Since the Kingdom of God is based on relationships, it is very important that we understand what oneness means, and how it is attained. Oneness has to be an expression of God’s love in us. We know that. But when you stop to consider love—human or divine—it has one characteristic about it that seems to be paralleled on both the natural as well as the spiritual plane.
When a couple fall in love, there is certainty in their love—and yet for a time they need a great deal of reassurance. They each have to know that they are loved; and they each have to sense the depth of their own love for the other, almost testing the depths of their own feelings. So they say, “Do I really love this person? And does this person really love me?” Then the questioning time has to give way and they come to the place where they can almost dispassionately evaluate the solidity of that love; they no longer have to question it. In fact, that can go almost too far. The couple can come to the place where they do not voice or express their love very often; they just take it for granted.
Love cannot be taken for granted. It has to be expressed. But the expression of it should not come in order to alleviate a questioning as to whether or not the love exists. You should come to the place where that is a certainty in your mind, so that you do not just love the other person but you have confidence—you have faith—in that love that you have for them.
We should look at oneness the same way. The problem now is that while the brothers and sisters everywhere are coming into oneness, they still are in a phase where they question their relationship and their oneness. You must come up to a higher level where you have faith for that oneness as well as faith in the oneness.
Look at your relationship to God. Hebrews talks about the very basic foundations of faith toward God (Hebrews 6:1). You have to have a faith that is beamed toward God. This does not mean that you believe that He is always going to do this or that, because sometimes God does things that you do not understand or cannot explain; but you still have faith toward God. You can have faith in a person, too—or love for a person. But when you have faith for that person in a relationship, it takes on a little more certain note. Lest this sound confusing to you, let’s go a little further in an explanation of it.
I can have faith in a person, or I can have faith for that person. If I have faith in him, and he stumbles or falls or becomes angry at me, I am shaken up in it. But if I have faith for that person and for a relationship with that person, then I am not moved from that oneness or faith for him by any erratic behavior or by some circumstance that happens which seems to deny that love. I can treat it as an isolated or a passing incident, because I have faith for that person and faith for the oneness with that person.
This is the thing that the brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus have to have. They may need that constant reassurance right now: “Well, the brothers love me and I love the brothers and Brother Stevens loves me—I think he does, but he just walked by me and didn’t say anything. I don’t really know whether he loves me or not.” It cannot be that way; there cannot be any question about the oneness that is coming, or the love that is involved in that oneness.
We must come to the place where we know that that oneness exists—even if everybody gets up and goes to a meeting where they all start yelling at each other, and it looks as if there is nothing but division and confusion. All of that does not alter the fact that we have entered into an era of oneness, and that is the Kingdom.
The Kingdom is based upon relationships together. We must believe for that oneness, and have faith for oneness rather than faith in our oneness. I am making the distinction clear here. If I have faith for the oneness, then it becomes not only reality, but it becomes an unalterable target that I never lose my focus on. I am never turned away from it. My faith in the oneness is not the basic issue. It is my faith for that oneness. It exists and I believe for it.
If people adopted that policy, they would not only fall in love with each other, but they would also say, “We believe in our love; why not believe for our love? We start in some strange, wonderful way; and as we go along, we keep believing for that love to grow stronger—because we are believing for love. We are believing that nothing is going to change it; we are not open for anything to change it. We have set our course.”
It is a wonderful thing when you find a couple who are so secure in their love because they have faith for it; they believe for it; they know that nothing will come to separate them. They say, “Who shall separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?” (Romans 8:38–39.)
The spiritual love is the same way. We say, “I am persuaded that none of these things is going to move me—neither life, nor death, nor height, nor any creature; nothing is going to separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.”
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38–39, KJV.
You have faith for that love. You have a faith for that love that you have for God—faith that it will grow stronger. That focus stabilizes everything! Our oneness or love then is not an issue to be raised every day. Circumstances will not challenge it. You have set yourself on this course, and that is what you will do. If there is a disappointment, you still believe in that oneness, inasmuch as you have faith for that oneness.
It is better to believe for something than in something.
Faith in a relationship may be presumptuous and disappointing.
Faith for a relationship expresses confidence in God’s Word instead of confiidence in a person.