Faith has ever been the principle on which God has blessed men. Long before the law was given by Moses, Abraham and been blessed on the principle of faith, as had also those named in Hebrews 11. It has been clearly stated that “without faith it is impossible to please (God): for he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Heb. 11:6). There were blessings enjoyed by the saints of old that faith brought to them, and that faith brings to us, but since the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ there have been blessings brought to the believer in Him that the saints of old could not know.
Divine Understanding
The opening verses of Hebrews 11 tells us something that faith has brought, and still brings, to those who come to God. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for,” and faith therefore enables us to enjoy the things that are yet in prospect. What God promised to Abraham, and the patriarchs, belonged to a day still future, but faith gave them the good of them in their souls. Relying on the word of God, their lives were ordered in the light of what lay before them: it was faith in God’s promises that made them strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Faith also was for them “the evidence of things not seen.” This is clearly seen in Moses, of whom it is written, “for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible” (verse 27). In Hebrews 2:8-9 it is written, “But now we see not yet all things put under Him. But we see Jesus…crowned with glory and honour.” The time has not come for all to see Jesus with all things under His feet, but by faith the believer sees Jesus crowned in heaven at God’s right hand. We do not yet see all that we shall see in the millennial day, but we have come to all in the faith of our souls (Heb. 12:22–24).
We can look forward by faith, we can look upwards by faith, and faith enables us to look backwards, so that we understand with perfect certainty “that the worlds were framed by the word of God.” Divine apprehension and understanding can only come by faith; the eyes of the heart being enlightened by the word of God, faith perceives and understands. Faith brings the believer into a realm of divine knowledge that is outside the ken of the greatest of men if they know not God. The babe in Christ has eyes to see what the greatest natural intellect is blind to. Faith gives the vision, and the possession of the Spirit of God gives the power to enter into the wonderful secrets of God that are revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures.
Children of God
When the Son of God came into the world He was unknown to the world, for the world did not apprehend who He was as God’s Son, as the true Light or as the Eternal Word. With Israel it was different, they did not receive Him, their leaders saying, “This is the Heir, come let us kill Him, and the inheritance will be ours.” God saw to it that there were those that did receive His Son, and “as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the children of God, even to them that believe in His Name” (John 1:12).
Faith in the Name of the Son of God brought a most blessed privilege, even that of being able to take the place that truly belongs to God’s children. Although Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel and all the other saints of God in past ages were God’s children, not one of them could ever say, I am a child of God. This privilege awaited the coming in to the world of the Son of God to reveal the Father; and on account of His death, the children of God that were scattered abroad have now been gathered together in one family (John 11:52), a family that knows the Father’s love, and that waits for the Son to come and take them to the Father’s house.
Eternal Life
This wonderful blessing comes to us through faith in the uplifted Son of Man (John 3:14–16). Entry into the kingdom of God by new birth should have been known to Nicodemus, but the Son of God had come to reveal what belonged to heaven, and also to die that those who believed in Him might receive what the Lord in incarnation made known. Man left to himself must perish, for the life received from Adam is claimed by death; but the Son of God has revealed a life on which death has no claim, and the one who receives it will never perish. Faith in the Son of Man who has died upon the cross is the only way in which this eternal life can be appropriated.
Eternal life is eternal because it belongs to eternity, having been with the Father before it was revealed in the Son, and it is the life in which believers will live with the Son and the Father in heaven for all eternity. In this life we have the knowledge of the Father and the Son, and the knowledge of the new relationships and affections of which Jesus spoke to His disciples. This life is in God’s Son, and He is personally the expression of it. It was made known in Him, in His Person, in His words; in One who was seen, heard, handled and contemplated by His disciples.
