One cannot conceive of anything that will cripple faith and put the believer in bondage more quickly and surely than underestimating what He is, and what we are in Him. Along with that will come an underestimation of the Word.
We will say right out, “Oh, I believe the Bible is the Word of God,” and yet we turn to the arm of flesh for help.
And when we pray, we do not come with that quiet assurance that we would if some banker had given us his word in regard to our financial standing at the bank.
This is an unconscious underestimation of the Word, and it is an unconscious underestimation of the integrity of the Master Himself, who is the Author of this Word.
This leads to weakness, to doubt and fear.
It makes a vacillating type of faith.
We become what James calls “a double minded man” who is “unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).
What will change it?
When we realize what He has done for us in His great substitution and in the new creation.
We should meditate on the fact that we are partakers of the divine nature. “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
If we say over and over again to our hearts, “I am a partaker of God’s very nature. I have in me His faith nature. This makes me a child of faith. I have been begotten of the living Word through the Holy Spirit. The real me was recreated in Christ. I have the very nature of the Father and the Father is love, so I have in me the love nature of the Father,” and we meditate on this, we will no longer be “double-minded men.”
Repeat it over and over again.
Hold it as a constant affirmation before your mind that you are what He says you are, that you are a partaker of His very nature as He has declared.
And you remember that “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). That greater One is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one who, in creation, gave the color, the beauty, and fragrance to the flowers, to vegetation, to the trees. He is the one who takes of the nature of the Father, and through the Word, builds it into us.
He builds the beauty of Christ into our conduct.
He touches our reasoning faculties until the things that He has made in the floral world assume a new interest, and their beauty is enhanced and their fragrance enjoyed as never before.
I can remember the night that I received eternal life. It seemed as though I hardly touched the sidewalk on my way home. It was a cold winter night in January, but, oh, how beautiful the snow and the frost. Yes, the trees, stripped of their foliage, assumed a beauty I had never noted before.
The Holy Spirit had taken possession and was unveiling the wonders of His grace to me.
An underestimation of the Holy Spirit, of the Word, of Jesus, will keep us in a state of flux, in a realm of uncertainty.
Fear will dominate us; doubt will bind us and hold us in the realm of weakness.
But when we come to know Jesus as our Lord, as the mighty One at the right hand of the Father who ever lives to make intercession for us, our great lawyer who looks after every legal need of ours in Christ, we will no longer be dominated by fear and doubt.
We should come to know the reality of the Holy Spirit’s reality, which is all unveiled to us in the Pauline Revelation.
I urge you to go back and read Romans, and First and Second Corinthians again. Then abide a while in Ephesians, in those first three chapters especially, until you are lifted out of the realm of the senses into the realm of the new man in Christ Jesus.
WHAT HE MADE US
The fear of seeing what we are in Christ, and of acting as though we knew what we were, has kept us in bondage and robbed us of the reality of His finished work. How slow we have been to act what we are in Him. The Spirit, through the Word, has declared what we are in Christ, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7).
That is not a theological redemption. This is not Paul’s philosophy. This is the Father’s description of what we are in His Son, and He says, “In whom we have redemption.”
From whom and what are we redeemed?
Satan is the god of darkness. We have been delivered out of Satan’s dominion, out of the realm and authority of darkness. We have been delivered out of the dominion of sin, for Romans 6:14 says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” We are delivered out of the authority of disease, for Romans 8:11 says, “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken [give life to] your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
Not only have we a redemption that is literal and absolute, but we are a new creation, and Satan has no dominion over us.
Jesus is the head and Lord of this new creation.
We have been taught so long and so persistently about our weaknesses, our lack of ability, and our unworthiness that we hardly dare say that we are what He says we are. We are afraid that people will misunderstand us and think that we have become fanatical.
But He says, “There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ; what is old is gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 MOFF), and we are reconciled to Him.
We are a part of His very dream.
Satan has no dominion over this new creation.
Ephesians 2:10 says we are created in Christ Jesus, that when Jesus arose from the dead, the work of the new creation was consummated in Christ. It became a reality in us when we took Him as our Savior and confessed Him as our Lord.
The Father in His Word has declared what we are in His Son. That declaration is the truth.
I may not have grown up to it, may not have appreciated it, but it stands there with an open door inviting me to enjoy all the fullness that is mine in Him.
He declares what we may do in the name of His Son. We haven’t appreciated it perhaps, but He gave to us the power of attorney to use His Son’s name.
Jesus said, “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24).
Seven times Jesus repeats this, giving us the legal right to the use of His name.
Philippians 2:9–11 tells us that God gave him “a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Not only that, but Jesus said, after He arose from the dead, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:18–19 ASV).
Disciple means a student, a learner. He never said, “Go and make converts.” He never said, “Go and make churches.” Jesus said, “Go and make disciples.”
