Why can’t people believe?
You’ve probably questioned this.
Why is it that people can’t or won’t believe? Is there something that prevents them? Is there something you and I can do to help people know God and follow him completely?
I see three reasons why people can’t believe.
First, some people can’t believe because they haven’t heard the story or understood the message. Yesterday I preached from John 9, the events surrounding Jesus and his disciples’s and their interaction with a man blind from his birth.
The man’s physical blindness became a picture of the spiritual blindness of the people of Israel.
This man had never heard the message.
Many people in Jesus day had never heard the good news. It’s the same today. People who live where the preaching of the word of God is prohibited have a hard time believing.
Many younger generations in our own country have never really heard the message, at least not the real message of Jesus who became sin for us so that we might become His righteousness.
When this man heard who Jesus was and saw his great power, he confessed, “Lord, I believe.”
Second, many people can’t believe because their wrong beliefs get in the way.
For example, many of the people of Jesus’ day had set views of God that wouldn’t allow them to understand that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. That happens in our day as well. Our old wrong beliefs get in the way and keep us from truly knowing God.
What beliefs are getting in your way? What truth do you need to share with a friend or family member?
Third, many people can’t believe because the cost of change is too great. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day would not let themselves see the truth. Their eyes were blind; their hearts were hard; and they rejected the truth of God.
I see many times where someone’s behavior becomes more important than the truth.
Is there some “pet sin” you need to reject and renounce?
How can you begin your life with God?
Begin like the man of John 9 who confessed his faith by exclaiming “Lord, I believe.” ” Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).
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3 Responses
Judas’ life is an amazing, enigmatic example. He was with Jesus, saw the miracles heard His wonderful teachings; yet if he did believe, something evil was in him that was greater than his faith in Christ. Jesus said he was a “devil” [John 6:70-71]. Perhaps there are still those who fall into that category. I never give up hope for anyone, but it certainly seems that some are so far into the darkness that they cannot even see the Light. This should make every born again Christian incredibly thankful that we have been able to hear His voice and recognize Him as Emanuel, God with us.
One problem of man about believing stands out above all others, namely, the inability to believe, a sinful inability, but an inability nevertheless. In Mk.9:23 Jesus said to the father of the demon possessed child, “If you can belief….” When the man responded, he said that he believed. Then he realized that his believing was really an insult to the Lord. After all, he had said to the Lord in 9:22, “If you can do anything; have compassion on us, and help us.” That is why he cried in vs. 24, “help my unbelief, i.e., help me overcome my unbelief.” In Mk.10:17-27 we find that when our Lord asked the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give to the poor, he was asking him to do the impossible. Perhaps that is why our Lord compared his call to the lost like a call to dead people, Jn.5:25, where, evidently, the power had to be of God, not the power of man. There is also the comparison of salvation to being born. If there is one thing a human has no control over, it is in the birth process. There is a reason for this emphasis on inability, namely, a therapeutic paradox, one designed to awaken the sinner to his or her deepest need, to show him or her how bad their situation truly is. In other words, it is one of helpless, so helpless in fact that the individual can only cry, like the drown person, “Save me.” It throws the sinner at the feet of the Lord, begging for mercy, for help for change. The sinner is invited to embrace his or her inability as the very means of appealing to God, of securing God’s help where it is most needed, namely, in the sinner’s very helplessness.
I posit that all mankind as the innate capacity to believe in God. That is the character of free will; to choose God or reject Him, and to choose good or absence from good which is evil. Augustine and Alvin Plantinga have excellent discourses on this subject.