Most Christians are very familiar with the Biblical account of Peter’s denial of Yahshua on the night that He was brought before the Jewish leaders and sentenced as a transgressor to be crucified. Peter did not understand until later that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things. To his eyes it appeared that Yahshua was being overcome by evil men. To Peter’s thinking, the One whom he had confessed as the Son of God, and whom he had hoped would soon establish His earthly rule with His disciples at His side, was unexpectedly demonstrating great weakness and vulnerability. Doubts filled Peter’s mind concerning the person and claims of Yahshua. In his confusion all faith fled away to be replaced with a skulking fear, and this fear led to his thrice uttered denial of having any familiarity or association with this man.

This night represents the very lowest point of Peter’s life. He denied knowing the One who was about to lay His life down for him. When Yahshua was prepared to give all He had for Peter, Peter would not even admit knowing Him. Only after what Yahshua had prophesied to Peter occurred, and Peter heard the cock crow a second time, did Peter understand that Yahshua had foreseen these things and none of it had taken Him by surprise. We are told that Peter went out and wept bitterly over his failure. Fear and unbelief had joined together to lead Peter to a great denial of the Son of God, and this understanding was bitter to endure.

And the Lord said, "Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not [utterly] fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren."

It is a terrible thing to deny Christ, but there is also hope for restoration should we ever find ourselves in this unhappy place. Peter was restored, and he did strengthen his brothers. He was not totally and immediately set free from the fear of man, for later we see him acquiescing to the opinion and pressure of the Judaisers and acting in what Paul describes as a hypocritical manner. Yet when confronted with his failure again, he once more repented and was again used as a vessel of honor in God’s household to strengthen and encourage others.

Growing up in Baptist churches I had the seriousness of denying Christ drilled into my brain. Often when a pastor was trying to recruit people for some neighborhood evangelistic outreach, or for Wednesday night visitation, he would quote the following.

“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.”

As a youth I was extremely shy and introspective, and I struggled with a tremendous feeling of inferiority. When I spoke with adults, or even other youth whom I did not know well, I rarely looked them in the eye due to my insecurity. Going out and speaking to adults and other youth whom I did not know was a thought that filled me with terror. Yet the words of the Pastor filled me with an even greater terror, “If you do not join us in going out and proclaiming Christ, then Christ will deny you when you stand before Him on the day of judgment.”

Because I feared God and did not want to be denied by Him, I participated in outreach when many who were far bolder chose to remain home, excusing themselves in various ways. It was years later that I understood the error of the pastor in proclaiming a works based salvation that had more to do with what the saints did than it had to do with Christ’s full and complete work on the cross and in His resurrection. Yet I still understood that denying Christ was a very serious matter.

More recently, however, I have come to understand that denying Christ, and demonstrating a lack of faith, can be much more subtle than what was seen in Peter’s point blank denial of knowing Yahshua. Unbelief manifests in many ways, and it is exposing unbelief in the hearts of the saints that this writing is directed toward. You may be surprised to discern how it often manifests.

We cannot please God without faith. We must believe in God’s existence AND that He will reward all men one day for the deeds done in the body. We are told that faith working in love is what truly counts before God. We are told that the good news that has been preached to the saints regarding Christ and salvation will do them no good unless it is united with faith. And we read our Lord’s sobering question regarding His return, “When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

There are many more ways to demonstrate unbelief than an outright denial of Christ. Yahshua’s question wasn’t mere rhetoric. Faith is truly hard to find among the saints today. If the saints actually believed that God will reward their every action, that He will judge every idle word, that He will come as a thresher of grain and separate the wheat from the chaff, that their every work will be tested with fire, then lives would be conducted in radically different ways than they are today.

I have sat and reflected on this matter much recently due to an event that I have observed in the lives of some friends that our family has known for many years. We formerly attended the same church as this couple, and I even worked with him on occasion. They were often in our home, and we were in theirs.

