THE ONE AND ONLY FAITH OF JESUS CHRIST
In this message we are going to be looking at Ephesians, chapter four, verse four. The title is going to be: The One and Only Faith of Jesus Christ. There are many times in scripture where the phrase appears as ‘faith in Christ’ or faith in God.’ But there are also numerous times, especially in the New Testament, where the phrase actually reads in the Greek, ‘the faith of Jesus Christ, the faith of God.’ In fact it exhorts believers to have the faith of Jesus Christ or the faith of God. Now this should raise a lot of questions in our minds because most of us have been taught that we are supposed to dig down deep inside of ourselves and muster up out of ourselves faith in God or in Christ. While we may not use these words when we describe this concept of faith that would really be, if this is how this is supposed to work, really not be the faith of Jesus Christ, would it? It would be our faith and this ought to raise a question. These verses ought to raise the questions, what is faith?, where does it come from?, and how does it come to be in a human being? We are going to address these very questions in this message.
In Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 3, Paul says, “Endeavoring or striving to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” So, the context here is unity among believers, under Christ. In verse 4, Paul then adds this. He says, “There is one Body and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all, through all and in you all.” There are seven things here which Paul emphasizes about which he says there is one. We could supply here, if we wanted to editorialize here a bit without compromising the truth, every place where it says one here, we could say only one. In other words, there is only one Body, only one spirit. The word, one, of course demands that anyway. If there is one of something, there are not two, five or ten. There are no others, there is only one. But, just for emphasis, we need to understand that what Paul is saying in this verse is that there is one and only one of each of these items: body, Lord, spirit, faith, hope of our calling, baptism and one God and Father of us all.
Now, this truth that there is one of each of these items, is founded on the fact that there is only one God. The only reason any of these things exist as possibilities, as experiences, as realities is because there is one God and only one God. If you meditate on this and consider the ramifications of there being only one God, there can be only one truth because that God is light and in Him there can be no darkness at all. So if there is one God and that God is of such a nature that he is true and right and does not talk out of both sides of His mouth and is the same yesterday, today and forever, then by definition, there being only one God, there can be only one truth. There can be only one definition or revelation of that one God, that revelation being truth. So everything here goes back to God, the Person, the one God, because everything there is only one of springs or emerges from Him and goes back to Him. As I said, God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. Jesus said, “I am the truth, I am the light of the world. So, if we really believe that and understand what it means, there can only be one of everything which is truth. There cannot be differing opinions or prospectives which are all true. You can’t have things in Christianity that contradict each other so that we just throw up our hands and say that we agree to disagree and maybe all of it has some truth.There certainly can’t be many ways to even this one God because there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ. There is only one only-begotten Son of God. Paul is very clear about this and it is really why he is saying this. He wants us to understand that there is one, one God and all that is birthed from Him and revealed from Him. Likewise, there is only one because there is only one truth.
Now, let’s look at some of these before we enter in on the fact that there is one faith of Jesus Christ. Paul beings by saying there is one body. This is important, because whatever the Body of Christ is, there is only one. That immediately does away with denominations as being distinctive in the eyes of God. Do you think God is pleased with denominations which differ in what they teach snd practice? I don’t believe God is pleased with that. I think He would like to dismantle the entire denominational theological system and bring everybody back to the Person of His Son. We know that in Corinthians, Paul comes against any idea that you or I would say, “I am of Apollos, I am of Peter, I am of Paul,” or whatever. Well, that is what denominations do, “I am of Luther, I am of Calvin,” and so forth. Actually, a lot of it gets a whole lot worse than that because this is not just about titles, is it? It is about a spirit that governs and really, in practice, whether people know Jesus Christ or if what they know is merely their own denomination and theology.
So, there is one Body or to use the other word commonly used, there is one church. What is the church? What is the Body of Christ? They are both referring to those who have been joined to the Lord and made one spirit with Him. The church are those who belong to Christ and in whom Christ dwells, who are in Christ. This is all the church is. If you and I are are not in Christ, we are not a member of His Body or His church. We are not even saved. It does not matter how often we go to church, how many offerings we give, how many times we genuflect before the altar or how committed we are to our church or denomination. If Christ is not in us, we are not in His church, not in His Body and indeed, not even saved.
