Grace Culture – Faith Walk
Grace provides light unto our path
As ye have, therefore, received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding with thanksgiving.
Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of your brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed that is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.
Faith is critical to our walk in the Lord at every level. We are expanding our faith discussions so that we can look a little deeper into the mechanics of this important subject. In the previous discussion our focus was on the state of our being “in Christ.” The reality of our life has changed from temporal resources to unseen eternal resources which now are ours “in Christ”. These eternal resources are defined in scripture itself and by our faith. We want to explore these resources and how to use them as a life style in Christ. If we walk by faith rather than sight, if we walk by what is unseen rather than what is tangible, we need a whole new set of guidelines. Before we do that however, let us review where we are and how we got here. Our faith is the reality of where we are.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
We are saved by faith. Many of our familiar verses use the word believe as the gateway to salvation. As we have seen, believe and faith have the same Greek root, πιστέυω and πιστός. By context, however, the use of faith implies the product of our belief. That is, we can be seen by what we do. What we believe produces an activity. Faith is an activity. Works without faith is not faith at all. In other words, if we profess belief that is not supported by our actions, we deceive our own self. Our faith is defined by our behavior not by what we want it to be.
Our classic definition comes from Hebrews: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Many of us have read this definition without really understanding what it says. We often link faith with hope in the sense that it is a wish or something to look to in the future. This may be true, but it is not what is stipulated here. Faith is tangible evidence or substance that we can see and touch and feel. How did this tangible substance appear on the scene? It is the product of what men and women believed. Faith is the product or substance of what we believe. Product is something we make. It involves action, it involves activity. Hebrews 11 contains examples of how substance appeared. It is always a product of activity.
We are all people of faith. We all believe in something! How we spend our time and energy is an indicator of our faith. What we do is the evidence of what we believe. The end of our last printed discussion concludes with the question of Jesus to His disciples, “Where is your faith?”
A lot of things happen to us when we accept God’s gift of life through Jesus. Many of them have to do with our position or our relationship to God. These doctrinal issues are often theological and not experiential. For example, as a Christian we have been redeemed. That is, we have been purchased out of sin into righteousness. The price for this purchase was the death of Jesus. There are several Greek words that have been translated redeemed in the New Testament. One of those words means that we have been set free, loosed from the bondage of sin. Another word means we have been bought out of the slave market never to be returned to it. These are meaningful and valuable truths. They are meat for the mind so that we can better understand our personal relationship with God. Other doctrinal truths describing relationship changes with God include, reconciliation, adoption, justification, propitiation, atonement, assurance, etc. Most of these teachings are listed in the 33 Acts of Grace compiled by Chafer and are part of our discussion folder. These doctrines are germane to our understanding of the reality that is ours in Christ. It is not important that we know the doctrinal terms but it is important that we understand the Truth contained in these terms. We can change our behavior to match our new reality by allowing our mind and heart to grasp their meanings. These Truths are inherent in our new relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Regeneration is the doctrinal term to describe the physical change that takes place in us when we are “born again”. The politically accepted definition of “born again” is quite different then what Jesus conveyed to Nicodemus in John 3. Being born again has to do with a brand new life. Jesus explains to Nicodemus that there are natural things of the flesh and there are spiritual things. These two things are contrary to each other. Any person “in Christ” is a new creation, the old things that governed life have passed away and all things have become new. The things of the flesh no longer command our life. That power has been destroyed or put to death and been replaced with the “dunamis” power of Jesus Christ.
This is not a divine power we now use to become good, righteous and better. No, quite the contrary, this is a brand new birthing that has placed us in Christ. In Christ we virtually have a new nature, we are partakers of Christ’s divine nature and have been joined with Him in Spirit, the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
Union with our Lord is sealed, complete and eternal. We are placed in His family and no one is going to pluck us out of His hand. This is our divine family nature and it is hid with God in Christ. We often hear comments about our “two” natures. This term implies we have competing forces in our lives enticing our will to choose between good and evil. There are several variations on this theme which babes in Christ believe to be true. This doctrine is not credible in the context of the whole gospel message. Paul makes it clear that the flesh or the old nature has been put to death. The flesh has not been wounded, it has been put to death and buried with Christ. That is what the death of Christ is all about. The good news is that death was conquered by the resurrection of Jesus. This is referred to as resurrection power. This is the dunamis (δύναμις ) power that we often refer. It is the dunamis protocol of God by which He creates a new life replacing the old. We have been born a second time, it is a spiritual birth but in the same old body. This new birth is Christ within us, the second Adam, an incorruptible seed, for you have been born again not of seed that is perishable but imperishable. We are out of His incorruptible seed. This is why John says no one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. The Greek word used here for seed, by the way, is sperma, σπέρμα. This is who we are in Christ.
