Living Faith in the Word

Living Faith in the Word

By nature we are, first of all unbelieving concerning the Word. Next, we are slow to believe it. It usually takes a woefully long time until faith in all the words of life becomes living, so that you appropriate personally what they say, with the result that you become like what the Word says.

We are so corrupted by the flesh that we meet almost each word of life with unbelief, even in the sense that what the Word says can obviously never completely and fully take place in me.

In the beginning, we are experts in unbelief in the Word! It is difficult to believe that God loves us so much that he wants to do something so unspeakably great and glorious in us during the time of our sojourning, as the Word in fact says. We are as if possessed by unbelief!!!

However, when a corruptible man says something, people are quick to believe it even though it is practically never completely true, and often very wrong! Then they are experts in believing the words of men which should not be relied on. People are actually completely backwards and therefore should get radically converted!

Instead of believing the Word so it can be fulfilled, people try to manage on their own without believing the Word, and by doing that they do not experience the truth of the glorious words of God.

For example, when you are to learn German, it says in the lesson book that “I am” is “ich bin,” and people don’t doubt it. However, in a manner of speaking, people have more reason to doubt that than to doubt God’s glorious, blessed, strong words, despite the fact that it is also true what it says in the German lesson book.

There is an abundance of glorious words in the Bible about our salvation, about always overcoming, about transformation and a new creation, about being conformed to Christ, about putting off the old man and putting on something new, about following Jesus’ steps, about becoming perfect and not lacking anything, about becoming blameless, without spot or wrinkle, about walking in the light as he is in the light, etc., etc. All of this is to happen while we are on this earth in the days of our flesh.

All of this, almost to the exclusion of everything else, is written in the New Testament, and yet it is a fact that the vast majority neither sees it nor believes it!!!