Justification
It is by faith that we have the remission of sins (Acts 10:43), and we are justified by faith (Rom. 5:1). Justification means that we are cleared from every charge of guilt, and this comes to us through believing in Him “that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” Once we were guilty sinners in the sight of God, but now we are God’s righteousness in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. The question of our sins once lay heavily upon the conscience, but knowing that the Lord Jesus bore the penalty of our sins, and that God raised Him from the dead, the burden has been lifted, and we are at peace in God’s presence. Faith also has given us access into the favour of God, so that we stand before Him now in His favour, not in our sins. Before we were justified we dreaded the light of God’s presence, having come short of His glory; now we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Salvation
There are many aspects of salvation. In Matthew 1:21 we read of Jesus coming to save His people from their sins; and in Luke 1:71 Zacharias spoke of Jesus coming “that we might be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us.” The death of Christ has saved us from the consequences of our guilt, from the power of sin, from the power of Satan, and from the fear of death. Soon, at the coming of the Lord, we shall be saved from the judgment that will overtake a world that knows not, and desires not, God and His Christ, a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5).
While waiting for the coming of Christ to save us from all that is around us in this world, we have already received what faith brings, the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:9). In Romans 10:9 we also learn that faith brings us salvation, for the Scripture reads, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” This is “the word of faith” that Paul preached (verse 8), the word preached to the keeper of the prison at Philippi (Acts 16:30-31), and the word that is the “power of God to salvation to every one that believes” (Rom. 1:16). Ephesians 2:8 also testifies that we have salvation through faith.
An Object in Heaven
When the Lord Jesus ascended to heaven, His disciples “looked stedfastly toward heaven as He went up,” and the angels said to them, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” then they told them that the Lord would “come in like manner” as they had seen Him go into heaven (Acts 1:9–11). It was not yet the moment for the disciples of the Lord to be occupied with heaven. They could not see Jesus in heaven without the indwelling Spirit of God, who was not yet come to them; and there was yet a testimony to be given to Israel by the Holy Spirit, and if they accepted this testimony and repented the times of refreshing would come “from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19-20).
The testimony of the Spirit was rejected in the martyrdom of Stephen, and in Stephen we see the attitude of saints towards heaven. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen “looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). Like the disciples of Acts 1, who were a type of the remnant of Israel, as also the nucleus of the church about to be formed by the coming of the Spirit, we are to be waiting for the coming of the Lord from heaven, but like Stephen we are also to have Christ in heaven as the object of our hearts.
Of this the Apostle Paul writes to the Galatians, where he says, “I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Paul viewed himself as crucified with Christ; all that he had been had gone in the cross of Christ, and it was Christ that lived in Him, and the power of that life was in having Christ, a living Christ in heaven, as the constant object of His heart and mind. Faith linked him with Christ, for it was by faith that he saw Christ in heaven in His glory. In 2 Corinthians 3:18 the Apostle shows that with faith we need the Holy Spirit to occupy us with the heavenly Christ.
Sonship
As children of God we were born into His family, it was an entirely new existence for us, brought about by God’s word and His Spirit. The relationship of sons to God supposes our previous existence as sons of disobedience, and our being brought into this new relationship with God by faith, even as it is written in Galatians 3:26, “For ye are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Faith has made us God’s sons, and the Apostle can add, “And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). We have the consciousness of the relationship of sons as having the Spirit of God’s Son, for we are associated in this close relationship with the Son of God Himself.
This is the highest Christian blessing, for we are brought individually and collectively into relationship with God, and as sharing His Son’s place before His face. What a place of nearness this is to God, where we can address Him so intimately with His love resting upon us. Moreover, this relationship carries with it heirship, so that it is written, “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ“ (Gal. 4:7), for it is through Christ, and with Christ, that we are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17).
Ephesians 1:5 tells us that we have this place of sonship as having been predestinated to it in association with Christ and that we are accepted in Him, God’s Beloved. Romans 8:23 tells us that we are awaiting sonship, in all that it will bring to us at the coming of the Lord, but our passage in Galatians 3:26 makes it clear that faith has even now given us the relationship, a relationship to be enjoyed before the Father’s face in spirit, while awaiting to be at home as sons in the Fathers house.
These are a few of the wonderful things that God has given us to enter into and enjoy by faith, things that are ours now in God’s rich grace, as anticipating the portion that awaits us with Christ in the coming day.
R. 18.1.68