Now, to you and me that is very simple and I would think that very few people would disagree with that, but I will tell you from experience that there are churches today in the United States of America, and I am sure overseas as well, who do not even know this. It is a concept which is removed from them, from their understanding. I preached a sermon in Massachusetts which stated this very thing, that church membership is not what makes you a member of the Body of Christ. It is not what saves you. I have to tell you that there were people there who had been in that church for decades, who came up to me after church and told me that they had never heard that and it was amazing to them. What is amazing to me is that people could be that blind, especially in church. What was the pastor preaching there every week? But there are folks who are blind in that way and I think some are actually blind to this truth even though they may not articulate the error that blinds them or the fact that they are blind.
I think there is a sense of ease, of security, a security blanket, if you will, that people get from belonging to a church, attending a church and giving to it and so forth. They would never say that is where their faith is or that they believe they are in Christ because they are in the church but, in the end, this is what they do believe in a kind of unconscious, untested, unchallenged ways. Of course, the real nature of it would be revealed if it were to be challenged or tested. A lot of people’s faith is in their friendly neighborhood guru, their leader, their church. Bringing a challenge to that is valid and many of them could be exposed as not being believers at all. I have known such folks. I have know people who were absolutely dedicated to their church, to their movement, to their cult and God exposed it as false and they walked completely away from Christ. It its not because they lost salvation, it was because they were never saved to begin with. They never put their faith in Christ and maybe did not even know to do that. They had their faith in what they were involved in and it collapsed along with their faith.
The one body that Paul speaks of here are those who are joined to the Lord in spirit and consequently, He is their life. This has to be there and it has to be reality. Now, we spend our entire lives discovering the Christ with whom we are joined in spirit but the reality of that is the new birth and is Christianity. It is the only way that you can be part of the one body. The Body of Christ consists of everyone who ever lived who has been one with Christ in spirit. There are many folks who have died in Christ who are just as much today part of the one Body as you and I are, who live and breathe physically. So, there is one body and one spirit. Now, one spirit of God may seem strange as needing to be emphasized here. There is certainly a reason why this is emphasized when it was first written and why we don’t take it seriously. It says there is ONE spirit. Read 1 John 4:1. John says there, “Beloved believe not every spirit but try the spirits to see whether they are of God.” This verse alone would be utter nonsense and completely unnecessary in the Bible if it were not possible that in the very congregation of believers there could come deceiving spirits. Can we see that? Why would John, under the inspiration of the spirit of God say, “Beloved, don’t believe every spirit but try the spirits?” Why would he write that unless it were possible for other spirits to be present in a congregation which needed to be tried and rejected and refused? There are many Christian pastors today who are leading people astray, who will tell you that you cannot be deceived if you are a Christian. I have videos of some of these preachers in places like the Toronto outpouring, the Pensacola thing and all the other stuff which has been formulated over the last twenty of thirty years, as supposed movements by the spirit of God. There are pastors who stand up and say, “Don’t worry about being deceived. Don’t trust your mind, just get into the experience.” Those ‘experiences’ include holy laughter, people acting like animals, people doing crazy things and flying off the handle emotionally, and attributing it all to God.
It is not of God, He is not the author of confusion. He is not the author of nonsense like that where people are made to act like a bunch of idiots. He is not! God Almighty is holy and true and righteous — not the author of confusion but of the spirit of peace. When God is present, when Christ is present, there are peace, joy, love and the other fruits. People have absolutely ignored exhortations like 1 John 4, where it says, “Believe not every spirit but try the spirits. Paul, back here in Ephesians 4, wants to emphasize the fact that there are not a bunch of different spirits that you can select from. There ix one Spirit of God! One Spirit of Christ! None other! If we would read 1 John 4 and the test for truth that is there, take it seriously and ask God to give us discernment, we would avoid a lot of trouble. Again, there is one Body and one Spirit because there is one God and one Jesus Christ, His Son.
