Believing is allowing the word of Christ to hold more authority over us than what we’ve learned to consider true, safe, and possible.

Túlio was an exemplary bank employee. For the last 20 years, he moved from branch to branch until he settled in that city. He started a family, had children, and he and his wife raised them closely and diligently. Raised in a Christian family with an evangelical tradition, he attended the local church with his family. Sundays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, they were present. He contributed financially and was an active deacon. Internally, he was a balanced man. Debt-free. Of good reputation. He just had a terrible fear of believing. But he wasn’t even aware of it.

The problem isn’t simply believing.

We can believe in Jesus without allowing Him to deeply alter what we believed before Him. We come to faith carrying an interpretation of the world shaped by family, culture, religion, and political experience. The problem begins when Jesus contradicts some of these certainties. At that moment, we discover if we truly believe in Him or if we merely accommodate Him within what we already believe.

Peter on the Water – When Experience Says It Can’t Be.

The passage from Matthew 14:22-33 is well-known. In short: the disciples are in a small boat in the middle of the sea under strong winds. Jesus approaches. The disciples see Him walking on the water. Peter asks to prove that it is Him walking on the water. Jesus invites him. Peter goes. Walks. Gets scared. Begins to sink. Jesus reaches out His hand and says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Peter is not just anyone. He is a middle-aged man whose profession was fishing. He knew the sea. He had ample reasons from his experience to stay in the boat. He knew clearly that it was not possible for a man to walk on water.

Perhaps precisely for this reason, he asks to walk to Jesus as proof that He was who He appeared to be—from a distance.

And perhaps for the same reason, Jesus performs no miracle, He simply says, “Come.”

One single word.

For a few moments, Peter allows this specific word from Jesus to carry more weight than his experience. Then he looks again at what he had long known: wind, water, danger. He was afraid. He began to sink.

Of course, like any text, it can hold an allegorical reflection. We could say that the water and wind are the problems and that the path over the sea is the path we are treading, that is, our life. And while this sounds very beautiful—and we will end up drawing a moral or spiritual lesson from it—the account is historical and should be treated as such.

The fact is, the wind didn’t start when Peter got scared. The wind, the water, the waves, the boat, Jesus in the distance, the other disciples in the boat. Everything was there before. It was like this when he jumped over the side of the little boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus.

So what changed? Prior knowledge entered his mind, and he was afraid.

Fear has this peculiarity of wanting to protect us from something. They say it’s better to be a live coward than a dead hero. (The Bible says, “a live dog is better off than a dead lion” – Ecclesiastes 9:4)

Was the prior knowledge to the walk wrong? No. In fact, these data had greatly helped him in the task at sea, which demands great respect. So his belief in these previous experiences (personal or not) was not wrong.

Thus, there are moments when believing means admitting that our experience is true but does not have the final word.

Nicodemus – When Religion Has No Category for What God Is Doing

Another well-known and interesting text for our point today is John 3:1-15

“We know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” This was Nicodemus’s introductory phrase that night.

Nicodemus is not an ignorant unbeliever. It is precisely his religious knowledge that makes the conversation interesting. Two Jewish teachers sitting on a cool night discussing their beliefs. A dialogue of equals in a certain sense. And his knowledge was not wrong. Jesus does not dismiss it. But He sees a shadow in all this. Something wanting to appear behind Nicodemus’s words that did not crystallize in his first statement.

Jesus (in His “Tramontina Quick Cut” version) does not miss the opportunity and proposes an existential dilemma that cannot be answered by Nicodemus’s religion: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Jesus speaks of being born again, and Nicodemus tries to fit it into the categories he already possesses: “How can someone be born when they are old?”

Nicodemus’s question is much more than obvious. It was then and is now. And the answer—within the physical realm—remains obvious.

However, from the source of evils that afflict us, the body is the most virtuous. Existential afflictions rooted in the soul need another type of answer.

So, pause and analyze: Isn’t Nicodemus’s dilemma that night similar to ours? He was trying to understand God’s novelty using only the religious categories he brought with him. The baggage.