The flesh is the wrapper in which we live, the vessel in which we dwell. That is where the sin resides, in the flesh,and it makes war on us. You and I sin because we make decisions in the flesh, but this is not our nature. Paul explains it this way, “Now, then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” In the same way that we have been delivered from sin and flesh, we have been given sperma life in Christ.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.
Faith is walking in the Spirit while living in the flesh. It is one thing to know we are in Christ, it is quite another to accept it in our soul so that our behavior, which is seen in the flesh, is a transparent copy of our belief. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. There are two ways to define our faith. One is based upon the absolute reality of who we are in Christ. The other is based upon the reality where we live. In Christ, we live in the Spirit but typically walk in the flesh. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
The first step in learning to walk by faith, by the Spirit, is to acquire knowledge about Christ and an understanding concerning being in Christ. “Know yourself, accept yourself and then be yourself”. I have referred to this idiom so many times during my life, thank you, Mrs. Brown. I learned this platitude in Sociology 101 at SF Baptist College. Mrs. Brown would repeat it to us over and over again. It works well as a training tool for walking spiritually. First, our mind must possess the Truth. This is essential to discern with understanding. Second, we have to believe or accept into our heart that which we know to be true. Third, we need to be who we are. This means expressing through our behavior that which we are committed in our heart and mind to do. This is “working out your salvation” because it is God working in your heart and mind. Know yourself in the Lord, accept who you are in the Lord with all your heart, and be who you are in the Lord with all your might and will.
This triad of personal actions within us is a scriptural pattern. For example, Jesus said: I am the way, and the truth, and life; no one comes to the father but through me. “I am the way” requires a choice on our part, an exercise of our will. “I am the Truth” requires knowledge and discerning exercise of our mind. “I am the Life” requires the passion and exercise of the heart. How about this one: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”. Take a careful look at this one: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” One more from Romans: “even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, (knowledge in the mind). Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey (exercise of the will) its lusts,” (rule of the heart). (This last one brings up an observation about balance or wholeness of this process. This triad is a model of how to walk in the absolute reality of who we are in Christ.
Defer a moment to Lloyd-Jones’s guidance concerning the Lord’s lesson to the disciples in Luke 8:22-35. This passage concerns their boat trip across the sea of Galilee. A furious storm was swamping their boat while Jesus was content sleeping. One of His disciples wakes Jesus and pleas for His help after some concern about their safety. Exhausted and without resources they turned to their last resort, Jesus. Waking up the Lord of the universe was an act of desperation on their part. Jesus made it clear that they were not operating out of faith. Where is your faith?, was His response. Notice, they did the dastardly deed in a group.
These disciples had witnessed Jesus make “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them”. They had seen miraculous events and yet they were amazed that He could calm the storm. They knew these facts in their mind but the full force of them had not penetrated their heart. The disciples had previously witnessed the feeding of the 5,000, they were on the boat when Peter walked on the water and then when Jesus walked on the water, got into the boat and the wind stopped and “they were greatly astonished”. It is hard to believe this is the same group of guys who had already experienced the “Where is your faith?” event in Luke 8.
This is an apt starting point for our faith-walk in Christ. This is where we all start, in our flesh. We are unaware of what great things have happened to us. It is a spiritual birth, silent and unseen but it equips us with Jesus Christ Himself. His is a grace culture. He is a life radically new and is totally different than the temporal culture that is our habit. The disciples had head knowledge but it had not yet gripped their hearts. They knew without knowing. They had not accepted in their heart what they knew in their mind. This is where they started and this is where we start also.
But as they were sailing along He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended upon the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger.
The first two things we notice in this passage is the contrast between Jesus and the disciples. He was asleep and they were in danger. Jesus is the logos (λόγος) of God, the physical manifestation of the divine being who is alive is us. He is the model of how we are provisioned to live on earth.