There will be schools of Christ. Every believer will be a student of this living Word. What masters they will be!
Not only do we have that power to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons, or to heal the sick, but that name gives us access to the Father, and is the absolute guarantee of answered prayer.
You see, this prayer life is based upon absolute knowledge.
It is not based upon emotion, nor feelings, nor the theories of men, but upon the living Word of God, this Word that “liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Peter 1:23).
When you know in your heart that you are what He says you are, then you act it in the face of all, confessing what He has done in you, confessing what He has made you. This glorifies Him and His Work.
To deny what we are, to tell what Satan is doing in our bodies and minds, is denying what we are in Christ.
When Jesus said, “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23), He meant that all things are possible to the believer. All the believer needs to do is to get to know what he is in Christ, then rise up and take his place.
What masters He has made us to be! How invincible we are!
Can’t you see what it would mean for one in the face of all this to be talking about his weakness or his lack, making his confession of his inability?
“For of his fulness we all received” (John 1:16 ASV), and it is grace and the ability of God for us to enjoy to the very limit all that we are in Him.
JESUS
The Man at the right hand of God, who loved me and died for me, now ever lives for me!
He was God’s answer to the universal cry of humanity.
He was God manifest to our senses.
He was an intrusion into the sense realm.
He talked like God. He acted like God. He lived like God, and, on the cross, He died like God.
He was not a philosopher searching for the truth. He was the truth.
He was not a mystic. He was reality.
He was not an experimenter searching for reality.
He was not a reformer. He was the recreator.
He was not a visionary. He was the Light of the world.
He never reflected.
He never reasoned.
He knew. He never learned.
He never asked prayers for Himself.
He never sought the help of man.
He was never in a hurry.
He was never afraid.
He never showed weakness.
He never hesitated.
He was always ready.
He was sure. There was a sureness in all He did or said.
He had no sense of sin or need of forgiveness.
He never sought or needed advice.
He knew why He came.
He knew from whence He came.
He knew who He was.
He knew the Father.
He knew about heaven.
He knew where He was going.
He knew man.
He knew Satan.
He had no sense of lack.
He had no sense of limitations.
FROM THE ARREST TO THE CROSS
He had no sense of fear.
He had no anger, no sense of disappointment, no sense of being defeated or being forsaken.
He had no sense of need of human sympathy.
He didn’t shrink from pain or brutal treatment.
He was Master when they arrested Him.
He was the Master at the trial.
He ruled the seen and the unseen while He was on the cross.
He was Almighty, yet a man.
He died as God.
AFTER THE RESURRECTION
He had no sense of revenge. He was love.
He was a revelation of a new kind of love.
There were no dramatics. He said, “Go tell Peter, the weakest one.”
He died a Lamb. He arose as Lord.
He acted like God.
He spoke like God.
His resurrection had all the simplicity of God.
He was God.
HIS WORD IS SPIRIT AND LIFE
Jesus knew the value and authority of His own words, and He dared to say, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).
He knew that His words were living things.
He knew that His words would give life and death.
You remember how He spoke to the barren fig tree and it died from the root up.
You know that He spoke to the widow’s son, and he became alive instantly. When the Holy Spirit speaks through Paul in Hebrews 4:12 (ASV), stating, “The word of God is living,” the Spirit is simply repeating in different words what Jesus said: “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).
James 1:18 says we are begotten by the Word, the Word that recreates men and gives them life.
First Peter 1:23 holds a peculiar place in the heart of deeply spiritual men: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”
Our birth into the spiritual realm, the thing that gave us eternal life and made us a branch of the vine, was the incorruptible Word of God.
Psalm 107:20 says, “He sent his word, and healed them.”
That word was His Son.
That word we know by the name of Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
That is the Word that brought eternal life to us.
Paul, saying goodbye to the Ephesian brethren, says in Acts 20:32, “Now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”
This Word is the faith-building Word, the grace-revealing Word, the Word of assurance.
THIS WORD IS OUR TESTIMONY
“The word of faith, which we preach” (Romans 10:8).
“If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32).
We abide in the Word.
We live in it.
Our home is in the Word.
But John 15:7 (MOFF) takes this a step beyond: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, then ask whatever you like and you shall have it.”
The thought of the Greek is like something born, “coming into being,” and so He says the thing that you desire, if His words abide in you, will be given birth by God.
It is a staggering thing, isn’t it?
There is absolutely no limit to the ability of God that is unveiled to us in His Word.
THE WORD OF GOD
The Word is of God—outbreathings of God, the mind of God, the will of God.
It is God speaking.
It is a part of God Himself. It is a living thing.
It abides forever.
“I watch over my word to perform it” (Jeremiah 1:12 ASV).
“No word from God shall be void of power” (Luke 1:37 ASV).
God and His Word are One.
This Word can live in my heart.
I will obey it—I will do it—I will enjoy it!
