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January 3, 2026 |
| Questions Faith Does Not Ask | ||
In his letter to the Romans, it sounds like Paul is telling them that there are some questions about the faith that they should not ask. Is he saying that? If so, why? Are there flaws in the faith that would break the faith if they were discussed? Is he saying this to protect the faith from criticism?
But the righteousness which is in faith says thus: "You shall not say in your heart, 'Who ascended to Heaven and sent down the Messiah?', 7 and 'who went down to the Abyss of Sheol and brought up the Messiah from among the dead?'" (Romans 10:6-7)
The point that Paul is making in these two verses is part of a bigger point that he is making. In this study, we aren't interested in his bigger point, so that context is not useful to us here.
I'm going to paraphrase what he is saying.
"A man who is made righteous by faith does not question in his heart things like:
- 'how exactly did the Messiah come to Earth? Did someone go up to Heaven and bring him down?', or like:
- 'How exactly did the Messiah get out of Sheol? Did someone go down there and bring him up to Earth?'."
Yes, paraphrases are often longer than the original text. I'll simplify it this way.
"A man who is made righteous by faith does not question certain things in his heart." Then he gives two examples of such questions.
Paul doesn't explain why a righteous man would not do this. The answer is that faith covers those things that are not explained by God. If God says he did something, but doesn't explain how he did it, faith accepts that God did it without knowing how.
In some cases God gives us lots of details directly in his word. In other cases he has spread the details around in his word, and if we want to understand them, we have to collect them all and put them together. But in some cases, there are no details. A man of faith knows there is no value in pursuing what cannot be found.
This was doubting Thomas.
But Thoma, one of the twelve, who is called the twin, he was not there when Yeshua had come. 25 And the disciples were saying to him, "We have seen Our Lord", but he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the places of the nails and I shall put my fingers in them, and reach my hand into his side, I will not believe." (John 20:24-25)
When Thomas does get the chance to see the proof he wants, Jesus has an important message for him and for us.
And Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord, and my God." 29 Yeshua said to him, "Now that you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen me and have believed."
Jesus isn't only speaking about believing that he was resurrected. He is speaking about the blessing that comes with faith.
Despite Jesus' words, the unbeliever and the doubter say, "I expect nothing less than the proof that was shown to Thomas. If he can stick his fingers in Christ's wounds to verify the resurrection, I should be able to as well." (unknown source)
Paul's point is the reverse of that though. He is saying that if you have questions like that in your heart, you are not a man made righteous by faith. Instead you are engaged in faithless questioning.
Faithless questioning requires answers to all the questions before faith can be possible. But because there are no answers to some of the questions, faith is never possible. It's an attempt to build faith on fact, which is not possible. It's the insistence, "show me and I will believe."
Faithless questioning never ends. If one question is answered, there will be another. The problem was never the question. It was always the heart behind it.
The verses from Romans have a qualifier that we need to understand: "shall not say in your heart." It is possible to say in your mind (to think): how can this be? I can't believe this. Jesus did and said many things that were stunning to the mind. Being stunned would be a normal response, and not what Paul is talking about. Having the doubt in your heart brings the unending faithless questions to mind. That is the problem.
In the verses we are studying, Paul uses examples that would have been familiar to the Roman church; perhaps some of them had even said them. Here is an example that is closer to our time.
It is generally understood that the Bible is inerrant in the sense that the words in the Bible are the words of God. If God dictated the Bible, why are the authors' styles so different?
It's true that each author has a style of his own. That makes it seem like God isn't dictating the prophecy. The Bible says nothing about this.
If this question raises a doubt in your heart, you have a problem. Do not let their faithless questioning cause you to doubt.
This example is more insidious than it may seem. It is put forward by liberals who want to attack your faith so you will stop believing God dictated the scripture. Then you will be like them, believing that the Bible's authors were writing of themselves about their experiences.
This is very similar to what the Sadducees were doing with the question about the woman with 7 husbands. Nowhere did the Bible explain how this case would work. The Sadducees were using that lack of an explanation to cause people to doubt and adopt their way of thinking.
Without an explanation, the people needed to answer the Sadducee question with, "The Bible doesn't say, but you are always twisting God's word." The same answer suffices for our question.
The answer, "God said it; I believe it;" is not a cop out. It's a statement of fact and faith.
That doesn't mean we should avoid looking for answers to questions like these. We also shouldn't be hard-set on some belief. We need to follow the Spirit's lead, and we must not let the question raise a doubt in us.
Often there is an answer that is tucked away in some corner of the Bible. Sometimes there is a Biblically valid alternative to their answer. For our example, their answer is that God did not dictate the scriptures. An alternative answer is that God did dictate the scriptures, and he did it in the personal style of each author. God can do that.
A valid alternative answer like that is as good as their answer because neither one has Biblical support. The alternative answer makes the case that there are other ways to answer the question. Their way is not the only way.
But sometimes an alternative answer doesn't present itself. In that case we need to put the question on a shelf in your minds along with all the other things we do not understand.
Do not doubt.