We don’t know. And we can’t, because God’s existence is improvable. Both theists and atheists can offer evidence for their position, but neither can provide proof.

As evidence for the existence of God, most Christians offer their personal encounters with the Divine, as well as the experiences of others in Scripture and in history—changed lives, miraculous healings, talking clouds, etc. Another source of evidence is natural science; the staggering complexities of the universe may indicate a highly intelligent celestial Designer. Christian philosophers and logicians offer their own brands of analytical evidence, too.

Yet, all of it comes down to faith. Christians believe in God because they’ve been given the ability. God resurrected their sin-deadened spirits by indwelling them with his own Spirit. This divine possession gives Christians their ability to believe so strongly the improvable and at times nonsensical claims of Jesus and his apostles.

“The saddest day after someone dies is the third day, because for those three days the soul wanders around the grave continually trying to get back into its body, but then when it sees that the color of its face has turned gray, the soul goes away and never returns.”

An ancient religious text, known as the Genesis Rabba, records this Jewish belief. The text itself comes from the early fifth century A.D., but this belief that it records is much older and likely even dates back to the first century when Jesus was teaching his gospel. It’s why when Jesus received an urgent message saying his friend, Lazarus, was sick, he waited two more days before going to him.

By the time Jesus finally made it to Lazarus’ side, the man had been dead for four days. The dead man’s sisters welcomed Jesus into their house of mourning with the comment that had he not taken his sweet time getting there, their brother would still be alive. Others in the community grumbled, too: “Could not he who healed a blind man keep Lazarus from dying?” (Jn 11.37).

Jesus could have, but wanted to make a point. He intended to heal Lazarus all along, but waited until the fourth day to ensure everyone in that community understood very definitively that Lazarus was dead. It is the day after Lazarus’ spirit has left the body, gone away never to return. Lazarus is dead. Not sick. Not asleep. Dead.

Only then does Jesus stand in front of his friend’s tomb and yell, “Lazarus! Come out of there!” (Jn 11.43).

At his call, sounds of shuffling echoed from inside the cave, and moments later a surprising figure hopped out of its darkness into the light, wrapped head to toe in burial cloths.

You and I may stand and shout at every mausoleum as loud as we like, but we will not produce the same result as Christ. What happened that afternoon was not a natural cause and effect but a supernatural intervention. By itself, Lazarus’ corpse could neither hear nor respond to Jesus’ calling. Before the dead man could take action, Christ had to awaken him supernaturally from his death.

It’s the same thing God does for every Christian. Before we can ever hear and respond to Christ’s call of salvation, we too must be supernaturally awakened. The Apostle Paul explains:

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of humankind. (Eph 2.1-3)

Before we became Christians, we were spiritually dead because of our sins. Paul rambles through an impressive run-on sentence to make this point razor sharp. He wants us to understand very definitively that we had turned away from life with God and there was no hope for our return. We were dead. Not sick. Not asleep. Dead. Only then does he tell us the rest:

But while we were dead in our sins, God (who is rich in mercy!), because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ. By grace, you have been saved! (Eph 2.4-5)

The reason we are Christians—the reason we believe—is because God gave us a supernatural ability to do so. While we lay spiritually dead in our tombs of sin, God made us alive and called our names with the command, “Come out of there!”

“By grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not of your doing. It is the gift of God.” (Eph 2.8)

Because we have been made alive and been given this gift of faith, we are able to choose to believe. Those who still lie dead cannot.

Photo by malik ml williams.

In 112 A.D., Pliny the Younger was governor of a northeastern Roman province named Bithynia. A successful and experienced Roman diplomat, Pliny had built a lifelong career of traveling the empire to work with vastly different people on many different projects. But when he arrived in Bithynia, Pliny came across a strange cult that he had no idea how to deal with.

Its beliefs were spreading through the cities, villages, and farms, and reaching into every rank of the society he was charged with governing. Alarmed at this growing foreign influence, Pliny interrogated members of the cult to discover the nature of their beliefs. He concluded that it was a “depraved, excessive superstition,” and punished with execution anyone who adhered to it. But it wasn’t the beliefs of this religious group that Pliny deemed deserving of death. There was something else—something about the religious group’s followers—that angered Pliny. He wrote:

In the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment. Those who persisted I ordered executed, for I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their belief, such stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished.

Pliny was demanding that Christians stop being Christians. He might as well have ordered them to stop being human. Pliny couldn’t comprehend the impossibility of what he was asking anymore than the father of a young girl named Perpetua could a hundred years later.

In 203 A.D., Vibia Perpetua was a 22-year-old Roman citizen, born from a noble family, educated, well married, and a new mother. She was also a new believer imprisoned by the Roman Empire for refusing to recant her Christian belief.

While incarcerated and awaiting trial, her father visited relentlessly and as she, herself, wrote, “continually strove to hurt my faith because of his love.”

“Have pity, daughter, on my grey hairs!” he cried. “Have pity on your father, if I am worthy to be called father by you. If with these hands I have brought you into this flower of youth, and I have preferred you before all your brothers, do not give me over to the reproach of men. Think of your brothers. Think of your mother and your aunt. Think of your infant son! He will die without his mother to care for him. Give up your resolution; do not destroy us all together!” All this he said fatherly in his love for me, kissing my hands and groveling at my feet with many tears.

Perpetua tried to explain to her father the impossibility of what he asked. Through the bars of her cell, she pointed to a clay jar sitting on the floor in a corner. “Dad, do you see that pot?”

His tear-strained eyes followed her finger to the floor. “Yes, sweetheart, I see it.”

“Can that pot be anything other than what it is?”

“…No.”

“Neither can I be anything other than that which I am, a Christian.”

Days later, on March 7th, 203 A.D., Perpetua walked with a small group of fellow believers into the Carthage amphitheater, surrounded by blasts of a cheering crowd. For that crowd’s amusement, and as part of the birthday celebration for the emperor’s son, these believers were thrown into the arena unarmed and unclothed at the feet of wild beasts and gladiators—because they refused to denounce their Christian beliefs.

My dear fellow Christian, the ancient world knew us—and despised us—for unyielding, obstinate belief past all reason, against the odds, beyond every hope, through despair, in crisis moments, under the blade, to the very bottom of the lion’s stomach. If we are following in the ancient faithful’s footsteps, this shouldn’t be any different today. We are believers. We believe.

There is a reason why we are so obstinate in our faith. There is a reason why we will never recant. It’s the reason I’ll tell you about next week.

The painting is The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer (1883) by Jean-Leon Gerome. Sources: The Letter of Pliny. The Passion of Perpetua.