Well, Do You Believe or Not? Yes! Help!

by Rev. Mark Buetow

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24)

Do you believe in God? Absolutely not! I hate God. I hate the idea of God. There is no “supreme being.” Life is what you make it and I’m on my own to do the best I can until I die. Do you believe in God? Yes! I believe that Jesus is the Christ! He died for me and lives in me and works in me to do good to others and love my neighbor. The first answer sounds like a staunch atheist, firm in his lack of belief in God. The second sounds like the answer a Christian would give. But what if both of those answers are from a Christian? Does that even make sense? How can you not believe and believe at the same time?

Jesus encountered a man with a demon-possessed son who told Him, “If you are able, do something.” It’s almost as if he wasn’t sure Jesus could drive the demon out. Jesus replies, “If you are able to believe, all things are possible…” So the man cries out, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” This is a beautiful confession of faith that this man makes. He clearly trusts in Jesus and yet he realizes his faith is weak and, in fact, he is full of unbelief at the same time. How can that be?

God’s Word teaches that we are completely saints, justified by grace, sanctified and made holy by Jesus and perfect in God’s sight for Christ’s sake. Yet we are also completely sinners, enemies of God, our sinful flesh denying Him and trying to do its own thing all the time. It’s what Paul struggles with as he confesses to the Romans: “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin” (Romans 7:22-25). He also describes this in Galatians, saying, “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:17-18).

You know this struggle. You know the right thing to do and the sin you’d rather commit to do something else. You know how to behave, and what the Commandments say, but you also know the lure and draw of temptations to sin. You know that Jesus died for you and rose again and that all your sins are forgiven, and yet you wonder and doubt whether all of that is true. Maybe you wonder if Jesus is even real. These thoughts are warring against each other all the time. Your sinful nature, led on by the glittering temptations of the world and the whispers of the devil, wants to go one way. But as a new creation in Christ, born from above in Holy Baptism, with a mind captive to Christ Jesus, you want to flee from sin and do what is right and what glorifies God and is a good blessing for those around you. That’s the “simul” which comes from the phrase “simul justus et peccator,” which means “simultaneously saint and sinner.” That’s just a description of our life in this world as we live as Christians who have sinful flesh but are new creations in Jesus.

How do we reconcile these two natures in us? How do we live with both of them? This is not something we can do. It must be done by Christ’s work and gifts in us. This is why the Small Catechism teaches this way about Baptism: What does such baptizing with water indicate? It indicates that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires. It also indicates that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. In other words, it is Jesus who overcomes your sin and delivers you through the promises He makes to you in Holy Baptism.

It looks kind of like this: Whatever in you that is sinful and wicked and unbelieving is covered, forgiven, and buried. Whatever in you that is good, and holy, and a new creation is strengthened and blessed in you as Christ lives in you. But the two natures in you are not equal. One is the power of sin, stirred up by the world and the devil. The other is of God Himself, redeemed by Jesus and made holy by the Spirit who gives you the forgiveness that wins out over the sins of your flesh. The struggle is answered by Jesus and overcome by Him and what He has done by His cross and death and resurrection, and what He gives you in your Baptism, Absolution, and His Word and Supper.

You see, because we have this struggle, it is often taught that if we just remember that God gives us the power, and we add in some willpower, we’ll be able to simply make the right choice, avoid the sin, and be holy by our actions. But what we really need is the Gospel, the Good News, the forgiveness of sins that Jesus gives us to not count our sinful flesh’s actions against us but instead to cultivate faith, hope, love, and good works as the fruit of faith in us. It’s the forgiveness we receive from Jesus that is used by the Spirit to actually work in us to fight off the sinful nature and to let our new person in Christ be busy living for others. So the answer to this struggle is to live in Christ and His gifts. It means to be in church where His forgiveness is given out and it means to live each day remembering our Baptism, putting down our sinful nature in repentance and living in faith as the new people we are in Christ.

If someone asks whether we believe in God, we can say, “Well, according to my sinful nature, not at all. But that sinful nature has been crucified with Christ! What I trust in now is the Savior who has made me a new creation. I do believe! And I pray every day for the Lord to help my unbelief!” After all, when it comes to our faith and our unbelief, faith is from Jesus, and whatever is from Him and in Him will win out over that which isn’t. It has to, because Jesus is greater than our sin and He has triumphed over sin and death and has triumphed over your sin and death!

Rev. Mark Buetow is the pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in McHenry, Illinois.