FAITH IN THE WRITTEN WORD
All the mighty achievements wrought by men of God have been accomplished by faith in the written Word.
It was the Word made flesh. Jesus spoke the Word. He was the Word.
Now it is my faith in the living Word, the written Word.
It is that Word on my lips that heals the sick, that breaks the power of demons over men.
I hold it in my hand.
I have it in my heart.
I have it on my lips.
I live it.
It lives in me.
The Word is my healing, my strength.
It is the Bread of Life to me.
It is the strength, the very ability of God to me.
The Word is my confession.
The Word is my light and my salvation.
The Word is my rest, my pillow.
The Word gives me quietness in the midst of confusion and gives me victory in the midst of defeat.
It gives me joy where desolation reigned.
The Word on my lips becomes the living, lifesaving, soul-inspiring voice of God.
I KNOW WHAT GOD’S WORD ON MY LIPS WILL DO
First, it is the Word in your heart; then it is the Word on your lips.
Jesus knew what His Father’s Word would do on His lips.
Peter and John knew what the Word would do on their lips.
It is the Word that goes forth out of my mouth, that cannot return to Him void.
The creative Word on the lips of Jesus is the creative Word on your lips.
Faith is daring to speak His Word to the sick, to the demon-possessed and setting them free.
Real prayer is taking His Word into the throne room and letting His Word speak through your lips to Him on the throne, calling His attention to His own promises.
The written Word is God’s testimony about Himself, about His Son and about His family.
It is also a testimony about His old enemy that has sought to destroy the object of His affection, man.
SOME WORD FACTS
The Gospel of John is largely Jesus’s testimony about Himself and about His Father.
It is a remarkable fact that Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are the testimony of Jehovah. About 2,500 times, He says, “I am Jehovah.”
We have never given place in our thinking to the importance of the right confession.
The Word is God speaking to me.
It is a Revelation to me.
So many of us wish to demonstrate our faith; that is, to prove, to our own heart’s satisfaction, our own confidence in the Word.
Here is the relation of confession to demonstration:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)
Notice that confession precedes possession.
You do not have eternal life until you confess the lordship of Jesus and your confidence in His substitutionary sacrifice.
John 6:47 (ASV) says, “He that believeth hath eternal life.”
There is no possession without action. Believing is acting on the Word.
Acting on the Word is your confession.
Let it be a fixed fact in your mind that confession is proof of faith.
There is no believing that does not climax in confession.
It is faith expressing itself.
So, believing and confessing are practically one.
Your confession locates you. I know where you are. I know what you are.
Mental assent dares not confess.
It wishes to be sure of results first, so it always stands on the negative side of the issue.
It never wins.
It is never a success.
Mental assent is the voice of the senses, the mind of the senses, or the mind of the flesh.
Faith is from the mind of the spirit—your recreated spirit, dominating your reason faculties.
The mind of the senses is a spiritually dead mind.
Now the natural [physical] man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him. (1 Corinthians 2:14 ASV)
There is only one attitude to take toward the spiritually dead or the mentally blinded one. They cannot enjoy the riches that belong to them until they act intelligently upon the Word.
Let me state it from another angle: the natural man cannot understand or appreciate the things of God, however hungry he may be for them, but he may recognize the need of them, so God has placed these riches within his reach.
All he needs to do is act upon the Word, and they become his.
TREATING THE WORD AS IF IT WERE A
COMMON BOOK
One of the most dangerous habits that Christians have is treating the Word as though it were a common book.
In one breath, we will declare that we believe it to be a revelation from God, and yet we turn to the arm of flesh for help when the Word has promised perfect deliverance.
We treat the fact of redemption as though it were a beautiful fiction.
We read articles about the Word.
We sing hymns confessing it.
And yet we live under the dominion of the adversary, continually confessing sickness, want, fear, weakness, and doubts in the face of this revelation from God of our redemption, of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, and the fact that He is seated now at the right hand of God, having finished a work that perfectly satisfies the demands of justice and meets the needs of humanity.
We read about it. We talk about it.
And then we act as though it were but a fable!
This is the reason why the church has more sickness and disease than any other organized body of people, why faith is weak, and why the average believer is ruled by the adversary.
All of this could be changed if we would give the Word the same place we would give Christ if He were here physically in our presence.
OUR WORDS
We are in our words.
They are born in us.
They are part of us.
We live in them.
They live in others.
We know each other by our words.
Our words are ourselves.
Words are given to express ourselves.
The Bible is born of God. He gave birth to it. He gave life to His own Word.
He is in it.
It is a part of Him.
We know God by His Word.
He has expressed Himself in it.
God lives in His Word on our lips.
This sets Jesus free to heal, save, and bless.
Jesus is the Word—He lives in the Word.
The Word lives in us.
The Word’s lordship is over us.
We know the Father through the Word.
We know Jesus by His words.