So, what is this faith thing?

“Faith is not an alternative achievement nor a refined human spirituality, but a declaration of bankruptcy, a radical and shattering recognition that the only capital in God’s economy is the gift of Christ crucified and risen” ([Barclay, Paul and the Gift] 384—85; cf. 390n5). Perhaps faith, then, is best understood as an allegiance to the Christ predicated on the recognition that nothing apart from this allegiance has saving value.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 83 n. 15