“So watch your step, friends. Make sure there’s no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God.” (Hebrews 3:12, The Message)
The writer to Hebrews warns of the danger of unbelief in Heb 3.12. According to the Louw-Nida lexicon, the word unbelief here means to refuse to put one’s trust or reliance in something or someone—‘to not believe (in), to refuse to believe, to not trust in, unbelief. BDAG defines it as: unwillingness to commit oneself to another or respond positively to the other’s words or actions. Implicit in the definition seems to be the issue of self-will, one refuses to put one's trust, or; one is unwilling to commit oneself.
Unbelief then, does not mean incredulity, as if the message was just too "out there" to believe. Unbelief implies self-will and choice, one understands a message, one chooses not to trust or rely upon it.
This helps us get at why the writer to Hebrews warns so strongly against unbelief, or as the ESV translates it: an evil, unbelieving heart. The stakes are incredibly high, indeed they could not be higher because unbelief can lead to falling away from the living God, and if that happens, what is left?
No comments:
Post a Comment