He is God, you may argue, it is impossible for us to live like Him. Yes, that is the whole point. He is in us and it is His life in us. He is Spirit and Truth and He has birthed in us a spiritual babe with His incorruptible seed. We are now a spiritual being living in the flesh. We have been joined with Him and are partakers of His divine nature. This is the life that He has provided for us to live while we are yet in the flesh, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. He was also a man who needed sleep. The scripture says that He was tempted in all ways just like us, yet without sin. So we, like Him, in the flesh, are to allow the λόγος (logos) of God manifested in our mortal flesh.
While Jesus is sleeping the disciples are in danger. The reality for the disciples was two fold. First the boat was vulnerable. Not only were fierce winds blowing but water was filling up their boat. Second, Jesus was not concerned about their fate, do you not care that we are perishing? The physical circumstances of life are intolerable for the disciples. If that was not enough, the man whom they had committed their life to seems to be unconcerned. Regardless of our station in life, we are much like the disciples.
The two things often accompany each other. First, we look to those things that oppress and cause us stress and hardship. We see them as unnecessary obstacles to our life in Christ. The wind and the storm is preventing us from getting to the other side of the lake. We blame sin, education, circumstances, money. We can even create obstacles that do not exist just so we can blame them. Following this is the frustration of not seeing God create a fix for our dilemma. God has promised to care for us, protect us and keep us in His love, yet in our time of need, He is sleeping. At least the disciples had the good sense to wake Him up. Often we don’t.
It is easy to judge the disciples from the safe distance of 2000 years? Jesus was shaking their world. He was not what their Jewish fathers were teaching. He was outside of their culture and was introducing something new which they wouldn’t really understand until after Paul shared a new message of grace years later. Given how hard it is for us today to accept and live a life of faith, we can’t judge the disciples too harshly without indicting ourselves.
I received a phone a call from a lady whom I dearly love the other day. She was one of several people involved in a small project. She had performed her task with dispatch and on schedule. The project did not complete as intended. It would seem that the time and energy invested by this lady was compromised because somebody else dropped the ball. She experienced anger and frustration because her boat got blown off course. I don’t think the waves were actually sinking her boat but she became a victim of the circumstances. The storm controlled her. She was living in the reality of her circumstances.
The disciples in Mark 6 and Luke 8 were reacting to their circumstances. The circumstances defined their reality. The disciples believed in the wind and the water more than the Man who was sleeping in the back of the boat on a cushion. Faith is reacting to our apparent reality. This is the reality where we live not the reality where we are in Christ. This is the difference between man’s truth and God’s Truth. The lady who called me was reacting to her apparent reality.
You and I have soulish flesh. God created a new life source that replaces self dominated flesh power. This new life is spiritual and not of the flesh. It is distinct and not tainted by the soul. This is why Christ is referred to as the “second Adam.” The first Adam became a living “soul” and the second Adam, “Christ in us” is a Life giving Spirit. It is that Spirit that is able to bring life back into our mortal, soulish flesh. Jesus made the distinction clear talking to Nicodemus: “That which is flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
This new life in Christ is external to our soulish flesh. This is why Paul speaks of the death of the flesh, not because it has been extinguished, but because he is no longer controlled by the flesh. He was and we are now in the Spirit with a new birthed life in Christ. The flesh is dead in the sense that it no longer controls his or our life. Paul, you and I have a new nature which is in reality joined to Jesus Christ Himself. We are one with Him, one Spirit, one spiritual body.
Our body is still subject to the temporal laws in which we live. We have a mind, heart and will which is soulish, subject to the laws that govern the mind, heart which renders an apparent reality to us. We are the same person in terms of our cultural habits, our desires and those things defining us before we received our new life in Christ. Our life source is in fact Jesus Christ. This our reality. Now we are called to live His life in our soulish body with our new nature in Christ Jesus. We do not get a new personality, we add life and joy to the one we have.
