“…faith is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews
11:1)
What is
faith? We need to understand that faith is not just believing blindly. It is not a blind leap into unknown territory without any assurance whatsoever... instead, it is a
trust and belief that is based on the foundation of facts the God has
presented. I would like to consider how God has preceded His request for our faith with Scripture.
Consider
this; Paul struggled to convince others of a resurrection; why? Was it because
there was no proof? Of course not; there is a massive level of proof of the
resurrection of Christ. The problem is that we stop looking at evidence, and start
to look at the misdirection of the world.
If you are a
born again Christian, there is a reason you are a born again Christian. You
decided to believe God… He told you that you were a sinner; and we have that
evidence; He told us that that “…Christ died for our sins according to the
scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day
according to the scriptures…” (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
So, wait…why
should I believe that?
To answer
that, we must first understand the purpose of the Scriptures. Is the Bible just
this book that some guy wrote? Is it a fictional account that someone imagined
and cobbled together?
Let us just
consider the Gospels; the reason for their existence was not just to tell us
about the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ for posterity; if that
were the case, one Gospel was quite sufficient. The Gospels form the body of
EVIDENCE that those things happened; historically. It is the eyewitness
testimony of those who were there.
Simon
Greenleaf was a professor of law, and one of the principle founders of the Harvard
Law School
He was
certain that an exhaustive examination of the internal witness of the Gospels
would dispel the central theme of Christianity; the myth that there Christ was
resurrected from the dead. This is a great study, which we do not have time to
fully convey in the space allotted; but suffice to say that after years of
exhaustive research and analysis, after carefully weighing the evidence
presented historically and in Scripture, he concluded that the witnesses were
reliable, and that the resurrection did in fact happen.
The point is
this; God has asked for our faith in His Word; but he has provided the proof
already that His word can be trusted. The question is, do you trust it?
“If any
unbiased jury in the world considered the evidence for the resurrection of
Christ, they would have to conclude that Jesus of Nazareth
—
Simon Greenleaf
*taken from Constructing Character by Steve C. Roberts
