Biblical "believe" (verb) and "faith" (noun)

[TonyChanYT]

John 8:

30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him.

The Greek "believed" is G4100, πιστεύω, pisteuó. They believed in him. The preposition "in" suggests a strong belief. The passage continues:

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,

This time, without the preposition, suggests a more superficial kind of belief.

The verb is pisteuó. The noun is pistis. The noun appears 243 times. Their biblical meanings are quite different.

Hebrews 11:

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Divine faith is different from human confidence, Biblehub:

Faith (4102/pistis) is always a gift from God, and never something that can be produced by people. In short, 4102/pistis ("faith") for the believer is "God's divine persuasion" – and therefore distinct from human belief (confidence), yet involving it.

Ro 12:

3 For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith <4102/pistis>

This kind of faith is from God and for God. It is exclusively given only to the redeemed, 2 Cor. 13:

5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves. Or do you yourselves not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless you fail the test.

A Christian can believe the existence of gravity. He might even believe in gravity. However, he should not have faith in gravity, at least not in the spiritual sense of the word faith. I assume physical gravitational law works without necessitating a faith system on it.

 

[Lambano]

One of the takeaways I had from a Bible study (my goodness, was it 20 years ago?) of John was that it is often helpful to replace the noun and verb forms of "faith" and " to believe" with "trust" (as appropriate to the context).