Conditional Faith - The Life of a Skeptic

Skeptic (def) - a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions. What is your inclination? Is it to doubt what you read in the Bible? I read some people on Reddit saying that Jesus dying on the cross for people who hate Him and are guilty of sin is just too good to be true. Hmmm. Looking at true salvation makes our perspective cause us to not believe in Jesus dying for a lost world, and for sure not rising from the dead. It is all beyond their reasoning, and so skepticism is a natural perspective for a lost person. When presented with the gospel, the power of the message truly causes a lost person to pause and change their thinking, because of the power of the Word of God. Keep in mind that doubt or skepticism should end at the point you are born again, because if you trust Jesus enough for eternal life, which is huge, you should also trust Him in other ways. Jesus calls this the better faith, and skepticism will cause our faith to dwindle if we are not fully committed.

This faith is called a Conditional Faith, which means to believe according to what I think about something and not about what God's Word says. This faith is weak at the core and influenced by the World, or the flesh. The disciples had their doubts about fully trusting Jesus, so it is possible for us to think in the same way, and Jesus dealt with this by using the dishonoring of parents as an example in Matthew 15. Matthew 15: ³ Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? ⁴ For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ ⁵ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ ⁶ In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ⁸ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.⁹ Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” ¹⁰ Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand. ¹¹ It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.” ¹² Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you realize you offended the Pharisees by what you just said?” ¹³ Jesus replied, “Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted, ¹⁴ so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.”

Do you honor God with your heartfelt belief in all His word, or just the parts you want to believe? Time to get off the fence and quit following man-made ideas that are empty and worthless. I know there are some things in the Bible that cause us to pause and think, "Can this be?" But just like the person I mentioned earlier in the blog who was trying to look at salvation through human reasoning, it comes back to faith, as Jesus says, a better faith.

Don't put human conditions on spiritual matters. It just won't work!!

The Pilgrimage Continues,

David Warren