Now it says, “There is one body and one spirit even as you are called to one hope of your calling.” What is the hope of our calling? Colossians 1:27 tells us, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Christ in us is the hope of our calling. He is our life, He is our all. Now, in emphasizing the one hope of our calling, that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened, that we may know what is the hope of His calling and what the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints are, and the power and so forth. The hope of our calling is the Person of Jesus Christ in us. The ramifications of that and our spiritual union with Him are eternal. We are to be extensions of Jesus Christ as His Body. We are to be those, in whom and through whom, Jesus Christ can live and move. As far as a personal hope found in Christ, we are called to fully and completely experience all God is through our union with His Son, Jesus Christ. A little bit of that begins now, but in the eternal ages, after the resurrection, we will fully experience everything God is in His Son. That is the hope of our calling and it is all centered in on that Person, Jesus Christ.
There is only one hope. There are not a bunch of hopes of your calling. As I have tried to emphasize in this series from Ephesians, you and I don’t have input into the hope of our calling. God has a purpose for you in your calling that He wants to find and execute. God has an inheritance that He wants to get in the saints. Again, it says this there in Ephesians one, that God wants us to discover and experience what is His inheritance in the saints. His inheritance in the saints and our inheritance in Him are the same thing and are all centered in Christ. But God is doing this and has planned and purposed it from the foundation of the world. We are apprehended for it and called into it and that is our hope. Never think that we get to decide anything. You, in this age, don’t get to decide what your gifts are or God’s way with you. You don’t get to decide God’s will for you. What you get to do is lose your life to Him and let Him bring to pass His will. This is not harsh, this is great! You and I do not have the capacity or the understanding to be able to figure out any of that. Can we please trust God to know better than we know? It seems that this is a big part of God’s accomplishing this in order that He would get that surrender.
So, one body, one spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling. One Lord, this certainly is many faceted. Jesus Christ is that one Lord and right now is seated in the heavenlies at the right hand of the Father. He already is King of Kings and Lord of Lords but we don’t see that in many areas, certainly not on this earth. But, He is, in essence establishing the His Lordship in this age within His people in order that, in the next age, He will establish His lordship through His people. (Although we do see a little bit of that now.) We, right now, are seated with Christ in the heavenlies and God wants to use the Body of Christ as instruments and vessels whereby His lordship can be executed. This cannot be unless it is first established in us. There are lots of people today, the ones who “name it and claim it,’ the ones who proclaim the authority of the believer, the word of faith heretics, who are walking around trying to execute the lordship of Jesus Christ and frankly, most of them do not understand what that means. They are trying to execute it by speaking it, doing things and naming it and claiming it but do not know anything about the work of the cross themselves. Well, it is nothing but a deception, in that case. You must allow Jesus Christ to be lord of you personally which does not happen by giving Him lip service or saying it and proclaiming it.
The way that Jesus Christ establishes Himself in you personally is by breaking you — breaking the self under the power of the cross — bringing you down to the place where you are committed and dedicated only to Him and His will and have put aside yourself as having anything to say. This is how Jesus begins to establish His lordship in a person. How many see that it always has to come back to the foundation of the cross in a person’s life. It always does! It has to because the place where we start is not fit for God. We cannot be used of God in our flesh. It has to be broken — the self has to be broken. We have to lose ourselves, in other words, into His hands and then pick up our cross daily. Then, whatever He wants to do in using us in various ways to establish His lordship through us, He may do. Most of the ways in which He does use us for that are going to be in very quiet unseen ways. God is not into these big movements, these big shows or showbiz Christianity. He is not into all these things that attract every wild beast and follow the air to the tree called ‘christianity.’ He just is not. So, there is one Lord and He is going to have that lordship, not as He already does now but as it will be worked out into all of the ends of creation.
I am going to skip over one faith and come back to it at greater length, but I will skip to the one baptism first. I wish that we could read that and actually believe it. It says, in this list of items on which there is only one of each thing, that there is one baptism. If you and I say that there are two, three or up to fifteen, as I read somewhere, we are then denying that Paul knows what he is talking about. If there is not one baptism, then I would submit neither is there one Lord, one faith, one body, one spirit, one God and Father of all, because these are all the things that Paul says there is only one. Baptism is on the list. There is one baptism. Now, what is that one baptism? It is not water baptism, neither is it baptism with the Holy Spirit which is supposedly subsequent to salvation. There is no such thing. The one baptism which Paul is speaking of here is our spiritual baptism into Christ. It is the one being talked about in the beginning of Romans six. We are baptized by one spirit into one body, that is Christ. We are baptized into His death and therefore, likewise, into His resurrection. As we have seen in past messages, that also extends out to being one with Him in His ascension. “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” That is the baptism that Paul is talking about here. Without that, there is no Christianity and you cannot add to that.
