O faithless generation!

And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, "What are you arguing about with them?" And someone from the crowd answered him, "Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able." And he answered them, "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me."
(Mar 9:14-19)

If you look into the context of this passage, we see that previously, Jesus was transfigured in front of his closest disciples and showed them His glory. And while coming back, some of His disciples tried healing a demon possessed child but failed. And then they were bringing that child to Jesus. Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith in healing that demon since they had not fasted and prayed to God to give them power of the Holy Spirit to chase it. And also it is an insult for Jesus, since He was still with them in the world and He was not taken up into heaven. If a patient is purposefully going and getting treated from a junior doctor infront of a senior consultant, it means that the patient is ill informed about the seniority of the doctor or he is insulting the senior doctor in purpose by not trusting him. Likewise it would have been insulting to Jesus because of the lack of faith upon the Sovereign creator and sustainer of the universe standing with them to heal the child. So He rebuked them. He rebuked them for their foolishness.

In our time, if we are teaching a doctrine or teaching which is contrary to one’s beliefs, then the common response of an evangelical Christian is, 'we should not offend his/her belief systems'. They say we should be very gentle with unbelievers. Many believe that we should not even tell the unbelievers that they are wrong. And they go to the extremes saying it is not loving if we rebuke them for their lack of faith in God of Scripture.

This philosophy is based on new age worldview, which believes in no absolutes. Truth is relative for them. So if they say that, we should not call others as wrong, then there is some sense in it. But it is really surprising for me to find many evangelicals having the same view.

But if we look in the Scripture, many times both in Old testament and New testament, we find prophets and apostles rebuking the unbelievers for their unbelief. In Old testament, we find prophets using words like ‘fools’ (Isa 19:13; 44:25, Jer 50:36), ‘stupid’ (Isa 19:11, Jer 4:22; 10:8; 10:14; 10:21), etc. In New testament times, we see John the Baptist rebuking unbelievers with words like ‘brood of vipers’ (Mat 3:7), Paul rebuking Galatians as ‘foolish’ (Gal 3:1). Now the smarter evangelicals would say, ‘we should follow Jesus, not John the Baptist’. Well, Jesus rebuked more than anyone else in the Scripture. Jesus used the words like ‘fox’ (Luke 13:32), ‘fools’ (Mat 23:17, Luke 11:40), ‘hypocrites’ (Mat 15:7; 22:18; 23:13,15,23,25,25,29) and rebuked them for their lack of faith (Mat 8:26, Mat 14:21, Mat 16:8, Mat 17:17).

And remember that prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah lived in a hostile situation, where even if they say negatively against the evil emperors, their lives would be at stake. But still they went to the extremes of it and they rebuked them harshly with severe terms like ‘fools’ against kings, emperors and officials. And infact, one of the reasons why Pharisees crucified Jesus is because they were offended by the words He used against them. So even then, they used severe terms like that because they were messengers of God and it is God who was rebuking the evil emperors. And as messengers of God, we need to tell the unbelievers exactly like how God calls them, because the light of Scripture (God’s word) is illuminated to we believers, not to unbelievers and we are the messengers of God now.

Now many will quote, 1 Pet 3:16, and say we should be prepared to give reason for our faith with ‘gentleness and respect’. But if you look in the context, we see that Peter is talking about submission to authorities. So in that context, he is referring to presenting the gospel to the authorities (parents, husbands, church authorities, government officials). To authorities, we need to present them the gospel truth with ‘gentleness and respect’ because God has placed them in that position, and we need to respect them not for the sake of them but for the sake of God. That’s why Paul asked for repentance (Acts 23:5) after he harshly rebukes the High Priest (Acts 23:3) for his unbelief. We cannot generalise this to all.

I am not telling that we should call every unbelievers whom we are encountering as fools, but if a person is consistently rejecting Christ out of his foolish sinful nature, it is our duty to show his unbelief to him and the foolishness in it. He may get offended, but that’s what Bible says (1Pet 2:8).

Instead, if we think that offending unbelievers because of the gospel will put them down and not ‘loving’, and we are preaching a watered down ‘gospel’ then it means that we are ashamed of the gospel. We are just trying to please men and God. But we can’t please both man and God. We should not be afraid of men. It will become a snare for us (Pro 29:25). If the prophets of the old and the apostles of the new testament were ready to risk their lives to use such indictments, we should not be afraid to use them either to preach the gospel. We may lose their friendship at best or may even lose our life at worst, but still we should be afraid of the One who can destroy both our ‘soul’ and ‘body’ (Mat 10:28).

Are we afraid of men or God? Are you thinking you will be hated by majority of people (including many ‘reformed’ Christians) for being faithful to Scripture? Let me end with the quote of Martin Luther:

“Of whom shall I be afraid? One with God is a majority”

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