The Faith of Christ

In the wonderful book The Dynamic of Faith A. Paget Wilkes of the Japan Evangelistic Band reveals how the Lord Jesus, as the Son of Man, exercised His confidence in God to accomplish what His Father was doing and saying. It is the same with us in our relationship with the Lord Jesus. This is from the chapter titled "The Faith of Christ":

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

"Our studies are drawing to a close, and we come to the most important and most blessed of them all. The Apostle Paul, in his epistles, was always presenting to us the mystery and power of an indwelling Christ.

"1. As revealed to the consciousness of the believer (Galatians 1:16).
2. As formed within and so made manifest to others (Galatians 4:19).
3. As the source of love (Ephesians 3:16).
4. As the cause of satisfaction and joy (Rev. 3:20).
5. As the secret of power (2 Corinthians 13:3).
6. As the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27); and lastly, perhaps the most important of all,
7. As the fountainhead of faith (Gal. 2:20).

"It is of this that I purpose to speak in the present chapter.

"The Apostle here tells us that, having been crucified with Christ, he is now alive through the indwelling Christ, and then adds this most illuminating of all statements, that the faith he has is the faith of the Son of God. In other words, the Lord Jesus, dwelling in the heart of the apostle, reproduced in him His own faith. It is not the faith of Paul, but the faith of Christ dwelling in his heart.

"On one occasion, when instructing His disciples in the way of faith, the Lord Jesus bade them have the faith of God. He had been telling them that if they would but 'say to the fig-tree,' it should be done as it was said, and then added, 'Have the faith of God.' What can this mean but that God had faith in His own Word. When He spoke, 'Let there be light, and there was light,' He believed in the efficacy of His own Word. This was the faith that the disciples were bidden to possess.

"The wording in the Greek is quite remarkable. If the meaning of the verse had merely been to believe God, or believe in God, there were, at least, three of four modes of expression possible, as found in colloquial Greek; but none of these were used, and the phrase employed, 'Have the faith of God' is both peculiar and emphatic.

"As we study the life of the Lord Jesus, the exact language of having faith in His Father is never employed; though, we are deeply impressed that like the humblest saint, He lived the life of faith. Those who reviled Him, when on the cross, said, 'He trusted in God that he would deliver him.' The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in producing four quotations in proof of His humanity, gives us one of them, 'I will put my trust in him'; while the Messianic Psalms abound in reference to his faith and confidence in God, His Father. It is of the greatest comfort and encouragement to His children that He himself lived, and walked and triumphed and served by faith--a perfect example and pattern to those whom He called 'his brethren.' And yet more wonderful and blessed is it to learn that the Lord Jesus can, will and does abide in the heart of the believer, by the Holy Ghost, to reproduce within us His own wonder-working faith.

"I propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to turn once more to our great Exemplar and see the faith of the Son of God, and the life that He lived as the Son of man upon earth. Not only can we worship and adore and wait upon Him; but we can say like Paul, 'I have been crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.'

1. A FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S CLAIM

"In Japanese the various words used for expressing 'faith' are deeply suggestive.

"(1) Shinko, which means 'believing expectancy.'
"(2) Shinyo, which may be expressed by 'believing appropriation,' or to use it more accurately with a verb, 'to believingly make use of.'
"(3) Shinnin--'believing surrender.'
"(4) Shinrai--'believing reliance.'

"It is of the third I would speak in connection with the Lord Jesus, and yet I dare not use the word 'surrender.' Perhaps we may say that His faith was a faith that lovingly offered all to His heavenly Father. Without faith none can either render or surrender. Unless our faith is deeply rooted in the love of God, there can be no glad surrender to His will. The supreme purpose, as well as joy, in the Lord's earthly life, was His supreme devotion to His Father's claims, though it led along a pathway of thorns, into places of suffering and woe, He gladly followed because His faith was rooted in the love of God His Father. That word shinnin suru in the Japanese language is: 'I believingly entrust'--blessedly suggestive and wonderfully characteristic of the Lord's devotion to His Father's demands.

"Insofar as Christ dwells in our hearts, just so far shall we be able to accept the will of God as our portion and with what Charles Finney called, 'an affectionate confidence in God,' find it easy to surrender and to obey His holy claims.

"To Christ they were absolute. The curse of the world, yea, and in great measure on the Church today, is the failure to recognize and believe in the righteousness and loving demands of a holy God. To Christ they were not only paramount but they were beautiful--they were reasonable beyond all dispute. They could not but be just and perfect; and because faith beheld them so, obedience thereto naturally followed.

"Oh, to bow to the claims of God! If Christ be within we shall, and that with all gladness of heart.

2. FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S WAY

"One of the most astonishing things in the earthly life of the Son of God was the place that prayer occupied. Surely He who was coequal with the Father had not need to pray, or to ask for what was His own! Not so. He who unlike ourselves knew all about the mystery of prayer, was ever bowing His knee--ever seeking solitude, ever asking for what He knew His Father loved to bestow, ever thanking and praising in anticipation for the promised gifts, ever in practice approving His Father's way for the bestowal and communication of all His blessings.

"Shall not the faith of the Son of God if He live in us operate in the same way? The more consciously He lives within, the more perfectly He has control in our hearts, the more simply and confidently will we approve God's appointed way of instant, earnest, believing prayer, as the means of grace to our souls.

"So much the more shall we believe in its necessity, its efficacy and its delight.

3. FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S POWER

"The dependence of the Lord Jesus is another and perhaps the most amazing of all His hallowed attributes. Never His own originating. Perfect submission (John 8:42). Never His own will. Perfect obedience (5:30; 6:38). Never His own glory. A perfect motive (8:50). Never His own teaching. Perfect humility (7:16). Never His own words. Perfect discipline (12:49). Never His own works. Perfect emptiness (14:10). Never His own power. Perfect dependence (5:19; 8:28).

"All His works and the power with which He did them were given of His Father. The Father was the Mighty Worker--the Lord Jesus the Instrument. This faith above all things brings rest to the heart. To know the Lord as our Savior and Sanctifier is blessed indeed, but to know Christ indwelling as the Mighty Worker means a greater and yet more wonderful rest. When He, the 'author and finisher of our faith,' dwells within, then surely the life we live will be by the faith of the Son of God who lived and walked and labored by faith in His heavenly Father, not only ordaining all His works for Him, but supplying the power and energy for their accomplishment. Is it not our business to wait upon such an indwelling Christ, till He not only works in us to will and to do, but till we find Him working with us and for us?

"This brings rest and joy. There are few if any joys in Christian service deeper and more satisfying than that of watching the Lord working in answer to the prayer of faith. Hereby we know we are well pleasing to Him; that He is with us and for us; that we are laying up treasure in heaven and accomplishing that which will abide forever.

4. FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S WILL

"To do the will of God was His meat and drink. It was that for which He came to live and die. But to treat it thus implies a confident faith in its excellency and supreme blessedness. The will of God is for us all the safest, sweetest, best and most fruitful of all things in the universe; if only the veil of unbelief and misunderstanding were taken from our eyes we should see it, know it and prove it to be so. And thus, too, it would be our delight and our joy, our meat and drink and our glory.

"No outcome of unbelief is more disastrous than this heart misconception as to the blessedness of the will of God. Our own way always appears the best, most interesting and most profitable. Christ came to bring us back to the way of dependence, by Himself doing only the will of the Father in heaven--the perfect model of a life dependent on God. Christ dwelling in our heart will produce faith in the goodness and perfection of the will of God. No result is more certain and none more radically evidential of an indwelling Christ than an assured faith in the sweetness and blessedness of the divine will, with a power to do it with all our might.

"To do His Father's will was His delight (Psalm 40:8). It was His meat and drink (John 4:34). It was the purpose of His life (John 6:38). It was the theme of His praying (Luke 22:42). And all this, because He believed it to be the safest, best and sweetest thing in both heaven and earth.

5. FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S GIFT

"In the High Priestly Prayer offered by the Lord on the eve of His death, we see the first and greatest secret of intercessory prayer (John 17).

"Richly conscious of what His Father had given Him--His power (verse 2), His work (verse 4), His words (verse 8), His glory (verse 22)--His greatest assurance and joy was concerning the gift of His own disciples. 'The men whom thou hast given me' occurs no less than seven times in His prayer. Again and again the repetition of these words reveals to us the place which they occupied in His heart and mind. Long before, when the priesthood was ordained, God had told Aaron that the Levites were given to him as a gift (Numbers 8:19). So was it with the men who were gathered to the Lord Jesus. Their preciousness and that of the Church they were to build up were to Him far above rubies. He believed in them as the gift of God; for them He died no less than for the world (cf. John 3:16 and Ephesians 5:25, 26); weak, yea, and carnal as they were, yet being the gift of His Father, He knew them to be priceless value.

"This gift represented to Him the way of His Father's wisdom; through it God was going to do all His mighty works, confounding the wise and mighty and noble and rich by the foolish and weak and base and poor. Such was the faith of the Son of God. As He lives within us, just so far shall we too value and have faith in His chosen people who have been given to Him by His Father--a faith that worketh by love.

"Faith in the people of God, the preciousness, the destiny and the character of the Church will mean that we love the brethren with something of the love that He had toward them. The deeper and clearer our faith in His people, the more binding and affectionate will be our love toward them. We shall indeed prove that it is love out of a pure heart, love the outcome of a living inwrought faith, love experienced in fellowship with all the saints.