Thus, sometimes our difficulty in believing does not come from a lack of religion, but from the difficulty of admitting that God is greater than our religious understanding of Him.

Peter and the Unclean Animals – When God Contradicts What We Learned as Faithfulness

This other text is also well-known. Perhaps not as much as the others, but I think it fits into those texts that deserve a second look (and which doesn’t?) Acts 10:9-20

Unlike the Peter of Matthew 14, here we find a different Peter. Particularly strong in faith. He is already an apostle, has already confessed Christ. He has already received the Holy Spirit. He has already boldly preached Jesus. He has already been imprisoned. He has already said that famous phrase “We must obey God rather than human beings.”

However, there was a small part of his inner self that still needed to be enlightened. He needed to have some beliefs dismantled.

An idea that troubled me for years is the full and instant transformation of a person when they convert. All my biblical knowledge led me to conclude that the transformation at the moment of conversion is deep, radical, and lasting. This inevitably raised other doubts in my heart: When did I convert? Am I truly converted? My beliefs needed to be dismantled.

So, when Peter hears “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat,” the most direct, correct, simple, and natural response that arises from his head is allied to biblical knowledge and the practice of a lifetime: “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

Just as it happened with the betrayal and his restoration, Peter needed three redundant visions (like the three denials or the three questions about love) and a clear and strong voice that put an end to an era in his life (like the rooster and like Jesus on the beach), said—in the last two times—affirmed: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Peter, like Paul persecuting the church, was firm in his convictions. He was faithful. This is Hebrew faith in practice: faithfulness that makes the believer part of the body. (“the righteous person will live by his faithfulness” Habakkuk 2:4)

Note to those who already know the text: The Greek “pistis” cannot fully convey the concept of the Hebrew “emunāh” even though it comes very close. The Hebrew word conveys faith, faithfulness, or firmness/constancy. “Pistis” carries more faith in the sense of trust and can indeed carry something of faithfulness or adherence. However, it does not exhaust the Hebrew term, even being the best term in Greek to express the Hebrew without resorting to neologisms. The Greek term brings the idea of an act or attitude of believing, while the Hebrew drags the concept of firmness, reliable constancy. Thus, Romans 1:17—for Luther and the entire Protestant world and later Reformed and by extension fundamentalists and evangelicals—is read as “The righteous will live by faith ,” (note the comma. With this, I want to represent that in Paul we can understand that the person reaches righteousness from (“ἐκ”) faith) to the point that Habakkuk could be read “The righteous, by faith (faithfulness, constancy) will live” which brings profound consequences in the concepts of justification, redemption, salvation, etc. Then arises the problem of translations into Portuguese. What to do? Is it faithful to the original literal text or does it follow the interpretative line by understanding that Paul (of Hebrew faith converted to Jesus) writing in Greek follows the Septuagint? I am of the idea that it should remain faithful to the original text, and it is up to us—through exegesis and hermeneutics—to show clear evidence of this distinction instead of adopting the reformers’ interpretation as absolute truth. But all this deserves another article. Suffice it to say that salvation, justification, and redemption depend on faith and extend to faith. Outside of it (and exclusively it), nothing is done.

Returning to the subject of Peter and his vision.

As we were saying: Peter (like Paul) was being faithful to his biblical knowledge. The Law forbade him from eating unclean things, and he was faithful in this.

But things had changed. And the disciples (and many of us) did not fully understand what this was all about in the end.

So, some of the beliefs that God needs to correct in us are precisely those we learned to defend in His name.

Peter Rebuking Jesus – When Christ Threatens the Messiah We Want

Read the text of Matthew 16:13-23. I know it is known. But with everything you’ve read so far, there are some things that should jump out at you now, even if it’s not what I’m going to say next.

This text is very intimate, personal. It’s the small group of disciples and Jesus. They have just arrived at Caesarea Philippi. And the Jewish teacher, following the dialectical tradition of the rabbis, begins with a question: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” In other words, what do people think about me? Who am I in their idea?