When you are baptized into Christ, you are baptized into the One who said, “I am the alpha and the omega.” When you are baptized into Christ, you are baptized into the One who said, “I am the life.” What can you add to life - His life? When you are baptized into Christ, you are baptized and made one in spirit with the very personhood of the Son of God. The resurrected, ascended Christ — do you think that you need to go on to get something else to add to that? If you do, you need to check up on scripture because it is not in there. It just isn’t. Paul says that we are complete in Him and that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ. Paul says in Romans that we have received all things freely in Christ. Yet, there are millions of people who say, “OK, yeah, you are saved but now you need to go on to get what you really need in addition to Christ, a baptism with the Holy Spirit. Believe me, as a former charismatic, I know all the verses and all the arguments and all the practices along that line. I know about all the experiences people supposedly have when they receive this second blessing. I know all that. I have been in it, it happened to me. The bottom line is that there is one baptism and that baptism happens at salvation when you are baptized into the Person of Jesus Christ. It is the only one there is. All of the other baptisms which are spoken of in the Bible, such as the baptism of John, are all types and shadows of this one baptism.
Someone is likely to mention Hebrews six, where the phrase appears, “the doctrine of baptisms…” What is Paul getting at there in Hebrews six if there is only one baptism? The doctrine of baptisms is the doctrine which teaches the difference between John’s baptism and the baptism into Christ. It is the same thing Jesus said when He appeared on the scene and the same thing that John the Baptist said. “I baptize you with water but one who is coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” This is not additional to salvation. It is salvation. So, the doctrine of baptisms is the truth that John’s baptism birthed no one anew, was not a baptism into Christ but was simply a legal baptism into the old covenant. Why do we think that there is a contrast being given there by John the Baptist? “I baptize you with water for the remission of sin BUT…” Then he goes on to say that Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. How many see that this is a better baptism? That it is a superseding baptism and its a baptism which John only pointed to. Just as the old covenant was a type and a shadow of Christ, the new covenant is the reality of Christ within, so are the baptisms which represent each exactly the same. John’s baptism was a type and a shadow of true spiritual baptism and oneness in Christ. Paul goes on here to say that there is one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in you all. There is just one as I noted at the outset of this message.
Now, I want to go beck to this two word phrase, one faith. I want to talk about what this one faith is. First of all, and I think that certainly in scripture, you will find that the phrase, one faith, or THE faith, as it says some places, can include all of the truths and doctrines which constitute the Christian experience. My faith, if I use that as a noun, the faith that I am in, the faith which constitutes my Christian life would include of the things I believe. All the experiences I could have and so forth. That is all part of THE faith. But that is the noun version of that word. There is also THE faith of Jesus Christ, which as the very phrase suggests, is a faith which is of and out from Him. It is not only THE faith in the sense of being a noun, it is also an active dynamic faith. We could even say that, yes, we need to have THE faith of Jesus Christ. We could do a little bit of a twist on that and say that we need to have the believing of Jesus Christ.
Now, what is THE faith of Jesus Christ? As I noted, it is His faith. So how do you and I have THE faith of Jesus Christ? Well, first of all, we must be one with Him in spirit. If we are one with Him in spirit and are growing to know Him in truth, growing to be set free from our mind, our blindnesses, our fake faith, then more and more we will be in fellowship and communion with Him in His faith. This gets back to the brokenness which I spoke of earlier. You and I have to be absolutely broken under the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. To apply this to faith: our faith in ourselves, in our own righteousness and really in anything about ourselves or our faith in any other thing that we might want to name. All of that faith, which is fake faith and in many cases is emotional, intellectual, psychic and is of humanity, must be broken. Now, I have to say this very directly because I don’t know that many of us believe it. Until our faith in ourselves is broken because, indeed, our self is broken, we are not going to get very far believing Jesus. We are not going to get very far in experiencing THE faith of Jesus Christ. How can we possibly experience, live in and operate out from Christ and out from His faith if we are not broken and we continue to operate out from our own human faith which we have produced from out of ourselves? We cannot. It is like everything else having to do with the Christian experience. If we are to be built up in Christ and discover the truth, we have to be torn down in ourselves by means of the cross and unlearn all of those old habits. We have to repent of fake faith in ourselves. All of it has to be broken and brought to the cross which took care of it and brought it down into a death.
