The Instrument of Faith

Oswald Chambers, in the book Our Brilliant Heritage, emphasizes that "the unsearchable riches of Christ" are made ours through our faith in Him:

"Unto me, whom am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ" Ephesians iii.8.

"To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians i.27.

"The mystery of the sanctification is that the perfections of Jesus Christ are imparted to us, not gradually, but instantly, when by faith we enter into the realisation that Christ is made unto us sanctification. Sanctification does not mean anything less than the holiness of Jesus Christ being made ours manifestly, and faith is the instrument given us to use in order to work out this unspeakable mystery in our lives. There are two 'means'; the Gospel of the Grace of God, and faith, which enables the life and liberty and power and marvel of the holiness of Jesus Christ to be wrought out in us.

"Do we know anything about this mystical union whereby the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ are made ours? If we have been born from above of the Spirit of God, the deep craving of our hearts is to be as holy as Jesus Christ, and just as we took the first step in salvation by faith, so we take the next step by faith. We are invited, we are commanded and pleaded with, to believe the gospel of the grace of God, which is, 'Christ in you, the hope of glory.'

"The one marvellous secret of a holy life is not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus manifest themselves in our mortal flesh. Do we believe that? Do we believe it with the same simple trust and confidence we had when we first trusted Jesus to save us? The way to believe is to listen first. 'So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.' Have we listened? Have we ever listened with the ears of our spirit to this wonderful statement--'Christ in you'? Do we hear that? If we are born of the Spirit of God, we do hear it, we hear it more eagerly, more passionately, more longingly than anything else that can be told. We are invited and commanded by God to believe that we can be made one with Jesus as He is one with God, so that His patience, His holiness, His purity, His gentleness, His prayerfulness are made ours. The way the gift of faith works in us and makes this real is by hearing. We first hear, and then we begin to trust. It is so simple that most of us miss the way. The way to have faith in the gospel of God's grace, in its deepest profundity as well as in its first working, is by listening to it. How many of us have brought the ears of our spirit straight down to the gospel of God's grace?

"Our idea of faith has a good deal to do with the harmful way faith is often spoken of. Faith is looked upon as an attitude of mind whereby we assent to a testimony on the authority of the one who testifies. We say that because Jesus says these things, we believe in Him. The faith of the New Testament is infinitely more than that; it is the means by which sanctification is manifested, the means of introducing the life of God into us, not the effect of our understanding only. In Romans iii. 24-25, Paul speaks about faith in the blood of Jesus, and faith is the instrument the Spirit of God uses. Faith is more than an attitude of the mind; faith is the complete, passionate, earnest trust of our whole nature in the Gospel of God's grace as it is presented in the Life and Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Some of us have never allowed God to make us understand how hopeless we are without Jesus Christ. It was my experience of the tempter, and my knowledge of my own heart under his assaults, that made me a preacher of Paul's gospel. It was my own exceeding sinfulness of heart that ever more and more taught and compelled me to preach Jesus Christ alone, His blood and His righteousness. Everyone who is born again of the Spirit of God knows that there is no good thing outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is no use looking for sanctification through prayer or obedience; sanctification must be the direct gift of God by means of this instrument of faith, not a half-hearted faith, but the most earnest, intense, and personal faith.

"Sanctification is 'Christ in you.' Is anything we hear in testimonies to sanctification untrue of Jesus Christ? It is His wonderful life that is imparted to us in sanctification, and it is imparted by faith. It will never be imparted as long as we cling to the idea that we can get it by obedience, by doing this and that. We have to come back to one thing, faith alone, and after having been put right with God by sanctification, it is still a life of faith all through. Those who are in the experience of sanctification know it means that the holiness of Jesus is imparted as a sovereign gift of God's grace. We cannot earn it, we cannot pray it down, but, thank God, we can take it by faith, 'through faith in His blood.'

"When we have become rightly related to God, it is the trial of our faith that is precious (see I Peter i. 7). Satan tries to come in and make the saint disbelieve that sanctification is only by faith in God; he comes in with his 'cinematograph show' and says, 'You must have this and you must do that.' The Spirit of God keeps us steadily to one line--faith in Jesus, and the trial of our faith, until the perfections of Jesus Christ are lived over again in our lives. . . .

"Sanctification is the impartation to us of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ. It is His patience, His love, His holiness, His faith, His purity, His godliness that are manifested in and through every sanctified soul. The presentation that God by sanctification plants within us His Spirit, and then setting Jesus Christ before us says--'There is your Example, follow Him and I will help you, but you must do your best to follow Him and do what He did,' is an error. It is not true to experience, and, thank God, it is not true to the wonderful Gospel of the grace of God. The mystery of sanctification is 'Christ in you, the hope of glory.' 'That which hath been made was life in Him' that is, Jesus Christ can create in us the image of God even as it was in Himself. . . .

"We do not get there by climbing, by aspiring, by struggling, by consecration, or by vows; God lifts us right straight up out of sin, inability and weakness, lust and disobedience, wrath and self-seeking--lifts us right up out of all this, 'up, up to the whiter than snow shine,' to the heavenly places where Jesus Christ lived when He was on earth, and where He lives to this hour in the fullness of the plenitude of His power. May God never relieve us from the wonder of it. We are lifted up into that inviolable place that cannot be defiled, and Paul states that God can raise us up there now, and that the wonder of sitting in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus is to be manifested in our lives while we are here on earth. . . .

"By sanctification we are placed in the will of God. We have not to ask what the will of God is, we are the will of God, and as we keep in the light as He is in the light, the decisions of the mind and the natural progress of the life go on like a law, and when the decision is likely to be wrong the Spirit checks. Whenever there is the tiniest inward check, we must stop, and we will find that the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfections will be there to meet every emergency.

"In prayer have we learned the wonderful power of that phrase '. . . boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus?' It means that we can talk to God as Jesus Christ did, but only through the right of His Atonement. We must never allow the idea that because we have been obedient, because our need is great, because we long for it, therefore God will hear us. There is only one way into the holiest, and that is by the blood of Jesus. Being made partakers of the light means that we are taken into the fellowship Jesus referred to when He said, 'the Father Himself loveth you.'

"As we are made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, we begin to understand that there is no division into sacred and secular, it is all one great glorious life with God as the Son of God is manifested in our mortal flesh. Paul puts it this way: 'When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me.' You in your shop, you in your office, you in your home, say that in your own heart--'The Son of God revealed in me!' That is sanctification."