This couple has been married for over twenty years and they have two children, a daughter who is fourteen and a son who is around ten. Ever since I have known this family, which has been about eighteen years, they have had a business that they have worked to develop, and it has consumed inordinate amounts of their time. A workweek where each of them worked one hundred hours was not unusual. They even added a kitchen and sleeping quarters at their business so they would not have to travel home every night.

I have expressed concern about this intense focus upon building a business to the exclusion of other things, particularly an exclusion of a healthy relationship with Christ, at times. However, in recent years we have seen one another very little as our lives have taken us in different directions. Recently this couple contacted us and we learned that the wife was asking for a divorce from her husband. My wife and I both counseled them against this course, but they were intransigent.

Things became very ugly between them as they both hired lawyers to represent them in court, and to tear down their spouse. I was appalled at the things I heard as we continued to speak to them about this matter. The husband’s lawyer depicted the wife as being sexually promiscuous due to some lingerie purchases she had made, though the husband confessed to me that he knew these inferences of infidelity were not true. He said that you had to let the lawyers do their job, and this included defaming others with false accusations. The wife in turn agreed to allow her lawyer to depict her husband as being mentally unstable due to a problem he had in controlling his anger. He was accused in court of being insane.

Other family members were drawn into this bitter argument and a rift has been made in many lives and relationships. Cruel and unkind words have flown and spiteful measures taken as they have lashed out at one another in hatred and anger. The divorce is now final and each parent has custody of a single child, and great hurt has occurred as the children were led to choose sides. My heart has grieved over what I have observed, and I have shared my counsel with the husband regarding what was transpiring.

He assured me that he didn’t want the divorce, and I believe he was sincere in this. He spoke to his wife repeatedly telling her that he did not want a divorce, but she was immovable. He spoke of his fear that she would take everything that they owned and he would be left with nothing. I advised him to let her have it, that it was all wood, hay and stubble, and that it was much more important to honor and obey God, and to not fail in love, than it was to hold onto some material possessions.

I counseled him from Scripture, telling him about David’s situation when his son Absalom sought to take the entire kingdom away from him. David entrusted himself to Yahweh. When Zadok the priest brought the Ark of God to David as he was departing Jerusalem, David responded in this way:

The king said to Zadok, "Return the ark of God to the city. If I find favor in the sight of Yahweh, then He will bring me back again and show me both it and His habitation. But if He should say thus, "I have no delight in you,' behold, here I am, let Him do to me as seems good to Him."

I advised this brother that what he was facing was the chastening hand of God, and that the best response he could choose was to humble himself before God and ask for mercy. I told him that he must choose to forgive his wife from the heart, and to demonstrate to her that even at this time that he preferred her welfare over his own. In this way he might in time win back her heart and experience reconciliation. To respond insult for insult, and to reply to harsh words and actions with more of the same, would be greatly displeasing to God, and it would stay Yahweh’s hand from the mercy and grace that He might otherwise pour forth upon him.

I shared many things with this brother to persuade him to consider that the only thing that mattered was whether God would look upon his life one day and say, “Well done.” All else was as nothing in comparison. “What does a man profit if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” What would he profit if he kept his business and some possessions, yet he incurred God’s disapproval of his methods and actions? What if he held onto some of the mammon of this world, but he failed in love and faith? Sadly, this man chose a worldly solution to his trial. He hired a lawyer to defame his wife and to allow him to hold onto as much of their joint possessions as possible. He was successful in accomplishing his own desire, but he has failed miserably before God.

How could this happen among two people who are professing Christians, and who acknowledge the existence of God? I have thought much on this recently, and I have observed that unbelief is the main reason that two people who are called to be conformed to Christ could walk as those who are conformed to Satan, lying and hating and acting with a murderous heart toward one another. “When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Yahshua said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, "Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.' And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.”

"But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, "Pay back what you owe.' So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, "Have patience with me and I will repay you.' But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened.”

