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Scripture Reading: Heb. 11:1; Rom. 10:17; John 1:1; Eph. 6:17; John 6:63; 10:35; 16, Gal. 2:20; 3:22, 26; Rom. 3:22; Matt. 17:20b; Gal. 6:10; John 3:15, 36
III. The faith of the believers:
А. The definition of faith:
1. Faith is the substantiation of things hoped for — Heb. 11:1a.
2. The conviction of things not seen — v. 1b.
B. The source of faith:
1. Faith comes out of the hearing of the word — Rom. 10:17:
а. The written word of God — the Bible — John 10:35.
b. The living word of God — Christ—1:1.
c. The applied word of God — the Spirit — Eph. 6:17; John 6:63.
2. All three refer to God Himself (who calls the things not being as being and gives life to the dead — Rom. 4:17) embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit, so the faith is the faith of Christ — 16, Gal. 2:20; 3:22, 26; Rom. 3:22.
C. The effect of faith — nothing will be impossible to faith — Matt. 17:20b.
D. The believers are the believing ones in Christ, who are the household of the faith — Gal. 6:10.
E. The believers’ faith in Christ brings them into a life union with Christ — John 3:15, 36.
Prayer: Lord, we thank You that You have gathered us again into Your dear name. Lord, we want to be here in Your name. In this name we have Your presence. In this name we enjoy You as the life-giving all-inclusive Spirit. Lord, even in this gathering we have Your word, Your living word. And we thank You that You cleanse us all the time with Your precious blood. We trust in this cleansing that we might be kept in the fellowship with You, dear Lord — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Lord, give us the utterance. We do not want to be anything in this speaking, but we want to let You be everything. You are the One speaking. We are not. Even, Lord, in the listening, we need You. You are our Listener, and we are not. You replace us. We come to You, Lord. We believe that You as God are, and we are not. Thank You, Lord.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This is the apostle Paul’s definition of faith. In Greek the word for substantiation is the same as the word for substance. In Hebrews 1:3 Paul refers to Christ as the impress of God’s substance. We could say that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Things hoped for and things unseen are not in the physical realm. We believers are not for physical things that are in our hands. We are always for things hoped for.
Also, all the things related to us are things not seen. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “We do not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” We should not choose the things in this temporary time. Instead, we should regard the unseen, eternal things. The worldly people regard the things which are seen. They do not care for things not seen. But we are different because we are believers. We may have a car, a house, and other material possessions, but we are not for these things, because we care only for things not seen. We regard all the things not seen from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22.
All the numerous blessings mentioned in this divine book are not seen, yet hoped for. We have not seen them, yet we hope for them day by day. So there is the need of faith. Faith is the very substance of the things we hope for. The two biggest things we hope for are the Lord’s second coming (1 Thes. 4:13-18; Col. 1:27) and our glorification with His glory (Rom. 8:23-25, 30; Phil. 3:21). Every day I am hoping for these two things. In a certain sense, I am tired of living in this ugly world. I want the Lord Jesus to come back today. I want to be glorified, redeemed in my body and transfigured into His glorious body. These are two big hopes. We know by faith that these things are coming, because faith is the conviction of things not seen and the substantiation of things hoped for.
Now we want to see the source of faith. Surely you and I are not the source. We do not have a bit of faith in ourselves. We have only unbelief. When we hear that the Lord Jesus will come again and that we will be raptured and glorified, there is a question mark within us. The first question mark was placed by the snake, the old serpent. When the serpent tempted Eve, probably he lifted up his head and was himself in the shape of a question mark as he asked, “Did God really say...?” (Gen. 3:1). The question mark is like a snake. When people read the promises in the Bible, the snake, the question mark, is within them to cause them to doubt God.
