Most Christians Believe God Can. Few Believe He Will.
Mediations on God's Faithfulness
A leper’s strange request to Jesus reveals the two things we must know and believe about God’s faithfulness.
Have you ever trusted God to do something only to wonder if He really would? I recently had to confront that question. In this post, I’ll try to answer it by looking at a Gospel story: Jesus’s encounter with a leper.
In Mark 1:40–45, an unnamed leper comes to Jesus, falls on his knees before Him, and begs Him. Then he makes this curious statement:
“If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
— v.40
That is a remarkable thing to say. Normally, you would expect him simply to ask Jesus to heal him. But that’s not what he says. His desire to be healed is implied, yet his words reveal something more—two deeper truths that together form the core of God’s faithfulness.
Believe God Can
First, we must believe that God can do whatever we ask of Him. You don’t ask someone to do something for you unless you already believe they can do it. In life, we sometimes ask people for things until we realize they can’t actually help—and a wise person learns not to ask them again.
Believing that God can do what we ask is the first part of understanding His faithfulness. Scripture is full of testimony to God’s sovereignty and omnipotence. God said to Jeremiah:
“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”
— Jeremiah 32:27
If you go back to the beginning of the chapter, there is an interesting backstory behind this statement. Earlier, God told Jeremiah that his cousin Hanamel would come and ask him to buy his field at Anathoth. Just as God had revealed, Hanamel came, and Jeremiah bought the field as the Lord instructed.
Yet Jeremiah didn’t understand why. Judah was on the brink of being taken by the Babylonian army. So in verses 17–25, Jeremiah prayed and laid out his concerns before God, pointing out that Jerusalem was already surrounded and about to fall. Why, then, would God ask him to buy a field there?
Verse 27 is God’s response. The Lord reminds Jeremiah that nothing is too hard for Him and then assures him that although the city is about to fall, a time of restoration is coming.
In other words, God was not only showing that He could restore His people—He was promising that He would.
In the Gospels, we also see Jesus affirming God’s omnipotence:
“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
— Matthew 19:26–30
Jesus said this because the disciples wondered how anyone could be saved (v.25), after He had said:
“…it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
— v.24
Have you ever faced a situation that feels impossible? Jesus says with God, it is possible. His point was clear: what is impossible for man is not impossible for God. All things are possible for Him.
Believe God Will
Now that I’ve established the first part of what it means to say God is faithful, let me unpack the second part: God’s willingness to keep His promises.
A promise means nothing if the person who made it has no intention of keeping it. When the leper indirectly asked Jesus to heal him, he wasn’t sure that Jesus would. That uncertainty is why he said:
“If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
— Mark 1:40
This is the part we struggle with. Most of us believe that God can—but sometimes we wonder if He will.
Believing that God can and believing that He will are both fundamental to understanding God’s faithfulness. Jesus did not leave us wondering whether God would keep His promises. He responded plainly to the leper:
“I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!”
— Mark 1:41
This is also what the writer of Hebrews was expressing when he wrote:
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
— Hebrews 11:6
To believe that God exists is to believe that He is God Almighty—the One who can do all things. To believe that He rewards is to believe that He will keep His promises.
Two Key Lessons from the Leper
The lessons from Jesus’ response to the leper are twofold: the first concerns us; the second reveals something about God.
First, you can’t say you believe that God can fulfill His promises while doubting that He will. To believe that God is faithful is to believe both—that He can and that He will. Believing that God is faithful means trusting not only that He has the power to keep His promises, but also that He intends to keep them.
Second, we usually don’t doubt that God can, but we sometimes wonder whether He will—especially when fulfillment is delayed or not immediately forthcoming. The will part is where we struggle. What Jesus shows us by His response, however, is that the will is inherent in the can. This is the assurance He is giving us when He said to the leper:
“I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!”
— Mark 1:41
This is the most profound and inspiring lesson—because God can, it also means that He will. God not only has the power to keep His promises—He will keep them. There may be delays at times, but He will. This is what the Bible tells us:
“God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.”
— Hebrews 6:17–18 NLT
The leper believed that Jesus could heal him, but he wasn’t sure that He would. Yet Jesus responded to him with compassion.
This is also how God deals with us. Even when we struggle with the will part, God understands—and He is compassionate.