The battle of faith is with sense knowledge reasonings. Man’s word has been at war with God’s Word ever since the beginning in the garden. The real struggle today that every believer must wage is with the sense knowledge that governs the human race.
Lead the life of the Spirit; then you will never satisfy the passions of the flesh. For the passion of the flesh is against the Spirit, and the passion of the Spirit against the flesh — the two are at issue, so that you are not free to do as you please. (Galatians 5:16–17 MOFF)
We may talk about faith in man, faith in ourselves, or faith in the works of man without opposition, but when we talk about having faith in the Bible, in the Word of God, we often find rebellion.
You will find that sense knowledge is faith’s worst enemy.
It will never give the Word first place. It admires the Word, but does not obey it.
It often confesses it as God’s Word, but obeys man’s words.
As I look over the books that fashioned my early Christian life, I note that almost every one of them was written to prove that the Bible agreed with the latest dictum of science, that man’s word had more authority than the Word of God.
Having been mentally trained in sense knowledge, I found it difficult to give sense knowledge a second place, and the Word of God its real place.
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. (1 Timothy 6:12)
In the fight of faith, there is but one weapon, the sword of the Spirit.
The combat is with reason, which is governed by the adversary, through the senses.
The adversary is like the political boss in our great cities. His name is seldom ever mentioned. He is a hidden force. He puts up puppets to do his will.
Satan uses the same tactics. He has given us a fetish, called science.
How fearful I was of science in my early days. I did not want to appear unscientific.
What is science? It is the knowledge that has been gathered through years of hard study by sense knowledge ruled men.
Through science has come most of our knowledge. It has been gained by experimentation and by observation. How men have worked and sacrificed to get this knowledge. We honor them for their achievements.
Sense knowledge comes from the five senses. The body is the laboratory. The contacts it makes with material things are carried to the brain by the sensory nerves, which divides and classifies it.
It has no other means of knowledge.
Sense knowledge cannot go beyond things it has seen, felt, heard, tasted, or smelled. Whenever it leaves these avenues, it goes into the realm of speculation, of theory, trusting that the theories may become realities in the next step of the experiment.
Charles Darwin had nothing but theories and guesses when it came to the question of creation.
As long as he could see or handle things, he was working on quite sure ground. But when he was asked the reason for creation, the reason for man, the source of life and gravitation, he had but a guess.
We may clothe that guess in the most beautiful language, but it is only a hypothesis at best.
Faith deals with facts. The Word of God has no speculations, no theories, just declarations of fact.
Ephesians 6:11–18 gives a picture of our spiritual warfare. We are to put on the whole armor of God.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. (verses 14–15)
Our shield is faith; our sword is the Word of God.
Every part of this armor is put on by faith. The whole armor in which we are garmented is a faith armor.
You cannot see truth, you cannot see righteousness, you cannot see peace, and you cannot see faith.
You cannot feel or hear any of them. Their substance is all in the spirit.
When we come to recognize that spiritual things are as real as physical things, then we will be able to understand the background of the faith life.
Hebrews 4:14 (ASV) says, “Let us hold fast our confession.” Our confession has not one physical thing in it. It hasn’t anything that can be seen, or felt, or heard, outside of the Word of God.
Faith is not based upon reason, nor upon things that men can see, unless the thing they see is the Word of God.
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:5)
The wisdom of which He is speaking is sense knowledge wisdom.
We do discuss “wisdom” with those who are mature; only it is not the wisdom of this world or of the dethroned Powers who rule this world, it is the mysterious Wisdom of God that we discuss. (1 Corinthians 2:6–7 MOFF)
This is God’s wisdom.
Jesus dethroned the powers that govern sense knowledge.
Nowhere does Paul make it as clear as he does in 2 Corinthians 10:3–5: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh” or senses (verse 3).
Though we live in the realm of the senses, we do not war with the weapons of the senses.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal [senses], but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. (2 Corinthians 10:4)
What are the strongholds?
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge [or Word] of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. (Verse 5)
We cast down reasonings, for men have deified reasonings. The great reasoners of the world and the great philosophers of the world have gained the ascendancy over the human mind.
The philosopher is the apologist for the failure of the sense knowledge man.
No man turns philosopher until he has the sense of utter failure, and he is writing an excuse for that failure.
Philosophy has never given anything of any value to the church.
What we called our Christian philosophers are often men who denied the miraculous and the supernatural.
They denied that God could hear prayer and would heal men today.
Philosophy is the swan song of human failure; it is born of the senses.
We are to cast down imaginations or reasonings, everything that sense knowledge has exalted against the Word of God, and we are to bring into captivity our thinking so we will think God’s thoughts instead of man’s thoughts, so we will be inspired by the Word of God rather than by the word of man.
God is a faith God. It took many years to find this out. I could think of Him as a love God, a holy God, and an omnipotent God, but to think of Him as a faith God was revolutionary.
There are two Scriptures that we should notice.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Montgomery calls faith “the title deed.”
You never expect anything now for which you hope. Hope is always in the future.
There is nothing firm or solid or tangible about hope. But faith gives reality to this thing you have hoped for, that you never would have had otherwise.
Romans 4:17 says, “Before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth [gives life to] the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” God calls the things that are not, as though they were, and they become.
Speaking of Abraham, He said, “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken” (Romans 4:18).
This is a striking Scripture. Abraham had a battle with hope. Finally, he arrived. He believed against hope. He counted God’s word to be absolute.
Without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform. (Romans 4:19–21 ASV)
Abraham looked at his body and saw it exactly as it was, an impotent, worn-out thing. He looked at Sarah, another broken vessel. Yet looking unto the promise of God, he waxed strong. He counted that God could make good what He had promised.
