Conviction, belief or opinion

It can be said of any Christian witness that for the first generation of believers their faith will be a matter of conviction, for the second generation it will only be a belief and by the time of the third generation it will be nothing more than an opinion. They may openly proclaim the same faith, yet in reality their attachment to those truths is vastly different from the generations before them. Although this may be most apparent in the youth of the church, yet it can also be the case in older believers also. It is evident today that many professing Christians have fallen away from that position of conviction which their predecessors have held and are 'carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness'. Their faith has become at best a belief and at worst an opinion. In considering what the difference is between those three positions it is easiest to reject that of an opinion, for opinions are subjective to the desires and views of those holding them. One opinion can never be truly considered to be of greater value than another opinion. As such we should never consider our scriptural standards as opinions, for John 17:17 says that ‘thy word is truth'. The doctrines of the Bible are not opinions but God’s revealed truth, a truth that is absolute and unchangeable and what it teaches can never be considered on a par with other ‘truths’.