Now, if God does break us, which is progressive and we have to at least be under God’s power of the cross, then we can, if we go on with God, begin to enter into fellowship with Jesus Christ. We can grow to know Him and consequently have the faith of Jesus Christ. The faith of Jesus Christ is possible for you and me to the extent that we come to an inward realization of Christ and are in fellowship with Him in His will and His interests. If we are, then we will be in fellowship with Him in His faith. Practically speaking this means that you and I cannot have THE faith of Jesus Christ for anything other than what He has faith for. Can we see that? The faith of Jesus Christ is only present for the will of God, for the purpose of God, for the glory of God, for the plan of God. The faith of Jesus Christ is absolutely present for all that is of God and it is never present for that which is not of God. Now do the math, so to speak. Use some logic here. That means that if we are to have the faith of Jesus Christ and that faith is only possible for that which is of God, means that any faith that anyone thinks they have faith for anything not of God, is not real faith. It is fake faith. It is human faith, religious faith, psychic faith, emotional faith but it is not THE faith of Jesus Christ. THE faith of Jesus Christ, I say again, is only that for which Jesus has faith and He has faith only for the will and purpose and glory of God. Therefore, for us to have the faith of Jesus Christ, to be one with Him in that faith, we have to grow to know Him, to know His mind. We have to absolutely be set free from our own interests and be dedicated and committed to His in our hearts. Then we can have fellowship with Him in His faith and have faith for what He has faith for, which is possible even if we do not know what that is. The point is that we are one with Him and all of the truth about it can then be revealed to us.
Sometimes I think we forget that faith is the only dimension of Christianity that is both a fruit and a gift. God does give to every man a measure of faith, which at it core comes about when there is a little bit of light that is received. God gives each man a measure of faith because He gives each man a measure of light. You cannot have faith without light because you would haver nothing to believe. But faith is also a fruit, the outcome of a growth process. We know that we need to grow in faith as we walk with God. But all of this is not a matter of our growing in faith as a thing unto ourselves or growing our faith as a thing unto itself. The only way that you grow in faith is by growing to know Jesus Christ. We need to understand this or we will become totally confused. I alluded to this earlier but I will say it again, the true faith of Jesus Christ is not something that you and I can dig down inside ourselves and find and then muster it up inside ourselves and shoot it up to God to try to get Him moving or to answer our prayers. We don’t have any faith in us that is the faith of God and are not born with that because we are not born with Christ in us. So, real faith is not generated out from ourselves as the source. The true faith of Jesus Christ is the outcome and product of oneness with Him in spirit and slowly growing to know and develop communion with HIm. If you have the mind of Christ, you have the desire of Christ and have surrendered your will to His will so that you want what He wants, you are going to have faith for that because it is what He wants and is that in which the faith of Christ is present and can operate.
Now, all of this is stated in rather brief form, admittedly, in Romans, chapter ten. Romans ten has a statement on faith that is incredibly filled with truth. The statement I am referring to is a very familiar one found in verse seventeen. It says there, “So then, faith comes…” Just back up a second. It has got to be talking about the faith of Jesus Christ first of all, because that is the only kind of faith God knows about. It is the one faith. So, Paul, in this verse is not talking about another faith. He is saying, “So then, this one faith comes to be by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Now, let’s dissect this a little bit because as I said, it is loaded with truth. So then, the ONE faith comes to be, is the intent here. Can we see, that by that phrase alone Paul is telling us that there is no faith in a human being to begin with? Of course not. He is saying that faith comes to be. Well, faith wouldn’t need to come to be, would it, if I was born with some measure of faith which I could muster up and shoot up to God and drag Him down from heaven and into my life? Again, this sounds funny to say it that way but I’ll bet that at one time, everyone listening to this message has, at one time or another, tried to make themselves believe and to muster up faith out from themselves. You tried to do that emotionally, intellectually or psychically, because that is what you thought you should do. You thought if you could just feel like something is true, that would be faith. None of that is faith. It is the natural man trying to generate faith out from himself. Paul, in this one phrase, is destroying that false notion. He is saying, “So then faith comes to BE…” How does faith, then, come to be? He is talking about faith coming to be in you and me. It cannot come to be anywhere else. It does not exist out there somewhere in the atmosphere floating around. Paul is really saying, “Faith comes to be in you and me.”
