Word and Spirit Both Needed for the Gift of True Faith
Before I begin to publish my posts on faith, I want to post one more ‘editorial’. This one is on doctrine and the Holy Spirit. In my opinion we need both for true faith to grow in a person’s heart. Especially for the broken-hearted people –and they are most of us – carrying so much hurt and pain in their hearts, who come to the Church looking for a transformed life of peace, hope, and joy.
In a previous post I offered the opinion or ‘editorial’ (see ‘Have Faith and Believe – The ‘Way’ to Life’) that many people, Christians and Non-Christians, are deeply wounded – carrying hurt and pain from their childhood. As many of these wounded people find their way to the Church and learn about Jesus, they have to live with a dichotomy: Jesus who loves them, so they are told; and Jesus who abandoned them, so they believe, when they were living through painful experiences like emotional, sexual, or physical abuse, abandonment, or even hurt and pain caused by less extreme events. Their heart tells them, “Jesus cannot be trusted”. It is one thing to know with your mind – “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so”. But for many people, that is not what their heart is telling them. Their heart says, “This Jesus does not love you. If He did, He would never have let ‘that’ happen”. And maybe they also hear in their heart, “He didn’t show up because you are not valuable to Him – not good enough”. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them “Jesus loves you”, their hearts call you a liar. And the heart always trumps the mind.
True faith is complete trust in Jesus. True faith is a risk, because it is things hoped for and not seen. If you enter a relationship with Jesus but cannot trust Him because of past hurt and pain, you will never be able to have true faith, and for sure you will never put yourself at risk.
True faith is important – without faith we cannot please God. Paul tells us that “we live by faith” (or “walk by faith”), and that salvation comes by grace, through faith. Without faith the wounded can never know true peace, joy, and hope. So, what about those who through no fault of their own struggle to receive true faith, even when it is offered to them by Jesus? Who can heal them? Only one person – Jesus! Jesus must show up in their heart, heal the wound, and wash them with the love of the Father. And for thousands of broken-hearted people He has done just that. That is healing, and only the Church can facilitate it.
But, how does He show up? In many different ways, each unique and personal for the individual, but usually with the help of a trained Christian facilitator. Almost always He shows up in a vision, a spoken word, or a sense of His presence in their hearts. What I am saying is that He shows up and talks directly to them, comforting them, and showing them how He was always with them, even in the trauma of abuse. They see and hear in their heart and spirit that He is trustworthy and that they are, and always have been, deeply loved by Him. And they are healed spiritually, emotionally, even physically, because many times physical illness is underlain by spiritual or emotional hurt and pain. Once healed, their hearts are open to receive, by grace, the gift of true faith.
I am writing this because I have seen that true faith does not come just through the hearing (or reading) of the written word. The written word, or logos, is critical, but it is too often known and accepted by the mind and not the heart. A word spoken by Jesus or the Holy Spirit directly into their heart is also necessary. Some call this a revelation, others a rhema word. Whatever it is, it is Jesus.
In America I have heard pastors claim that God does not talk directly to people. I have also heard pastors and ‘prophets’ preach against the danger of putting God in a box. This is a reference I guess, to the danger of doctrine, at least in their minds. In Scripture God is telling us, “it is not one or the other, it is both.” True “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word (rhema) of God” (Romans 10: 17 NKJV); “the words (rhema) I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life” (John 6: 63 NIV). And of course, Jesus is the Word (logos). So, let’s not put God in a box. But it is, unfortunately, the nature of fallen humans to put what they don’t understand or can’t control into a box – in a flawed attempt to understand and control. And there is a lot we can’t understand about the Triune God, and for sure we cannot manipulate or control Him. There is mystery and risk in following this God, which are the opposite of certainty and security.
Why are most of us uncomfortable with paradoxes, ambiguities, mysteries, or antinomies (an antinomy is when two ideas, both correct, are mutually contradictory)? Why are we always trying to make a situation ‘this’ or ‘that’ when the best answer is ‘both’? In my experience, there is no realm where antinomies and mysteries (and arguments about them) are more common than in Christianity – God’s sovereignty versus my free will; Jesus was fully man, fully God; Truth versus grace or as someone wrote “orthodoxy versus generosity”; God is love, God hates evil; and God elects some versus God wants everyone to be saved. And one more – although not an antinomy – is the contentious issue I described above. We know God communicates to His children through the written word (systematized in what I call doctrine), but does He also talk to them through His Spirit; for example through prophecy, words of knowledge, and other forms of direct revelation? It seems to me that the Church in America is divided on this question – many Evangelicals on one side, Charismatics on the other. I believe that this divide hinders the church from releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world and opens the door for satan to do some of his most effective work.