It’s obvious that Jesus knew what people thought. He had shown this repeatedly through dialogues, speeches, and direct confrontation. His disciples knew that He knew. So the question pointed in another direction. A more intimate one perhaps.

And the answers came, spontaneously and noisily. “John the Baptist,” “Elijah,” “Jeremiah,” “or one of the prophets.”

They reached the end of the options they knew, and I imagine there was a silence. The one that precedes the real question. I can imagine Jesus looking at all of them as if ready to present His most sensitive point. Then He spoke.

“But what about you? Who do you say I am?“

I imagine more silence. In Jesus’s gaze, the sincerity of one who with the question seeks to teach something more. And Peter breaks the silence: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.“

And I, guess what, imagine more silence. In the minds of the other Jewish disciples, there were certainly thoughts like: “He’s gone mad.” “Yeah. The desert heat fried his brains. He got here with abundant vegetation and completely lost it.” “Man… he’s blaspheming.” “How can an individual be the son of YHWH?”

Jesus turns to him and says: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.“

For those who like to study more: natural theology—that which intends to sustain itself only from non-biblical revelation and is obtained through the senses—can reach the conclusion that, considering what nature reveals, there must be a creator god. Paul seems to point in this direction in Romans 1:19-23ff. But to understand Him as the unique and personal creator, special revelation is necessary: the Bible. So, this general, universal knowledge, accessible to any individual, serves—by the conduct that this individual has afterward—only to condemn him. But to embrace saving faith, special revelation is necessary. (Remember Romans 2:12-15 and then vv16)

Returning to Peter’s declaration, it is so grand that it is the watershed of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. See the beginning of 16:21: “From that time on Jesus began…“

Something had changed. Something had profoundly transformed Jesus’s ministry. Having been at least two years on a well-known plateau, now the Master was resolute in going to Jerusalem, and He knew clearly what awaited Him in Jerusalem.

The change was very abrupt. Especially for Peter. Peter loved Jesus—as did the others except for Judas Iscariot, who was in the group on this occasion as well. In that love, he urged Jesus to practice what psychology today calls self-care. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!“

There was no doubt that Peter was fully aware that the panorama Jesus painted was nothing comfortable and ended in death. The part about the resurrection, no one understood right what it was about, even though the Pharisees and others had introduced this notion two hundred years earlier.

Jesus’s response must have echoed in the secluded place where Peter and Jesus were: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.“

Peter must have been stunned.

Just a little while ago, Jesus had said that he was very blessed because what he had spoken had been revealed by the Father in heaven. Now, what he had spoken only manifested earthly knowledge of things. And Jesus called him Adversary, Tempter, Accuser, Evil One

What had happened?

Peter accepted that Jesus was the Messiah (Christ), but rejected what the Messiah Himself had as mission and method.

In the common idea of the time regarding the Messiah, everything was combined. The one anointed by God to free the people from Roman oppression and along with that the political-military expectations around this idea of liberation.

It is possible to correctly confess the name of Jesus and still try to subordinate Him to the world we would like Him to build.

Therefore, the fear of believing appears when we want Jesus to confirm our worldview, but He begins to judge it.

Conclusion

I want to return to Peter on the water.

Let’s consider the idea of “getting out of the boat.”

We are not talking about abandoning our family, tradition, experience, religion, or political preference. That would be too simplistic. These things are part of the formation of who we are and can carry much truth.

The issue is deeper, much more: none of them can take the place of Christ

Peter did not discover that the wind was imaginary. He was not in the matrix, and Neo came to save him. The wind was real. The sea remained dangerous. The boat was, humanly, the safest place to be. And he was exactly in the place and action he wanted: walking on the water like Jesus.

The call was real.

The one calling was real.

But fear, or lack of faith as Jesus indicates in the following verse, made itself present.

All his previous beliefs passed through him like ballast. And they made him sink.

Following Jesus may require us to place our feet where everything we’ve always known said there was no ground.