvation by belief,

or even salvation by intellectual assent. I am no Greek scholar, but it seems to me that the

New Testament word faith is not just belief, but a more robust faithfulness that extends to every aspects of one's

life. However, when I have asked these questions to church leaders, I have been firmly denied

any discussion of this on the grounds that it introduces salvation by works. I believe in a doctrine of salvation by

faith, but I want to be sure it's a doctrine of salvation by biblical faith. I believe this

distinction may be vastly important, especially in American evangelical churches. So how might I wisely and humbly engage these questions with fellow Christians

who are afraid that my perspective distorts the gospel?

...