We need to exercise our faith to believe in the unseen things. Is the church something seen or something not seen? The church in its most basic definition is a gathering of the called ones. Whenever we, the called ones of God, come together, that is the church. It is seen. But the Bible says more. The church is also the house of God (Eph. 2:19; 1 Tim. 3:15). This is not seen. We may have a gathering but not have the house of God. There are many kinds of gatherings. Worldly people gather together in nightclubs and social clubs, but our gathering should be the house of God. The assembly is seen, but the house of God is not seen. We have to realize the house of God, not by sight but by faith (2 Cor. 5:7). Everything that we regard is not seen, so we need to exercise our faith.
According to Romans 10:17, faith comes out of the hearing of the word. Thus, the source of faith is the word, but we have to realize the crystallization of this point. There are three aspects of the word. First, there is the written word of God — the Bible (John 10:35). Then there is the living word of God — Christ (1:1). Finally, there is the applied word of God — the Spirit (Eph. 6:17; John 6:63).
The Bible is the written word, and Christ is the living word. Without the Spirit, however, the living word cannot be applied to us. The living word becomes the applied word through the Spirit. God has only one kind of word. First, He spoke, and what He spoke was written in a book. That is the Bible. There is only one book that is the word of God. The term Bible means “the book.” The Bible is the book of books. What a mercy and what a wonder that in human history such a book has been produced — the word of God! The world today is a mess. So many bad things are reported in today’s newspapers. Suppose the Bible were taken away from mankind. I do not think that mankind could exist without the word of God.
We have such a word, but not many have really been benefited by this word. This is why we have to either read or hear the Bible. Every week we gather together a number of times just to read, speak, and hear the word. When the word of the Bible is spoken to us and heard by us, right away the written word becomes the living word. That is Christ. When the living word is applied to us and received by us, it becomes the word of the Spirit. Then this word of the Spirit heard by us is the source of our faith. Faith comes from the hearing of this applied word by the Spirit through the living Christ out of the written Bible.
Early in the morning you may read the Bible but without prayer and without calling on the name of the Lord. Then the word of God is merely the written word to you. It has nothing to do with you subjectively. So you have to have some contact with the Lord by calling on Him and pray-reading the Word. When you call on Him and pray-read the Word, right away you have the deep sensation that Christ is living within you. Then you would say, “Lord, I love You. I love this word here. How I love Hebrews 11:6: ‘He who comes forward to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.’” Right away this written word becomes a living word and then an applied word to you. Then you get into your car and drive to your office. While you are driving, you have something living applied to you. Then you have faith. Faith comes from this source. This is our crystallization-study of the source of faith.
All three — the written word, the living word, and the applied word — refer to God Himself. “In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Word here is a person. God’s written word in the Bible becomes Christ as the living word, who is applied into us as the Spirit, the word of the Spirit. That is God Himself. The more that God is gained by you in this way, the more He becomes your faith.
Thus, the source of faith is God. He is the One who calls the things not being as being and gives life to the dead (Rom. 4:17). In Genesis 1 there was no light, so God said, “Let there be light,” and light was there (v. 3). We are related to God through these three aspects of His word: the written word, the living word, and the applied word. Then we enjoy God as the One who calls the things not being as being and who gives life to the dead. Nothing is impossible to faith (see Hymns, #535), because faith is actually God Himself.
The more of God you have, the more faith you have. We can gain God by coming to the Bible, the written word. But if we merely read the Bible, it could only be the dead letter to us. Before reading the Bible, it is good to call on the Lord at least two or three times, “O Lord Jesus. O Lord Jesus.” Right away, the written word of the Bible becomes the living word. That is Christ. Then we react to Him, and He becomes the word as the Spirit, the word applied by the Spirit. Then we have God. God is added into our being, and this God is the source of faith.
The God who calls the things not being as being and who gives life to the dead is embodied in Christ. Whenever you have God, you have His embodiment, and His embodiment is Christ. This embodiment is realized as the Spirit. So the faith is the faith of God, the faith of Christ (16, Gal. 2:20; 3:22, 26; Rom. 3:22), and the faith of the Spirit. Thus, the faith is the faith of the embodied and realized Triune God.
To study the Bible in this way is what I call the study of crystallization. For twenty years I have been having a life-study of the Bible. Now our study has been uplifted to another level, a higher level. We have gone on from the life-study to the crystallization-study.
