This brief passage of scripture is instructive: James 2:19-20 :You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! ESV
The idea seems simple. It does not require much to believe in the existence of God. It takes very little more to believe in His innate qualities: that he is All powerful, All knowing, All seeing, All loving, All present, and who lives forever. As the Apostle James says, even the Demons believe in that. What they do not do is respond to God appropriately. They know who God is, but they do not give Him his proper place in their lives.
So what is Faith? Faith is not only believing in God and knowing who He is. It is also loving God and obeying God, because we know that He only requires of us the things that are best for us. So, believing only involves the facts of who God is. Faith, on the other hand, involves a reationship and trust. John summed that up nicely in one of the shortest verses in the bible: 1 John 4:19: We love because he first loved us. ESV. We believe in things and that is good.. Faith goes a step farther. And that step makes all the difference.
The Demons know who God is, but they reject His love and His authority. People do the same thing. I used to wonder how it is that some people will go to Hell. It seems like anyone who knows the truth about God and about us would do whatever they possibly can to avoid the punishment of Hell. But obviously the Devil and his minions have chosen otherwise. Even people who know all about God will someday choose to love and obey only themselves and the result will be an eternity seperated from the love and the presence of God.
Can you imagine that someone could read, know, and love the Bible, and yet could fail to put their trust in the God whom the Bible tells us all about? The Gospel story about the Temptation of Jesus by Satan, tells us that Satan knows the Bible intimately well and even uses Bible quotations to tempt us. As we study that story we come to know that Jesus also knows the scriptures, but his quotations from scripture not only tell us that He knows the words, He also knows the person that the Bible tells us about. The question for us is; do we also know, love, and trust in God who is our Father in Heaven? Jesus did. Do we?