“Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?”
Of course, we know God is our Father and, of course, we know He created all men. And, of course, in their stiff-necked tradition, the Israelites chose to follow other gods from the surrounding pagan nations.
Israel was to be that nation that was set apart to worship the One True God. They were to be a Holy nation, a royal priesthood. We all know the commandment, “you shall have no other gods before me.” We know, as Paul Harvey used to say, ‘the rest of the story’ for Israel.
As we move further on in this verse, we come across the word faithless. I’m sure we all would agree a faithless person is anybody who doesn’t believe that God can do and change all things.
Bible Study Tools has just about the same definition. Here’s what they have:
“Having the sense of unbelieving or disbelieving.”
In using Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary, faithless is used in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament 23 times, meaning treacherous or treacherously and is used once to mean unfaithful.
Let’s see just how strong faithless comes across from our Lord in Matthew 17:17.
“O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”
Not only did Jesus refer to that generation as faithless, but they were described by Jesus Himself as twisted, or some versions have it, perverted.
In the Book of Revelation, it becomes quite succinct on what faithless strongly denotes. Look at the words accompanying faithless in the following verse from Revelation 21:8:
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Let me say this, and I’m sure we’ve all gone through those difficult times in our lives when we, quote, “lacked faith.” That does not in any way, shape or form define what being faithless or faithlessness is.
That lack of faith simply means the faith tank within us is running low for whatever the reason, but your faith is still in the Creator. You haven’t left Him and He certainly hasn’t left you. In further reading in Malachi 3, he hasn’t left the Jews either. There will be a remnant of Jews; God always has a remnant.
However, for those who are, quote, “faithless,” that refers to having zero, nada, absolutely no faith in the One True God. Yes, there are those who put their faith in a cult, organization, or whatever or whomever else. Those things and ideas seemingly created by man are nothing but deception and deceitful, but the spiritual reality is, Satan is at the controls. Here’s what Paul wrote in 2nd Corinthians 11:12-15:
“And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”
Satan has a way to make evil sound so good and look so nice. He is using the same play out of the same playbook because… it is still effective. Look at Genesis 3:1-6.
“He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
If faith, the belief in the One True God, is anything other than that; that is faithlessness. That is treacherous.
We could look at Revelation 21:8 in this way:
“But as for the cowardly, the treacherous, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
And going back to the verse that started all of this, Malachi 2:10, we could read it this way without too much of an argument:
“Why then are we treacherous (faithless) to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?”
For the unbeliever to remain faithless is indeed a bad way to go and to end their God-given life with.
In the end, without faith in the One True God, they are being treacherous to themselves; and, in the end, that faithlessness will only lead to living in an eternity of Hell. However, in our obedience to the Great Commission, with the Holy Spirit leading us and encouraging us, we can at the very least plant a seed that will eventually grow, and hopefully and prayerfully pull that one faithless person we know and love out of the pit of that dark and treacherous place known as Hell and into the light of an eternal place—the New Jerusalem. Amen?