Have you encountered the spirit of religion in the Church? Satan always tries to corrupt the things of God. The spirit of religion is one of his tools. It is a devaluing, dehumanizing, and heart-breaking spirit that is released out of the hearts of some church-going Christians including pastors and teachers. The spirit is rooted in the work we do to make ourselves presentable to God, to ‘earn’ our way into His Kingdom through the things of religion; or sometimes, just to feel valuable about ourselves. This ‘earning’ is expressed in our need to be relevant in our churches and to find our ultimate value in ministry. The religious spirit can be fed by the idolatrous value and status we find in our knowledge of God’s word. It involves judging people and seeing them as objects instead of how Christ sees them – as His beloved children, all of whom He wants saved according to Scripture – although not all will be saved. It is one more manifestation of the evil named pride.
Whenever we try to make ourselves ‘presentable’ to God in our own power, we will always see others, or at least some others, as unpresentable and in need of our ‘help’, which is usually accompanied by judgment. God does call us to instruct and help others with the word and prayer. That is not the issue. The issue is why we are doing that – to be obedient to God’s calling for His glory, or to make ourselves look relevant and feel valuable? The former is ministry; the latter is a spirit of religion. Doctrine is the fertile ground where the seeds of the spirit of religion can be planted and grow.
Sound doctrine is essential. There is a reason God gave us the amazing gift of the Bible – the logos. Logos is truth. It is the highest, most authoritative truth. There is also a reason God gave us the gifts of the Spirit, including faith (I differentiate this gift of faith from saving faith. More on that later). The Body of Christ needs supernatural healing, especially spiritual and emotional healing; prophecy, words of knowledge, signs and wonders, and yes –for some people – praying in tongues. These all come through the Spirit, actively speaking and working with visible signs in our lives.
Doctrine divorced from these manifestations of the Spirit leaves us open to man’s intellectual corruption of God’s intentions as we follow our logic and do not take into account His mysteries, His antinomies, or His Love. But the Spirit decoupled from doctrine opens the doors for all types of spiritual abuse, including wounded Christians used by satan to wage war on the Church from the inside. Other types of spiritual abuse include shallow Christianity, New Age spiritualism and it’s father, the occult. But we have a safeguard – every true word from the Spirit will never contradict Scripture – the word of God is the counterbalance to the leading of the Spirit. Unfortunately, in the Church in America today there have been heart-breaking abuses both of doctrine, manifesting in a religious spirit; and the spiritual, manifesting in the jezebel spirit or the words “God told me to say . . .” or “God told me to do . . . ”. How can you respond to that? End of conversation. Or “You don’t pray in tongues? You are spiritually immature”, spoken or implied. These types of abuses release hurt and pain; or worse, destroy a church. God did not intend it to be this way, judging by Scripture.
Doctrine provides the framework for faith and the Kingdom life. The Spirit brings the framework alive and makes living in the Kingdom by faith active, personal, powerful, and releasing us into the world with lives that are healed and whole. We need actively to move both in the Spirit of Christ and the power of the word to release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world. We need to do this by faith – and faith is risky business, requiring courage.
I have rooted this series on ‘faith’ in Scripture and the Holy Spirit. We do not receive faith through one or the other, it is a balance of both – doctrine and Spirit. When we get unbalanced we open the door for satan to get a foothold in our churches, our communities, our hearts, and the hearts of the people we are called to love. Without faith, and I mean ‘true’ faith, we cannot love as God loves, and without His kind of love we are “only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”. Faith is the essential, ultimate element in the Christian’s life. Faith and love go together, just as faith and repentance go hand-in-hand. One cannot exist without the others. To see faith released into the hearts of God’s people, I believe we need this balance between doctrine from Scripture and revelation from the Holy Spirit.
That’s it for the ‘Jesus Restores’ opinion pieces. I promise. Now on to the series on Faith.
My next post is titled ‘Faith Begins with “I Believe” – But “I Believe” Is Not Always Faith’.
Grace and peace through our Lord Jesus Christ,
John