The writer of Hebrews in explaining why it is “impossible to please” God “without faith” says that the one “who comes to God must believe that He is,” and the same must believe that God “is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). Obviously, one has to believe that God exists. It is not just believing in His existence, but that He is a “rewarder” of those who diligently seek him. These two things are essential in coming to God, and the second requirement goes far beyond just believing that there is a God.
Believing that God is a “rewarder” of those who diligently seek Him implies several things. It recognizes that God is not far removed from his creation. God is searchable and knowable. He wants to be known. There is revelation from God that tells us about Him. To believe He is a rewarder says something about his character. God not only wants to be known, but He rewards those who diligently seek him with knowledge about Himself. Who is this God and what does He want me to know? If God wants to be known and has made revelation available, then it's not a stretch to conclude there is an accountability to God concerning that revelation.
Not only is there creation to reveal God and which gives reason to believe that He is—faith has an object (such as the evidence of God in creation), and to believe is to have faith—there is special revelation from God of who He is, and what He expects from us, that came through His involvement with mankind through prophets (especially from the nation of Israel) and ultimately through Jesus Christ.
We read in Hebrews 1:1-4: 1 God, Who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
The Apostle Paul makes reference to all these things when he was in Athens Greece on a place called the Areopagus, where certain philosophers and Athenians met:
22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; 23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.' 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead."
Acts 17:22-31
Paul's message here addresses these different issues of belief, and it speaks of an accountability to what God has revealed. The ultimate revelation was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead—that God has chosen Him as the revelation to mankind about Himself, and what He wants mankind to know and believe.
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