A lot of different sermons come out of Galatians 5:25. Not likely you have heard of this one: “We can live in the Spirit while walking in the flesh!” The issue of walking for born again believers seems rather clear cut but wimpy steps are symptoms of something buried deeper. Its like the disciples in the boat with Jesus who started discussing lack of bread when Jesus mentioned the leaven of the Pharisees, Mark 8:14-21. Jesus responds, ”Do you not understand?” Jesus had just fed the 4,000.
But the theme joining these two phrases together in this Galatian’s verse is not overtly stated. The actual word we are looking for is missing, the theme is faith, loud and clear!
Our capacity to accept Jesus and receive Spiritual life flows out of our belief or “saving faith.” It is also faith that enables a Spiritual person with a capacity to righteous walking in the Spirit.
Faith is the condition required to produce the life of Christ within our fleshly humanity. We are simply clay containers formed from dust. Wondrously made, to be sure, but Spiritually dead without God’s provisions of grace. Grace can only be received in faith.
Faith is not only the desire coming from the heart of a person, faith is also the capacity within the person to receive what God provides.
LIFE in our clay containers is sustained by eternal power external to the worldliness of our cursed, polluted, degenerate planet. We are walking dead people without God’s provisions of grace. Faith is the designated response redeeming us out of an otherwise condemned environment. Paul tells us our former manner of life without Christ is corrupt because of deceitful desires. Without God’s own provisions of righteousness and truth, we are simply worldly wise falling far short of a designated inheritance, ours to claim.
But receiving eternal life is only getting in the front door. There is “so much more,” to quote Romans 5. Getting in the door just puts us in the lobby of what life is really intended to be. In fact, faith is God’s training tool. Our life in this clay vessel is preparation. Faith is a workout to build us up into the nature and divine condition of Jesus Christ. … so that “we have the mind of Christ.” It is our introduction into what life really looks like once we graduate from this clay shell and become whom we are intended to be. The most amazing thing is … we who have this LIFE, don’t even know what we have!
My short visit to Ethiopia this past October was instructive. The best way to learn is to teach and that is what happened. Much more was taught me than I gave to others. At least that is how it seemed to me! Our faith journey in Grace Notes flows out this trip to Ethiopia. What is being taught is what we teach. This is how faith works! It is what Ray Stedman used to call “Body Life.” Faith is the exercise of one body part in the larger organ of which Christ is the Head.
This is why we are taking this extended journey into the deep forest of faith and discover things prepared for those willing to accept the challenge and pay the price to grow FAITH.
Paul’s constant messages of divine promises are linked to our faith. Jesus Himself chided the disciples for their lack of faith and it was Jesus who said it would take only a mustard seed of faith to move a mountain.
Many of the Bible verses we memorize are “faith verses.” Below are a dozen sample phrases we will examine more closely as we understand the nature of saving faith.
The righteous shall live by FAITH
In Christ … only FAITH working through love
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our FAITH
For by grace you have been saved through FAITH.
since we have been justified by FAITH
That your FAITH may not rest on the wisdom of men but in the power of God
So FAITH comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our FAITH
“If you had FAITH like a grain of mustard seed …”
the testing of your FAITH produces steadfastness
guarded through FAITH for a salvation to be revealed
Rooted and built up in him, established in the FAITH
I’m sure you recognize more than a few of these favorites. The subject of faith in verses like these contain more than what the word “faith” itself implies. Like so many Biblical terms, faith reaches beyond a Webster’s secular meaning.
Biblical faith looses context when removed from the overlapping cover of both love and grace. In fact, faith is not Biblical faith unless linked with a divine provision of revelation enabling the believer to see what otherwise is not seen or know something unknowable. These are God’s grace provisions and flow from a desire from God for us to know and love Him, a Person Who loves us!
Faith is inherently linked to both love and grace. Remember we are dealing at a human level what is essentially outside of our sphere. Our capacity to grapple with eternal things is what faith is all about. It is seeing what is unseen and knowing what it is unknowable. It is no wonder we get labeled mystic now and then.
Faith is a divine dynamic within human reach. But our reach is only long enough because God has already extended our arms and provided us with the sensitivity to sense and experience God’s absolute reality in a temporal setting. Yes, it is a contradiction in terms but one that faith is designed to handle.
When we learn these verses or use the Biblical intent, we need to make sure we understand what Jesus means when he says, “He that hath ears, let him hear.” Jesus is talking about faith. Faith is the capacity and will to know God which comes from a provision of grace bringing into our sphere what exists beyond our natural realm.
We need to once again remind ourselves of Hebrews 5:14. Here is where that rare Greek word is used to refer to a spiritual sense which, we would argue, is our “faith sense” enabling us to cultivate our relationship with the Father of our Lord Jesus. Look at the writer’s description. “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” How is this different than growing our faith? Drinking milk is good because it leads to digesting meat.
We will explore these and other relevant faith issues as we try to get our arms around this critical ingredient of experiencing God’s resurrection power, power to move mulberry trees and mountains. But before we get further into the forest of faith we need to climb the mountain and look down on the broader issues so we can see faith the way God has laid it out.
Faith is the human trigger drawing us, created out of dust, into God’s larger intent and design. Faith is not our contribution, or our part in God’s plan, faith is merely the ways and means of God’s provisions drawing us into participation of what He is doing. In other words, God met before the existence of time, before our creation was brought into existence and laid out a plan. We are now inside the operation of this plan. This is literally a virtual reality! Talk about a mind blower!
We know these things because the scripture, when blended together in its wholeness, provides us with this picture. So lets try to summarize this scriptural picture so we can visualize our faith component, a hinge point for humanity of which you and I participate.
That will be our launch point for our next discussion. We want to understand the general, as Lloyd-Jones constantly reminds us, before we reason down to the details.