Abraham moved into God’s class. He counted the things that were not as though they were, and they became.
He counted his body to be as good as it was at the age of thirty-five years. He considered Sarah to be as young, and capable of bearing children.
He counted the thing that was not as though it was, and it became.
Reason would have conquered had he yielded to it. Reason said, “Tradition shows that no man has ever had his youth renewed, that no woman past ninety years of age has ever had a child.”
Yet this man believed against all the evidences of sense knowledge, and counted that God was able to make good what He had promised.
By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear. (Hebrews 11:3 ASV)
God had said before, “Let there be an earth,” and the earth came into being.
He said, “Let there be light.” It was not the light of the sun or moon. It was a light that gave us the subtropical heat during the first four days of creation, that gave us our vast fields of coal and oil. There was no rotation of the earth, thus the whole of it was subtropical.
All that God did to create the universe was to say, “Let there be light in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth,” and the sun, moon, and stars came into being.
The sun and moon did not function until the beginning of the fifth or sixth day. It would take ages on ages for the light to come to the earth from the distant stars.
God’s only machinery for creation was His Word. In that Word was the faith of God expressed.
It is a strange thing that we have not been taught that our words can be filled with either faith or unbelief or cold speculation; we have not realized their effect on the hearer!
It is our words that build up great organizations and institutions.
It is our words that destroy or build. It is words that are filled with faith or unbelief.
Faith words are constructive. The man who inspires faith is a builder. He is constructive.
The man who inspires unbelief is an enemy of progress. Faith giving substance to the Word of God.
It is giving substance to things we have hoped for.
Faith makes man God-like, just as love makes him God-like.
God is a faith God, and when man links up with God, he becomes a faith man.
He and God work together, and walk together.
Second Corinthians 5:7 says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”
The believer is a faith person. He does not walk by reason. He does not walk by sense knowledge.
He lives and walks in the realm of faith.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8–10)
It is by grace we are saved. It is through faith. It is not of man’s works. It is the gift of God. It is not of works lest any man should boast.
The new creation comes into being purely on the ground of faith.
God first believed it into being. Now we believe that Creator being, the Holy Spirit, into us. Our whole struggle in the faith life is to take the Word of God instead of the word of man, to rest in God’s Word rather than in man’s word.
MY RESOURCES
It staggered me when I said out loud, “God is the fount of my resources because He is the strength of my life; He is my ability; He is the Author and substance of my faith.”
I am a partaker of the divine nature. “These things have I written unto you…that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:13).
His life is His nature.
His nature is love.
If I have His nature, I have a measure of His ability. I have a measure of His love.
His wisdom is given to me in Christ without measure, so I can safely say that He is my ability.
You remember that Jesus said to the disciples, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).
The word “power” comes from the Greek word dunamis. Robert Young translates this as “ability,” and it is a better word. They were to tarry in Jerusalem until they received the ability of God.
You not only received the nature of God, but when the Spirit came into your life, you had in you the ability of God, the very resources of heaven.
No one yet knows the limit of that ability. It must be exhaustless.
Colossians 2:9–10 gives us a suggestion: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.”
Take with that Galatians 2:20 (ASV): “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.”
He has come into me in all His fullness.
He has come into me with all His completeness.
Now we can understand John 1:16: “Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”
The limitless One has come into me to take me over.
He gave to me His ability, His completeness.
Now I can understand Colossians 1:9 (MOFF) and Paul’s prayer: “We have never ceased to pray for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and insight.”
The Greek word translated “knowledge” is epiginosis, which means “complete, perfect, or exact knowledge.”
It means the very fullness of His ability.
First Corinthians 1:30 says God has made Jesus to be wisdom unto us.
Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge to my advantage.
I have the knowledge of the complete and perfect substitutionary work of Jesus.
Now I have the ability to incorporate that knowledge in my daily life.
I have spiritual wisdom and understanding so that I may “walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work,” and continually increasing in this exact, perfect knowledge of God. (See Colossians 1:9–12.)
I am made powerful with His ability, according to the might of His glory.
I now have steadfastness and longsuffering because of what I am in Christ.
I do not chide or condemn myself.
I throw myself open to this new life, this new unveiling of what I am in Christ.
I am longsuffering with those who can’t see it, who seem to be unable to take it in, as I once was.
In the meantime, with great joy, I am giving thanks unto the Father, who has given me this ability to enjoy my share of the inheritance of the saints in light. For I have been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom I have my redemption from Satan’s thralldom. (See Colossians 1:13–14.)
This new light has given me a new responsibility in the prayer life.
I can understand now why He said, “Come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), into the throne room where He and the Father are seated together.
I am not to come as a servant or a slave, but I am to come as a lover, a son.
But prayer is not going to be what it was before I knew who I was, and what my privileges were.
Now I am going in to sit with Him in the council room. I am going to call His attention to the needs of the brethren who are sitting in the darkness of sense knowledge while they pray for faith and seek for power.
I am going to find out how they can be helped to see the light of life, for I remember the Master said:
I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (John 8:12)
I have found that light of life.
I am no longer walking in the darkness of sense knowledge.
I am no longer crippled by my inferiority complex or my sense of unworthiness.
I know that I am a beloved son; that I have my place in the Father’s presence.
When we come to understand love’s intimacy, love’s privileges, and love’s right to the Father’s ear, we may rush into His presence at any time without an apology and lay our needs before Him—not only our personal needs, but the needs of those about us.
We can enjoy the ability and wisdom of our Father, and we will go out with that strange, sweet fragrance that is found only in the throne room, a fragrance that will cling to our garments.
Yes, our very words will have in them love’s own sweet fragrance.
Men will know that we have been with Jesus, have been in fellowship with Him.