The psychology of faith iii - Chambers, Oswald

1. Mental belief

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of god, even to them that believe on his name. ( john 1:12)

John 1:1213 is a grand, mighty, all-embracing word to as many as received him . . . The way mental belief works is that it leads us to understand who Jesus Christ is and what he can do for us and in us. Jesus Christ is the normal man, the man according to gods standard, and god demands of us the very holiness he exhibited. A spiritually minded christian has to go through the throes of a total mental readjustment; it is a god- glorifying process, if a humbling one. People continually say, how can i have more faith? You may ask for faith to further orders,11 but you will never have faith apart from Jesus Christ. You cant pump up faith out of your own heart. Whenever faith is starved in your soul it is because you are not in contact with Jesus; get in contact with him and lack of faith will go in two seconds. Whenever Jesus Christ came across people who were free from the ban of finality12 which comes

From religious beliefs, he awakened faith in them at once. The only ones who were without faith in him were those who were bound up by religious certitude. Faith means that i commit myself to Jesus, project myself absolutely on to him, sink or swim and you do both, you sink out of yourself and swim into him. Faith is implicit confidence in Jesus and in his faith. It is one thing to have faith in Jesus and another thing to have faith about everything for which he has faith. Galatians 2:20 does not refer to the apostle pauls elementary faith in Jesus as his saviour, but to the faith of Jesus. He says that the identical faith that was in Jesus Christ, the faith that governed his life, the faith which Satan could not break, is now in him through identification with the death of Jesus; the faith that characterised him now characterises Paul.

2. Moral belief

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (romans 6:6)

If we are honest and obedient, moral belief will follow mental belief very quickly. Am i poor enough, humble enough, and simple enough to believe in Jesus? Do i believe him when he says that god will give me the holy spirit if i ask him? If i do believe in Jesus and receive the holy spirit on the authority of his word, then i will have to make a moral decision about all that the holy spirit reveals. He will reveal to me what sin is, and he will reveal that Jesus Christ can deliver me from sin if i will agree with gods verdict on it in the cross.

Many of us do believe in Jesus, we have received the holy spirit and know we are children of god, and yet we wont make the moral decision about sin, viz. , that it must be killed right out in us. It is the great moment of our lives when we decide that sin must die right out, not be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified. It is not done easily; it is only done by a moral wrench. We never understand the relation between a human life and the cross of Christ until we perform a moral act and have the light of god thrown upon reality. The transactions which tell in my life for god are moral decisions, not mental ones. I may think through everything there is in christian doctrine and yet remain exactly the same; but i never make a moral decision and remain the same, and it is the moral decisions to which the holy spirit is always leading us on the basis of the redemption. A moral decision is not a decision that takes time, one second is sufficient; what takes time is my stubborn refusal to come to the point of morally deciding. Here, where we sit, we can decide whether or not the redemption shall take its full course in us. Once i decide that it shall, the great inrush of the redemption takes efficacious effect immediately. There are times when the holy spirit does touch us, times when there are flashes struck from midnight and we see everything clearly, and that is where the danger comes in, because we are apt to let those touches pass off in sentimental ardor instead of making a moral decision. It is a sensible delight to feel god so near, but unless a moral deci- sion is made you will find it much harder next time to pay attention to the touch when it comes. It is better to decide without the accompaniment of the glow and the thrill better to decide in cold blood, when your own will is in the ascendant, deliberately swayed by the rulership of Christ.

3. Mystic belief

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in god. (colossi ans 3:3)

Paul is not talking to disembodied spirits, he is talking to men and women who have been through identification with the death of Jesus and know that their old man is crucified with him. If we are born again of the holy ghost, and have made the moral decision to obey what he reveals about sin, then we must go on to believe that god can enable us to live for his glory in any circumstances he places us in. You can always detect the right kind of belief in Jesus by a flesh-and-blood testimony. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Other people are not likely to confuse grapes with thorns, or figs with thistles. Mystic belief means that we enter into a conscious inheritance of what the redemption has wrought for us, and daily, hourly, manifest the marvel of the grace of god in our actual lives. The majority of us hang on to Jesus Christ, we are thankful for the massive gift of salvation, but we don’t do anything towards working it out.

That is the difficult bit, and the bit the majority of us fall in, because we have not been taught that that is what we have to do, consequently there is a gap between our religious profession and our actual practical living. To put it down to human frailty is a wiggle, there is only one word for it, and that is humbug. In my actual life i live below the belief which i profess. We can do nothing towards our salvation, but we can work out what god works in and the emphasis all through the new testament is that god gives us sufficient energy to do it if we will. The great factor in christian experience is the one our lord continually brought out, viz. , the reception of the holy spirit who does in us what he did for us, and slowly and surely our natural life is transformed into a spiritual life through obedience.