"Then summoning him, his lord said to him, "You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?' And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."

In comparison to the debt that we have been forgiven by God, all the things we have opportunity to forgive in our relationship to others is minuscule. Yahshua took the entire decree of sin, rebellion and offenses that stood against us and He nailed them to His cross. The debt was paid in full and we were given a complete absolution. Though our sins were as scarlet, they have been washed as white as snow. We have been made the righteousness of God in Yahshua our Messiah. When we deserved death and damnation, we were given life and accorded righteousness. What transgression of any person against us could compare to this?

The words that our Lord ended this parable with are sobering. “And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” If we do not forgive others from the heart, our Father in heaven will turn us over to the tormentors. To fail in forgiveness is a grievous thing in the sight of God. If He was willing to not even withhold the life of His Son in His great love and forgiveness toward us, how can we in turn fail to forgive one another? He set the example for us. How great a failure it is to spurn His example and to fail to forgive those who have transgressed against us!

If we really believe that God exists, and if we truly believe that He will reward all men according to their actions, then we would tremble in reading this parable if we observed unforgiveness in our hearts. God is not lying when He says that He will turn such ones over to the tormentors. If you have read the book “God’s Plan of the Ages” then you understand that the Lake of Fire is for unbelievers, and Christ warned that many who said they were His followers would share a place with the unbelievers. Paul understood this, and he commented:

How can a husband and wife of twenty years, who have both participated in the fellowship of the saints, and who both profess to be believers in Christ, treat one another with such enmity and hatred, even to publicly characterizing their spouse in defamatory ways that they know are based on lies and deception? How can they hire godless men to use wicked means in securing the worldly possessions their hearts lust after? Only by failing to believe that God is present and observing all, and by failing to believe that He will surely reward all ungodliness, are they able to do such a thing. Sadly, the church is filled with this unbelief.

Let no saint be deluded into thinking that simply because they have said a sinners prayer, and they confess Christ as Savior, that they can then live in a carnal and selfish manner, nor let them believe that a careless life will not bear consequences.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Therefore, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men...

Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside.) [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap. For he who sows to his own flesh (lower nature, sensuality) will from the flesh reap decay and ruin and destruction, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

It is not enough to profess Christ as Savior. We remain yet the greatest of unbelievers if we do not then begin to act in such a way that we demonstrate that Yahshua is Lord of our lives.

Some years back when I first began to have opportunity to preach to the saints, I shared a message that was centered around a statement that J. Oswald Chambers had made. He said, “The deadliest form of Pharisaism today is not hypocrisy, but unconscious reality.”

We generally associate the word Pharisee with the word hypocrisy. A hypocrite is one who says he believes something, but he does just the opposite. I think that most saints, when envisioning a hypocrite, picture someone who actually believes something to be true, and perhaps they even make a point to proclaim it to be so, but they deliberately violate their own stated belief. A doctor that tells his patients that it is unhealthy to smoke cigarettes, but who does so himself, would be such an example.

Yet J. Oswald Chambers stated that there is an even deadlier form of Pharisaism. It is unconscious reality. To put it in my own words, it is being unconscious to the reality of God in the saints’ personal existence. When a Christian states that all people will one day stand before God to be judged for the deeds done in the body, and when they acknowledge that Christ will reward all men according to what each one has done, but these same ones walk around as if they are completely oblivious to God’s judgment of their words and actions, then they are acting out the deadliest form of Pharisaism today. They are professors of Christ in word, but in deed they are the greatest of unbelievers.

This unbelief is very blatant when it is seen in a public way, such as that of the couple who slandered and vilified one another in court, but unbelief is demonstrated through private actions and thoughts as well. A man may know that viewing pornography is wrong, being aware of Yahshua’s words that “he who has looked upon a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” There used to be a greater risk of public exposure when a man chose to view pornography. He may have had to go into a public store and purchase a magazine, or go into a movie rental store and rent an indecent video. Today, however, a man can view pornography in private over the Internet, or watch sex movies via cable TV, where others are unaware of his activity. This has lowered the barriers and public risks of viewing such material. Consequently, there is an epidemic, even among professing Christians, of such ungodly behavior.