The crystallization of faith is to believe that God is. The crystallization of the source of faith is God in His written word contacted as the living word and applied as the word of the Spirit so that we can gain the Triune God, who is able to call the things not being as being and give life to the dead. This One is embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit. So faith is the Triune God embodied and realized. God in the written word becomes the living word applied as the word of the Spirit. Thus, God embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit is faith.
In Matthew 17:20b the Lord spoke concerning the effect of faith: “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” Nothing is impossible to faith. Hymns, #535, written by Charles Wesley, expresses this effect of faith:
Only God is all able, omnipotent; nothing is impossible to Him (19:26). But the Lord also indicated that nothing is impossible to faith. So this indicates that faith and God, God and faith, are one. If you do not have God, God remains apart from you. If you have God in you, this God becomes faith. Faith is the subjective God applied to your being. Thus, just as nothing is impossible to God, nothing is impossible to faith.
The believers are the believing ones in Christ, who are the household of the faith (Gal. 6:10). In the universe there are many houses with many households. But there is one particular house with millions of members. That is the house of faith. We belong to this house. This is a big family, and the family name is faith. This is the home of faith. We may say that a certain home is the Smith home or the Lee home. Now we are all members of the “faith home.”
We are believers, who do not believe nonsensical things. We believe in the word, and the word has three stages: the written word, the living word, and the applied word. Over two thousand years ago, there was only the written word, not the living word, because Christ was not here yet. Today we have the living word. Without Christ as the living word, it was very hard for God’s word to become the applied word as the Spirit. This is because before Christ came, the Spirit was mostly objective; He was not yet within God’s people. Before Christ, the Spirit of God was upon God’s people. But today we have the Triune God embodied in Christ and realized as the all-inclusive, compound, life-giving Spirit indwelling us all the time. Thus, when we touch the Bible, right away the Bible can become living and applied.
We are the members of the family, the household, of the faith. This faith house is a house that believes in God through His word. Hebrews 1 says that God has spoken (vv. 1-2). This word becomes the living word, Christ, and this living word is applied by the Spirit. Then we have the Triune God as the word in us.
The believers’ faith in Christ brings them into a life union with Christ (John 3:15, 36). This is my point in this chapter.
In just thirty-three and a half years, from Christ’s incarnation to His resurrection, great things were accomplished in the universe. The worldly people do not see these things, but thank God for His mercy to mankind. Whatever took place in these thirty-three and a half years as great things has been written in the New Testament. Today when we read the New Testament, we have to see all these great things.
The New Testament begins with a genealogy. Matthew 1:1 says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” This is Christ’s incarnation. The first great thing that was accomplished in the whole universe was God’s incarnation, God’s becoming a man. Then there was His living for thirty-three and a half years, recorded in the four Gospels. How great this was! Then He entered into death, passed through death, came out of death, and entered into resurrection. In the Lord’s recovery we have published thousands of messages on these things.
Three results came out of His resurrection. First, He, the only begotten Son of God, became the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29), indicating that many sons of God are following. So the second thing is that millions of us, the believers, were born with Him (1 Pet. 1:3). He was born as the firstborn Son of God, and we were born as the many sons of God. We are His “twins.” Third, this One, who was the only Begotten becoming the Firstborn with many twins, became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and this life-giving Spirit is the consummation and aggregate of the processed Triune God. Out of this consummation of the Triune God, the church came into being, and the church as the house of God is the Body of Christ. This Body of Christ is the organism of the Triune God, which consummates in the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem will remain in the new heaven and new earth as a city expressing God for eternity with divinity mingled with humanity. This is our New Testament.
When we read the New Testament, we read these things. The more we read, the more we contact the written word of the New Testament. Then we have Christ as the living word and the Spirit as the applied word. The word of God is embodied in Christ and realized in the Spirit to be our faith. This faith brings us into a life union with Christ, who is the embodiment of God realized as the all-inclusive Spirit. Faith links us with the Triune God.
