Seeing the Bible as Law – Means me doing the best I can to comply with God’s standards, as my head understands them, set out in the scriptures. In other words me trying to keep God’s commandments. That’s the Old Covenant which man by human nature couldn’t keep.
Seeing the Bible as Grace - Means my believing: That the words of the Bible are living seeds containing the life and nature of Jesus Christ in dormant form. (Just as natural seeds contain the life and nature of plants in dormant form). That these words are God’s grace, which His Spirit will speak to me, reveal to me, and, as I believe them, write them in my heart. That these living words will transform me into their likeness, so imparting the nature of Christ, for He is God’s grace. This is the New Covenant which, with Christ in me now doing it, I can keep.
To begin to receive God’s Grace, His word, the nature of Christ, we must believe His word:
The Law is God’s word initially written on stone and which is now written with ink on paper.
Grace is God’s living word lifted off the paper and written by the Holy Spirit on our hearts.
2 Cor 3:3 And you show that you are a letter of Christ …written … by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts ESV
Our relationship with God began, and we were born again, the moment we believed in our
Hearts, not our heads, the first words of the gospel of grace brought to us by the Holy Spirit:
Acts 20:24 ...The gospel (God’s words) of the grace of God.
1 Pet 1:23 Being born again of incorruptible seed, by the word of God (believed)... KJV
Eph 2:8 For by grace (by God’s words) are you saved through faith... KJV
That’s initial Grace; God wants us to have abundant Grace, as we believe more of His words
2 Cor 9:8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work.
Rom 5:17 ...Those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Grace has to be received).
But we could only receive God’s initial Grace, His word, when we believed that word with
our hearts. Natural seeds only spring to life when planted in soil, our hearts are the spiritual
soil in which the spiritual seed of God’s words spring to life. In order to receive more Grace,
more of Christ’s nature, more of God’s words, so that we can reign in this life over all our
spiritual enemies, we must believe those words, not with our heads, but with our hearts.
Without such further belief there can be no more Grace and hence we cannot please God.
Rom 4:16 Therefore it is of (our) faith that it might be (that it can be) by (God’s) grace...
Rom 5:2 ...We have access by faith into this grace...(and there is no other way)
Heb 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him (for there can be no Grace)
God can do nothing for us apart from His Grace, we can only receive His Grace by faith:
Everywhere in the Bible we are told that our faith, that truly believes God, that whole heartedly trusts Him, is essential for God to do the work in our lives that He wants to:
Ps 37:5 Commit your way to the LORD, Trust in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.
Matthew 9:29 …According to your faith be it unto you.
Mark 9:23 …If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes.
Matthew 21:22 ...Whatever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.
James 1:6-7 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting...he that doubts...let not that person suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
God desires and must have our trust, our belief in the words He speaks to us, in order for Him to fulfill any of His promises in our lives. He can’t bless us unless we believe His words. Otherwise our salvation would be based on our works. You would think that since receiving anything from God depends on first believing God, that we would all diligently study and learn what God has to say about faith. So that we could all trust God for everything in our lives and therefore live by faith. Most of us don’t do this and when we are unable to receive something from God, because we don’t understand our need for faith or we don’t know how to get more of it, we may complain and judge God, falsely assuming He withheld His Grace.
Some of the counterfeits that Christians assume are faith but in fact they are not faith at all:
1. Faith is not mental assent: I can read or hear a promise of God from the Bible and agree intellectually with what it says; I can even memorize it – isn’t that faith, can’t I now stand on that promise and expect God to fulfill it? No, I can’t. This is a deadly counterfeit of faith, because I am only mentally, that is with my natural mind or brain, consenting to the scripture and it can’t be fulfilled. This fake head faith can never have the joyous doubt-free assurance of genuine heart faith, so it will always be tentative and wavering. Since it doesn’t know if a promise in scripture really is God’s will, it can’t fully commit its will to that promise. Mental assent accounts for most of the so called “faith failures” where a person claimed to be believing God for a certain promise but the promise didn’t happen – it couldn’t, because they confused trying to believe God with the natural mind, or mental assent, with heart faith.
Romans 8:7 The natural mind (sense and reason without the Holy Spirit) is God’s enemy..
Rom 10:10 For with the heart a person believes, trusts in, and relies on Christ...AMP
2. Faith is not hope, or wishing it would happen: Faith and hope are not the same thing, although hope may often be the stepping stone to faith. Hope is wishing even longing for something to happen in the future, but it doesn’t know if the thing hoped for will happen. Faith believes, and when the Bible says believes it means “knows”, faith knows that it has right now whatever it is seeking, even though it hasn’t shown up physically yet. To faith it is just a matter of time, but not if, whatever it is shows up. How does faith “know” the future before it happens? Because genuine faith, according to scripture, has always heard directly from God what He is going to do. That’s why faith is doubt free whereas hope can never be.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance (the certainty) of things hoped for (bringing
the future into the present), the evidence (the proof) of things not seen.
Rom 10:17 Faith comes by hearing and hearing of the word of God (that He speaks).
Num 23:19 God is not like man that He should lie, has He said it and will He not do it?
Or has He spoken it (and you heard Him), and will He not make it good?