A man is walking in unconscious reality when he professes that Christ is Lord, and he acknowledges that God is ever present in his life, but he then sits down to view men and women involved in various sexual activities on a computer or television screen. Paul asked the following questions to the Corinthian Christians:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be... But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

I suppose that there are myriads of saints who have heard or read this Scripture, and who would philosophically acknowledge it as truth. They would agree that they are a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that the Spirit of God dwells in them. Yet at the same time they may regularly sit down in front of perverse and immoral sexual images and entertain all manner of impure thoughts in this same temple. While engaged in such activity they have entered into a state of unconsciousness to the reality and presence of God, allowing them to remain engaged in something they know is thoroughly displeasing to a holy God.

I can empathize with those men and women who find themselves in this deplorable position. There was a time in my life when I also failed to crucify the flesh in this area of temptation. I filled my mind with many impure images that at times lingered in my mind for years. I walked in a hideous cycle of lust, satiation, revulsion, repentance and lust again. The way out of this cycle was to not allow myself to enter into a state of unconsciousness to the reality of God’s immediate and unceasing presence in my life. The Holy Spirit of God would remind me that He was present when I was tempted to give into lust and temptation. He would remind me that God would not be mocked, and I would reap corruption if I continued to sow to the flesh. He told me that I would be disqualified from the calling, the prize and the inheritance set before me if I did not guard what I allowed my eyes to view.

I trembled as I heard the Spirit tell me that I would be disqualified from entering the good things He had in store for me if I did not walk carefully in this area. I was reminded of Paul’s words:

But [like a boxer] I buffet my body [handle it roughly, discipline it by hardships] and subdue it, for fear that after proclaiming to others the Gospel and things pertaining to it, I myself should become unfit [not stand the test, be unapproved and rejected as a counterfeit].

I have been considering more recently that any time we enter into sin, whether public or private, we are walking in unbelief. For that period of time it is as if we are confessing, “Surely God does not see, and if He sees He does not care. Surely I won’t be held accountable for this act or word. There is no God watching me, and there is no judgment for my actions, so I can sin with impunity.”

In contrast, God’s word says that Yahweh judges the very thoughts and intentions of our hearts, and we will give an account of every idle word. We will be held accountable for the deeds done in the body. Will we believe this? Will we put on faith and believe what is recorded in Scripture, and what the Spirit speaks within these temples? Or will we allow ourselves to be deluded, and in our moment of unbelief deny Christ?

The cock is set to crow a second time. When Yahshua turns to look us in the eyes will we be as Peter and go out and weep bitterly over our failure, or will we hear Him say, “Well done. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”? All sin is the fruit of unbelief. What we need is a greater discerning of the presence of God in our lives. The world is too much with us, and God is too distant. We must put on Christ like a garment, and we must walk with a consciousness of being clothed with Him at all times.

As you look around at the church you will see many walking as if they are unconscious to the presence and reality of God. They are speaking ungodly things, and they are performing many selfish and ungodly acts. Many do this arrogantly with no concern for Yahweh’s opinion, and no thought to the repercussions.

I have found myself praying for a greater discerning of the presence of God in my life. I know that such a continual consciousness of His presence will lead to a proportionate increase of righteousness, faith and love that will result in glory to God. I am learning more and more the necessity of faith as Paul described it.

Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

As the saints walk in a greater conviction of the reality of God’s presence, a presence that our natural senses often fail to detect, but which our Spirit man assures us of, we will find ourselves putting the flesh to death in order that Christ might be glorified in our members. Rather than bringing reproach to the name of Christ, and judgment to ourselves, we will be known as Overcomers in Yahshua the Messiah.