So, number one - faith comes to be in you and me because it isn’t there to begin with. Now, how does that happen? He says, “By hearing.” If you want to know what I mean by hearing, I mean hearing the word of God. How does faith come to be then? Well, God has to take the initiative to give light. It uses the term, hearing, but we could just as well apply that to seeing. God has to give light or God has to speak otherwise there would be nothing to see or to hear. Again, you and I are not born with any truth in ourselves. We are not born with any capacity to drag God down from heaven so that we might see and hear. God, Almighty, has to take the initiative and Jesus said, “No man can come to Me except the Father who sent Me first draw him.” You cannot come to God otherwise. God has to take the initiative by speaking truth into your heart. When I say that He has to take the initiative to speak truth into your heart, I am not talking about God narrating Biblical doctrine to you so that you may know what this or that verse means. All of that is included later. But, when God takes the initiative to bring light into our darkness, it always concerns in one way or another, His Son and also in the light of Jesus, we see our emptiness, our sinfulness and our need for His Son. God has to take us right where we are and that is where we are, lost and in darkness.
So, God speaks Christ. It may not be that articulate or dramatic, but it begins to convict and some of that is in an unspoken way. In other words, God begins to stir things. God is bringing light and He its speaking the living word, Jesus Christ. I am not talking about a voice you hear, even an inward one. I am just speaking about something that dawns on you, something you begin to realize is the truth. God has to take the initiative to speak that, to bring light. Now, you can refuse it, which contradicts the heresy of Calvinism. You absolutely can refuse the grace of God and the Bible is filled with warnings against doing that. But, having said that God must take the initiative to draw someone to Christ and He must take the initiative to speak or bring light. It is only then that you can believe. Then, of course, it is only then that you can refuse to believe because there is something to believe, there is something to refuse.
So faith comes once God speaks or brings light. Now what form would this light, this speaking take? Let’s look at that for a minute and this is going to be a general truth or principle about this. God has any number of ways of getting through to people but I think, at the end of the day, everything He does to get through to people has to be brought down to a common denominator, a common principle. I think we get a suggestion of what that is in John, chapter three. John, chapter three, contains the most famous verse in the Bible and many times people do not read the subsequent passage there. I want to begin reading John 3:16 and go on with the passage to get the gist of what God is talking about here. This really does have to do with how faith comes to be, the faith of Jesus Christ. It says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. [We see again here that there is only one Son,} Right there we have God’s motive in giving Christ - that we may not perish but have everlasting life. Of course, all of this is predicated on the fact that we are already perishing and would have, had God not given Christ. How many understand that if there is no such thing as the fallen Adam creature, if there is no such thing as fallen humanity, we do not need a savior? That is why any denial of original sin is a denial of the savior who saved us from it. , it God gave us Christ so that we would not perish but have everlasting life. “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn to world…” Incidentally, this does away with a false gospel of fire and brimstone where people say, “Believe in Jesus or else go to hell.” And then they think that they can stampede people into the Kingdom of God through fear of hell. I know that this can seem to work at times for people but if they are coming to Christ simply because they want ‘fire insurance,’ I would question whether they are really putting their faith in Christ. That is the problem there. If God is actually convicting them, it is not a matter of ‘fire insurance,’ it is a matter of wanting Christ. There is a big difference in coming to Christ because you don’t want hell and coming to Christ because you do want Him. So, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved.”