3. Faith is not presumption Just because I may have believed with genuine faith one promise from God, such as the initial forgiveness of my sins, this does not somehow earn me the blessing of an unrelated promise, such as physical healing, when I have not yet genuinely heard and believed that other promise. For any one of God’s promises to be true in my life there must be genuine faith in that particular promise. Otherwise I will start to make false assumptions that can lead to great disappointment. Often we Christians wrongly presume that if we faithfully serve God in some way, this entitles us to have God fulfill certain promises for us, such as meeting our financial needs. No, grace must have faith to receive it, we must hear with out hearts His word of grace and then believe it, for it to come to pass.
Psa 19:13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have
dominion over me: then...I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
Matt 8:13 (Jesus) ...As you have believed (not presumed), so let it be done for you.
4. Faith is not fatalism Many Christians think that by waiting to see how events play out they are sort of trusting God, even though there is no knowledge of God’s will, or active belief in it, or obedience to His Spirit. No, that isn’t faith its passive resignation or fatalism. Fatalism appeals because it excuses us of any responsibility for what happens. It’s based on the false Calvinism teaching that in any situation God’s will is going to be done anyway. All of the Bible contradicts this: God’s will was not done by: Adam and Eve, by Cain, by the entire generation of Noah, by all Israel in the wilderness except Joshua and Caleb, by Saul and most of Israel’s other kings, by almost all of Israel at the time of Christ, by 5 out of 7 of the Churches in book of Revelation, and by the rest of the world according to 1 John 5:19:
1 Jo 5:19 ...The whole world (most Christians) lies under the influence of the wicked one.
2 Cor 4:4 Whose minds the god of this world has blinded, who do not (actively) believe...
True faith makes us responsible to believe the will and word of God that He reveals to us, and to see that our words and actions are consistent with believing Him and obeying Him.
James 2:26 ...Faith without actions (which prove that faith) is dead (just like fatalism is).
God’s will is that none perish but that all come to repentance (2 Pet 3:9). But if we buy in to the false doctrine of fatalism, God is control, if it’s meant to be it will be, none of us could be saved. Salvation requires that we repent, change our minds about sin and God, and then, with our hearts, believe the first words of the gospel. If God’s number one priority, salvation, requires our heart faith, do you think any of His other promises won’t also require heart faith?
Jam 2:18-24 ...I will show you my faith by my actions...So you see, we are made right
with God by what we do (that proves we believe), not by faith alone. TEV/NLT
Our lack of knowledge about what faith is causes us to fail and have resentment against God
If I have been deceived by one of faiths’ counterfeits, mental assent, hope, presumption or fatalism, treating it as faith, then it’s very likely that some disaster has occurred, over which I thought I had faith. But relief from God never came nor could cone since it wasn’t true faith.
Rom 14:23 For whatever is not of faith is sin, whatever is done without a heart
conviction of its approval by God is sinful. NKJV/AMP
Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge…(especially about faith)
Inevitably and sadly when Christians through a lack of knowledge have latched on to a counterfeit of faith and God couldn’t, not wouldn’t, help them, they will often judge God falsely and harden their hearts toward Him. With the exception of abandoning their faith in Christ altogether this is the very worst thing a Christian could ever do. It will now be almost impossible for them to receive any of God’s blessings until they forsake their thoughts about God and are established in the truth about faith, and, in God’s unchanging love for them.
Mark 6:5-6 And He (Jesus) could not do any mighty work there (in Nazareth)…
And He marveled because of their unbelief...
Jer 31:3 …I have loved you with an everlasting love…
What then is genuine faith? How do I get it, what are the conditions, and what destroys it?
Faith is the ability to completely trust God, first for ourselves and then increasingly for others.
This ability can only exist within our hearts, meaning in our spirits, never in our heads.
For faith to exist and grow, our hearts must be tender toward and able to hear God’s voice.
Sin, any sin, will harden our hearts making them unable to hear God, and destroy our faith.
God’s word, as we hear it with our hearts, is the word of faith, imparting Christ’s faith to us.
God’s Spirit, as we submit to it with our will, is the Spirit of faith, imparting God’s faith to us.
Faith, having heard words from God and being led by God’s Spirit, faith knows God’s will.
Knowing God’s will in the heart, faith will think, act and speak always in line with God’s will.
Faith fights, in the thought life, using God’s word and by God’ Spirit, every opposing thought.
Faith is the life of Jesus Christ, imparted by His word and Spirit, trusting God the Father, in us.
Heb 3:15 ...Today, if you will hear His (God’s) voice, Do not harden your hearts...
Heb 3:13 ...Lest any of you be hardened (in heart) through the deceitfulness of sin.
Rom 10:8 The word is near you...that is, the word of faith which we preach:
2 Cor 4:13 ...We have the same Spirit of faith...we also believe and therefore speak.
Col 1:9 ...That you may be filled with the knowledge of His (God’s) will....
1 Tim 6:12 Fight the good fight of faith (how?) lay hold on eternal life (on God’s words)
John 6:68 ...Lord...You have the words of eternal life.
Col 1:26-27 The mystery of the gospel...now has been revealed to His saints...(what is it)
Christ (living) in you (His faith working in you), the hope of (eternal) glory.
Gal 2:20 ...The life which I now live...I live by the faith of the Son of God... KJV
