Believe: The Verb of the Gospels

Recently I was reading through the gospel of John looking to see what commands Jesus gave to His disciples and witnesses, during His brief 3-year ministry on earth. I combed through the book of John and began underlining Jesus’ commandments (orders telling us to do an action, i.e. verb, i.e. listen). There was one commandment, summed up in one word, listed 84 times in the NIV translation of the book of John. The word I discovered is “believe.”

Today I am sitting down with our pastor Rafael Ruiz to ask- why did Jesus place so much emphasis on the command to believe?

Pastor Rafael: Belief is to have confidence in the truth. To trust what’s being said about something or someone. Even more when there’s no immediate physical proof or the person asked to do so did not witness something in person.

Jesus used the verb "believe" to turn people toward God and away from their human ways. His mission on earth was to restore the broken relationship between God and humanity. Yet in a world saturated by religious practices, the command to believe was not enough for many, including His disciples. Jesus told them He would die and rise up, but as soon as things went wrong, they stopped believing.

The disciples reasoning makes sense, who comes back from the dead anyway?

After Jesus died and was resurrected, belief was still an issue for a disciple named Thomas. Thomas needed to touch Jesus’ wounds to believe. Jesus then said: “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me” (John 20:29).

Throughout life, we all are asked to believe in many things but the source is not always a reliable one. It makes sense that the only way Jesus could captivate the attention of many was by performing miracles. But even after the blessings and miracles happened, people struggled to believe and trust. It’s difficult to trust someone you can see; it is even harder to trust someone you just heard about.

That’s why Jesus repeatedly taught and reminded his followers of the importance of believing. Without belief, you cannot surrender everything to Him. You cannot receive His gift or acknowledge His divinity. Believing is the first step toward a relationship with God and our journey toward eternal life.

We all can do better at trusting God and believing in Him.