The Sin of Unbelief

The sin of unbelief is something that will keep us in cycles of sin simply because we don’t believe God is good. We don’t believe in the gospel fully and we don’t believe we are enough to receive God’s goodness. I was reminded of this when viewing a film this past week about Hosea. The film is called, “Sinners Wanted.” The blessing of the Lord could be right before our eyes and we will not see it due to unbelief.  This is what the woman in the film depicted and this is why it is so important that we guard what we allow ourselves to meditate on and we become intentional about building our faith.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy (holy, consecrated) faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. – Jude 1:20

We all will have circumstances that test our faith. Years ago, I remember feeling like a bad example and failure while speaking to kids in public schools about healthy relationships and abstinence. The kids would always ask me if I was in a relationship and I’d say no. This one day when I was asked the question, I began to feel the above emotions of guilt and failure. I took a bathroom break in between classes and God spoke to me clearly asking me this question, “Where is your faith?”

Unbelief causes us to become stuck on how things appear, but because God loves us, he gives us his perspective which builds our faith. I share in my first book, “The Single Christian Woman’s Guide” how God bought resolve to the encroaching unbelief that attempted to ensue me through furthering the discussion through his word. In short, God let me know that things would not always be as I’d seen them at that time. There was another side of this singleness journey I had to get to. God has been walking with me and his word has helped to build my faith along the way.

You see our faith-walk is a journey. No one has it all together, but building our faith through God’s word helps us to walk safe, secure, and sound.

Religious people are some of the hardest people to get to believe the gospel because of being blinded by their religious piety. For example, when I was in college, I interviewed a Jehovah’s witness, Jewish priest, Muslim minister, and Christian for a brief documentary presented as a project in college.

The Jew shared how her Jewish place of worship stood on the belief that Jesus was not as honorable as Moses. They did not look at Jesus as the Son of God or savior of the world, but as a good Jew, but not as good as Moses. This was dishonoring to the Biblical fact that Moses along with other figures and scriptures in the old testament only exist to point to Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ is the only way for man to be saved.

Jesus had to go into Egypt to be preserved and grow up into the God-man who delivered his people—all who place their trust in him. Moses likewise had to go into Egypt as a baby to be preserved from the Pharaoh who sought all of the lives of the male children 2 and under. Moses, in the process, learned the Egyptian ways and gained the favor that allowed him to intercede on behalf of the Hebrews—his blood brethren. In this way along with other similarities, Moses was what some Bible scholars call a type of Christ, which is an image-bearer that points directly to Christ.

Even though Christ stood right in front of the religious leaders, they did not recognize him as Christ but instead despised him. Meanwhile, those who were first to worship Christ were called Magi, which are non-religious wise men of the world.

In summary, it skews our perception to operate out of unbelief. Operating out of skewed perceptions is dangerous and leads to sin. It causes us to deny the blessing of the Lord while operating out of a lower than mindset. We have to be diligent with building ourselves up with God’s word to avoid the sin of unbelief.

Unbelief will cause us to give up on trusting in God for our deliverance, freedom, and the right as those made in his image too, like Moses, point others to him. Unbelief will cause us to return to what is familiar rather than stepping out in the unknown of faith.

The earlier mentioned film is a depiction of Gomer and Hosea—a prostitute and man of God who got married in the old testament at God’s command. God commanded this to be a metaphor for Christ and the church. No matter where we are at in our faith-walk, God is still committed to us. He still holds up his end of the marriage when we do not, and this in and of itself should compel us to seek to walk in faith in Christ.