God provides the facts before He calls for faith.
FACTS before faith, that’s what I have written in the margin of this little gem of a book on Positional Truth along side the above sentence, the last line from last week’s consideration. We will pick up from this point today, from where we left off in this 24th Chapter titled—Identification and Growth
LOOKING at that second word in the title “Growth” reminds me of my favorite color, green. I don’t know why we have favorite “things,” I guess it has to do with our personal experiences or DNA coding, but most of us can make a list –like that holiday song– of our favorite things. I don’t recall but I think I may have leaned toward the color green before, but in my encounter with this author, my preference for green has certainly solidified. Miles Stanford wrote a series of devotions booked in green covers, wrote a companion study to what we’ve been looking at titled “The Green Letters,” and when alive before the age of electronic mail, sent out Christian Correspondence written on lime green paper with dark green lettering. His reason? — To emphasis the necessity of growth, green in the color of growth. I think this is one of the reasons I like working around my house with my many plants and flowers (Well, actually I think most of my love for growing things came from my mother, and the appreciation for such things she taught me from her mid-west farm-girl roots). I wish I could show you right now my Trinidad Flame Bush in the back-yard. It just went through its annual cycle of shedding it old foliage, looked almost dead for a while (I’ve a funny story about that plant, but that is for another time), and now has burst forth with such vibrant, bright green slender leaves. They will eventually settle into a darker, healthier, hue. Green in the color of growth, and growth is the necessity for the Christian. That’s what this chapter is about, our identification to Christ and growth in grace and knowledge of Christ. (2Pet 3:18)
MY prayer is that the Lord would be pleased to make these things very real to us as we consider afresh our Identification and Growth in Christ our Lord.
IN the joy of the Lord,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa. 30:15 & Job 2:10
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Chapter 24—Identification and Growth — Part 2
God provides the facts before He calls for faith. Early in Romans Six we are asked, “Know ye not” that all who were identified with the Lord Jesus were identified in His death (v. 3)? In verse 6 Paul says, “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him (Rom. 6:6, ASV).” It is not until the facts of our identification with Christ are understood that we are admonished to exercise faith. In this way there is no effort or struggle to reckon, because we know.
Yes, it is in the clear light of our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection that we are directed to “reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11, ASV). It would be utterly impossible for our Father even to suggest that we count ourselves as having died unto sin and become alive unto Him in the Lord Jesus if it were not already true of us! Nor could He ever call upon us to consecrate ourselves to Him “as alive from the dead” (Rom. 6:13) if He had not already made us “new creations” in the risen Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).
However, true as our identification with the Lord Jesus is, if we are not fully aware of the facts we will derive little benefit from them in our daily life. And that is where we need them. Moreover, unless we realize our need of the separating (sanctifying) power of our death and life in Him, there will be no motivation for our faith to reach out and receive. To reckon upon a positional fact is to see it clearly, to believe it, to count upon it, to receive and appropriate the practical reality of it with thanksgiving. “Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving” (Col. 2:7).
Death and judgment are behind us,
Grace and glory are before;
All the billows rolled o’er Jesus,
There they spent their utmost power.
Jesus died and we died with Him,
Buried in His grave we lay,
One with Him in resurrection,
Now “in Him” in Heaven’s bright day.
The gracious Spirit of truth revealed to us that the Lord Jesus died for our sins, and by faith in the facts we entered into the position of justification (which included our complete and eternal salvation). When the Holy Spirit reveals to us the truth of our Lord Jesus having died unto sin, and our identification with Him in that death and resurrection, by faith in the facts we acknowledge our position—we reckon ourselves to have died unto sin and to be forever alive unto God in Christ.
That which we reckon in our position becomes experiential in our condition. …….to be continued