Now, here is the passage I want to get to: “He who believes on Christ is not condemned but he who believes not is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Then he goes on to say this: “And this is condemnation…” Now, we are going to read a description here, which according to God, is the basis of condemnation. If you want to know how folks are condemned and under condemnation, here is how that is possible and is God’s definition of that. “And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world…” We might even say, “This is the condemnation that light has come into my world and I loved darkness rather than light because my deeds were evil.” “For everyone who does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest their deeds should be reproved. But he that does truth, comes to the light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.” Let’s get to the bottom line on this. What God is saying here is that when He begins to draw a person to Christ, when he begins to speak to a person the word of God - truth, in other words and when he begins to bring light into their world, what this must do, because of the very nature of things and because of where man starts in sin and in darkness, is begin to expose us for what we really are. If you are a sinner who is not saved or if you are a saved person who is going on with God, the light is going to expose everything that is contrary to God. It has to. In order to be brought into the truth, untruth must be exposed. Now, I have to say this again at this point, when I am talking about God bringing light and truth and untruth being exposed, I am not primarily talking about doctrines. The doctrines will line up later with the Christ that God is going to reveal and they will be Biblical if they are the truth. But when I talk about God bringing light and exposing untruth, I am speaking about the errors in the human heart. I am talking about God exposing unbelief and the self as corrupt. I am talking about God exposing self righteousness. I am talking about God, through a revelation of Christ, small as that might be to begin with, showing us how absolutely contrary we are to Him and showing us that if we are left to ourselves, we are going to hell. But He offers in grace, in truth and in love, His Son as the way to salvation.
This has to do with our personal faith and relationship with God before it has anything to do with teachings, doctrines and the like. Anybody can say, “Yeah, I was wrong about what I thought the Bible meant.” But how many understand that that is nothing compared to a person’s confessing, “Lord, I have been wrong with You. I have been wrong towards You. I have owned myself and been my own lord, my own boss. I have been in pride, self righteousness and unbelief.” How many know that this is where the rubber meets the road and is exactly what John is talking about here when he talks about light coming into a dark world and when he speaks of people loving light rather than darkness versus loving darkness rather than light?
Now again, if we did not start in untruth, in darkness, in sin, but instead began on neutral ground, none of that would be necessary. But we do start in darkness and sin and so God has to take things as they are. There is no one God calls to Christ who does not have, as their starting point, darkness and bondage to sin. There is no believer, who in wanting to go on with God, is not bound by something that needs to be exposed so that they can go on with God. It only makes sense and is the nature of things. We are being called out of something, aren’t we, the Adam race, the old creation, the old mind, into the truth of Jesus Christ. That demands unlearning and repenting of where we have been. What John is getting at here is that light is going to come into each of our worlds, into each of our minds. Light is going to come, at least a little, as God begins to work in even the worst sinner, into our understanding. Once light comes, then we have a choice as to whether to believe or refuse to believe. When I say believe, I am not simply saying that when we believe something is truth that God is showing us, which is always included, but when the Bible talks about believing or true faith, it is talking about embracing and giving yourself to Him. Never say that you believe Christ if you do not embrace and surrender to Him. You cannot just say, “Yeah, I believe Jesus is Lord.” The devil believes and trembles. That is about how valuable that in and of itself would be.
So when God begins to bring truth and to make a person realize something, it is going to be a revelation, yes, of Jesus Christ and is always that because He is the light. But that revelation of
Christ is likewise going to expose that person for what they are. I would daresay that it would probably not hit them over the head all at once but there will be enough that that person will understand that they need the Christ that God is revealing. The way John puts it, there are going to be those who love darkness rather than light. We could add that there will also be those who love light rather than darkness. It says that those who love darkness rather than light do so because their deeds are evil and they do not want to be exposed. And right there you have the pivot point. Right there you have the basis for condemnation and you really have the basis for a Christian person to be paralyzed and not go on with God. We don’t want to be exposed, but it all goes back to the fact that there is one God and one truth and there is one light. You have to come to terms with this. If you want to maintain your righteousness in some standing you think you have before God, in and of yourself; if you want to try to be somebody in your own eyes, in the eyes of God or even in the eyes of other people, You will not go on with God as a Christian and you may find yourself being in greater darkness. Certainly, as an unbeliever, you are pushing away the very one who saved you.