"The indwelling Christ will mean all this to us. He will create and sustain and nourish our love to His own. More especially shall we believe in the giving of God to us of precious souls. The power to lead men to Christ is a gracious thing. That power and the souls who respond to it are both the gift of God. Christ dwelling in the heart will remind us of their preciousness and lead us to seek and expect and believe for these wonderful gifts. Hallelujah!

6. FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S WORD

"There can be no living reasonable faith except as it is based on the Word of God. The life of faith lived by the Son of God on earth was lived so. All His life long He lived by the Word of His Father, the written Word, the very Word that is given to us. His faith fed thereon. No feeling or sentiment or reasoning however specious moved Him for one moment from the life of faith controlled, enlightened and empowered by the Word of God. His birth, His naming and His flight to Egypt were all accomplished 'that the word spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled.'

"His choice of residence was made not according to the sight of His eyes, not for expediency, not in sentiment, not under the impetus of emotion, still less ordered by chance. 'He came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets.' Is our dwelling ordered so? How many hundreds of God's children would be living in very different places today, if the faith of the Son of God were only operating in their lives!

"His sphere of service was chosen through faith in His Father's Word. We read at the opening of His ministry, that 'leaving Nazareth he came to Capernaum, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet.' Do we labor thus? Is faith in that Word our guide in choosing our life work? If only it were, the heathen lands would not be crying in vain, 'Come over and help us.'

"His work too was ordered through faith in the written Scripture of God. 'He cast out the spirits by his word . . . that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet.' Oh, how He loved and reverenced and obeyed the Word of God. Faith therein was the principle of His life. Has faith any such place in our life work?

"His ways of spreading His name were all guided by the Book. 'He charged the multitude that they should not make him known, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet. . . . he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.' Ah, yes, He will accept no popular acclamation or praise: God's ways are not man's ways. Faith is content that the Word shall be its guide, and the cross shall be its way. First judgment and then victory accomplished on Calvary shall be the means of glorifying the Son of God, before ever men can spread abroad His name and fame as the Teacher and Healer of men.

"The method of His message must be appointed according to the Scripture. 'All these things spake Jesus in parables that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet.' Studying the Word He believed in its inviolability, its authority and power. He walked by faith in its wisdom. He knew the sacred obligation there was to fulfill it to the letter, and so unlike all that went before Him, He spake in parables, that only those who like Himself walked by faith might understand. If the Lord Jesus lives in our hearts, His faith in the Word of God will most assuredly be reproduced in His people. The Word will speak: will be paramount in its claims and its sacred authority no less that in its life-giving grace and power. We, too, shall speak and preach the Word, content to be foolish in the eyes of men, if only our message is according to the Word. The faith of the Son of God operating in our hearts will be faith that lives by the Word of God.

7. FAITH IN HIS FATHER'S LOVE

"In spite of all the difficulty of the task assigned to Christ by His Father, and the desperate attempts of Satan to take Him out of that blessed current, the Lord Jesus abode consciously and constantly in the love of His Father. And this was the abiding of faith. The first thing that unbelief accomplishes is to lift us out of the hallowed environment. If we are lifted thence we can do nothing. It is that which sweetens and empowers and satisfies. 'Faith that worketh by love' is the greatest thing on earth. 'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love' (Ephesians 3:17) expresses the sum of Christian experience.

"Christ the Author and Finisher of our faith above all things, and in the face of all appearances, keeps us rooted and grounded in the love of God. How easy it is to write these words, but, alas! how hard to understand their full import. The love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost is described by the apostle as fourfold (Phil. 2:1):

(1) The love of Christ to us individually.
(2) The love of us individually to Christ.
(3) The complacent love of Christ to the Church--His people.
(4) The compassionate love of Christ to the world.

"He says: 'If there be any comfort of love,' that is, comfort of being loved by the Lord; 'If any consolation in Christ'--the consolation arising from exercise of affection to Him; 'if any love of the Spirit'--the love of God toward the Church--our fellow believers; 'any bowels of mercies,' that is, the compassionate yearning over a world that is lost, sinners that are going down to eternal death. Here was the love of God in which our Lord Himself abode. This was the environment of His life. This was the atmosphere of His soul; and if He abides within our hearts, surely we shall live and move and have our being in this blessed environment. Faith will feed upon the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. Every act and word of Christ when on earth bespoke His faith in the love of God His Father.

"Oh, what a storehouse is Christ! Oh, the blessedness of bringing all we have thereinto, so that there may be meat in His house--the Church and people of the living God! If the very faith of Christ can be reproduced in us, what need have we to wait upon Him, look to Him, depend upon Him, expect from Him, cling to Him and seek His face in the consciousness of His indwelling and the certainty of His inworking.

"How rich our life can be! recognizing His claim, believing with simplicity in His way, knowing His will to be best, proving His resurrection power, tasting of His love, delighting in His gift, and living by His Word. All this will be to him, who like St. Paul can say, 'I have been crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.'"