“Immediately the boy’s father cried out saying, “I do believe; help me in my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
At first sight, this verse seems not to make sense; the father says he believes and then says he needs help in his unbelief. This doesn’t make much sense on the face of it, but what it does is highlight that, in the Bible, faith and belief are two different things. It is possible to believe and yet not have faith, but one cannot have faith without believing. Faith is belief fulfilled in action; it is belief activated by complete trust; that is why faith can be seen; it is evidenced in the supernatural quality of the life of the one having faith; whereas belief is not necessarily seen, but heard; that is, it is known by being spoken of by the one believing.
What the father in this story is really saying is that he does believe, but he needs help in letting his belief live and become faith; that is be seen in his absolute trust in the outcome if he leaves it in the hands of Jesus.
Belief and faith are commonly misunderstood by Christians and are assumed to be the same thing, but they are not.
We see in Hebrews 3:19 that Israel could not enter in to the land of rest “on account of unbelief”. Yet they were believers, God’s chosen people, liberated from the hands of Pharaoh and sustained by God throughout the years in the wilderness. Of course they were believers; it was to them that God had given the Law and they travelled everywhere with the Ark of God’s presence, the tabernacle and all its furniture. Yet their condition is described as “unbelief”. The writer to the Hebrews, speaking of those who had received the word of God and disregarded it, said that “it was not mixed, or blended together, with faith by those hearing”; in other words, they didn’t act upon it in faithfulness.
This term, “unbelief”, actually means “unfaithful belief”; that is, belief that is not fulfilled in the life of the believer to become faith, which is meant to be a reflection of the life of Christ within and an outworking of the life of Christ without.
The main signifier of what life rules within, whether it is Christ or self, whether it is faith or unbelief, is what the heart is set upon; Christ or earthly things.
It is probably true to say that in modern Christianity, there is too much of an unhealthy emphasis placed on worldly “success” and attributing of that to God’s benevolence. This is a dangerous condition and reflects the preoccupations of the world, rather than of Christ. So the heart that, at conversion, was equipped to soar with eagles and look upon the Almighty God in heavenly places, is put aside in favour of coveting what all unbelievers covet; the pleasures of this life, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things.
In one of the parables (Luke 12:16-20), Jesus spoke of the foolish man that accumulated great wealth to the extent that he could now put up his feet and take it easy, or “eat, drink and be merry”. But God told him that his life was required of him that very night.
“Thus is the one storing up things to himself and not being rich toward God” (Luke 12:21).
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