Psychology comes from the Greek word psuche, ψυχή, for mind. The word “mind” in the New Testament is generally not ψυχή. Psychology originally dealt with the mind but in time expanded the meaning to include all the states and processes that contribute to human behavior. We have summarized it using our biblical model in terms of mind, heart and will. This is generally understood to be the “soul” of man but is sometimes used to include the spirit of man. Psuche, ψυχή, is often translated soul in the New Testament. Perhaps we should have made this a footnote but we need to distinguish our “spirit” from our “soul”. Faith is the conduit feeding life from our in Christ nature into our soul or body system when we make this choice. Our spirit is redeemed, our body is not.
We are not born again into spiritual adulthood. Our reference passage for this discussion instructs us that God birthed us with His sperma seed. Our life in Christ has to go through a development process from seed to adulthood. Jesus was nurtured in the womb of Mary and became a baby. He then grew up as a man leaning the skills of carpentry. In the same way we have to grow up spiritually. Speaking to the Christians at Corinth Paul says: “and I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. I gave
you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not able to receive it, Indeed, even now you are not yet able”.
We are continually conditioned to a culture of the world, the flesh and the devil which is our soulish mind, heart and will. Now, we have to train our “soul” to a new way of living, a new set of rules, a new power, a new grace culture who is Jesus Christ. We start with the knowledge of who we are in Christ. Know yourself in Christ.
It always comes back to knowing the Truth. The scripture itself affirms Truth. The law was given by Moses, but grace and Truth are through Jesus Christ,God is Spirit and those who worship in spirit and truth,If you abide in my word ... you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,But when He the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the Truth,Sanctify them in the Truth, Thy word is Truth,Be diligent ... handling accurately the word of truth,.. for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, in the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth..I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.
Just as the Spirit is distinct from the flesh, so is the Truth of God distinct from the truth of man. Our experience within the culture of the soul can only produce the truth of man. This natural truth is relative, partial, flawed and biased by man’s agenda.
Paul writes to the Ephesians “and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience”. When God made Adam and Eve He breathed into them the breath of life and they became a living being. When God departed from Adam and Eve, Satan was on the scene to provide the life force to sustain their life in the flesh. Their soulish flesh was alive in terms of their mind, heart and will but they became spiritually dead to God Himself. God’s absolute Truth was removed from them leaving them to their own way and the relative truth they could find without God.
Paul explains in chapter 4 of Ephesians that we, being in Christ, no longer walk in the futility of a soulish mind as do those who are excluded from the life of God. This soulish type of life style leads to a hardness of the heart and a self serving will that portends greedy evil practices.
But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as the truth is in Jesus.
We are also instructed in this passage to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Another translation of this text is that we restore the mind to its original state. We now have access to absolute Truth in Jesus. This is part of the washing of regeneration, by His mercy, through the renewing of the Holy Spirit. God does the work but gives options of choice to us.
Our mind, heart and will are integrated into our whole body system. We create frustration for ourselves when our will has to chose between the competing interests of our mind and our heart. We know that we should do one thing in our mind but the desire of our heart may urge us in a different direction. These common conflicts overlap into areas of spiritual conflict and can lead to spiritual depression. Self integrity can be an issue and we often fall into the trap of self deception. All of these self issues are addressed as a by-product of growing in faith. God is the solution but it starts with getting to know Him. If we exercise our will to make Him our choice, our heart will follow and He will give us the grace to be whole in Him. This is the “much more” grace Paul speaks about in Romans 5 and the riches of His grace in Ephesians 2:7.
Our subjective choices vary from person to person. Some of us have wills of iron but may not study out a matter as much as person who relies more upon their mind. Others rely instinctively upon their heart and how they feel about a matter. One person will perceive the Truth a little differently according to their needs. In spite of these soul differences, we have been given unity with the Father through Jesus and with each other. If 100 pianos are all tuned to the same tuning fork then we are all tuned to each other. There is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, who is the source for our Truth.
By His grace and mercy, He has enabled us to choose Him. He stands at the door of our Christian heart in Revelation 3:20, asking us to wine and dine with Him. When we make this choice He provides Truth to our mind which produces love in our heart which allows Him to be seen in us by others. Faith is the sequential accumulation of choices. If our choices are based upon self, that becomes the reality where we live. If our choices are in Christ then the reality where we are becomes the reality where we live. We are in Christ!
As Paul writes to the saints at Ephesus: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know (with your mind) what is the hope of His calling, what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
Nothing from us, everything from God.
“Now thanks be unto God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.”