So, light has come into the world and that light is a Person. God will begin to unfold Christ in some dimension, some truth of Him that will begin to make a person realize and expose, believer or unbeliever, that which hinders us and constitutes darkness in our lives. We have to make a choice as to whether we love darkness rather than light or whether we love light rather than darkness. According to Romans 10:17, if we are at least open to what God is exposing and revealing faith will begin to come. It won’t be our faith but will be His faith. Someone once asked, “Well, don’t you have to have faith to hear the word of God by which faith comes?” In other words, what comes first, ‘the chicken or the egg?’ What comes first, the faith or the hearing? Well, Romans 10:17, says that faith comes by hearing. The hearing comes first. So, how do you get the faith to hear? Isn’t that a good question? The answer is that when God speaks and when God reveals, there is contained within His voice, if I can put it that way, the capability to hear. The way I would describe this is that God Almighty knows how to speak in a way that will penetrate any confusion. God Almighty knows how to bring light that can penetrate any darkness. In the Bible, Jesus says that a day is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. God Almighty can speak in a voice that even the dead can hear.
In other words, when God says that faith comes by hearing, He is not saying that the whole thing depends on our ability to hear or our ability to muster up enough faith to believe. No, He is saying that faith comes by hearing which is dependent upon my speaking in a way that anyone can hear. How many understand that the power here is not the power to hear. The power here is in God’s speaking and revealing. If God speaks and brings light, you can see. The speaking and the light He brings carries with it power to penetrate any of our inability, so that, at least at that point in time, turn to God and hear. Calvinists teach that man cannot turn to God which is a bunch of boloney. When God speaks anyone can turn. If He is speaking to you and me, built into that is the fact that we can turn. God doesn’t speak to hear the sound of His own voice. He doesn’t sit in heaven and speak and say, “Well, I know that nobody is hearing me but…” Nonsense! God speaks in a way, that those to whom He is speaking can hear, which is why there is condemnation and judgement if we will not. Now there is one other thing which talks about how God will speak and if we will hear, our faith will be formed. Hebrews 1:1, “God, who at different times and in different manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets.” So, in other words, God used to speak by the prophets and the implication is that this does not occur any more, because it says that God used to speak unto the fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, has spoken unto us in a Son. The Greek there is very telling, it says that God is speaking today, Son-wise. In other words, God’s primary way of speaking today is through an ongoing, inward revelation of Jesus Christ given to the person with whom He is speaking.
People try to say that God speaks with leadings and voices and signs and wonders. I am not saying that God could never do that but it is not His primary way of speaking today. God’s primary way of speaking today is in an inward way by His spirit in His Son. God is talking to you and me in the language called Jesus Christ in an ongoing revelation of Christ. He is light that comes into my dark world. He is the light that exposes all that is not of God. Is He not the living Word of God? So, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
There are many instances in scripture which say, “the faith of the Son of God,” and God’s exhortation to us to live from that faith. You can look this up if you want to do some research. The important thing to realize here is that, ‘the faith of Jesus Christ,’ is exactly what the phrase demands. It is His faith and is part of His life. It is really part of Him. To the extent that we are growing in our union with Him, growing in our fellowship with Him and in our inward knowledge and realization of Jesus Christ, anything which is OUR faith, fake faith, is slowly going to be exposed as such and we will begin to have His will and His mind and motives. We will then be able to be one with Him in His faith. The more you and I grow to know Jesus Christ and come into an inward realization of Him, the more we are going to be one in mind and in faith with Him. If this is the case, then we will indeed only have faith for what God has faith for, what Christ has faith for, which is the truth and is God’s will. We will belong to Him. if we go back to the purpose of God and of our calling, how many see that it is only the faith OF Jesus Christ that makes it possible to be used as extensions of Christ, as those through whom God establishes the lordship of Jesus Christ in practical ways. The faith of Jesus Christ is the only faith there is that is of God. Just as there is only one God, one Lord, one purpose of God and one everything, God want us to be brought into an inward realization of His Son so that we may be in fellowship and communion with Him in THE faith of Jesus Christ.