We have been for some time now in this church expounding on the scriptural teaching of regeneration and renewal. And in this way to lay a very firm foundation for everyone here as to what being a Christian is all about. And today I would like to continue in this series on regeneration and renewal, but to expound on the meaning of faith, the character of faith in the New Testament. Because faith is central to any discussion about regeneration and renewal.
Now, expounding faith is no simple matter. And many books have been written on the subject. But what I shall aim to do is to expound faith from an angle which we have not done so far. Maybe going further back to the foundations of faith. We have already defined faith in the past as commitment, as total commitment, as faithfulness of character, faithfulness of our commitment. To keep faith, for example, means quite simply — to keep faith means to be faithful. So we know that faith has its essential meaning as faithfulness, and more specifically as commitment. A total commitment to God and to the brother or to the neighbor. But I'd like to, if possible, go even further back than this. To something even more fundamental than this, if possible. And I would try to do this in a number of hopefully clearly defined points. And to establish each one of these points as we go along. Not so that you have a better intellectual grasp of the meaning of faith. But so that you will know how to enter into faith. Because my concern is very practical. And not at all theoretical or intellectual. I'm concerned that we are able to live the life of faith. What do we want to live the life of faith for? In order that we may know the living God. Because without faith, there is no way to know God. So we are dealing with something very basic. But something more important than which we cannot find in this world.
Let me then proceed very quickly to the scriptural character and meaning of faith. For this purpose, turn to Hebrews chapter 11. Which is the chapter par excellence, you can say, on faith in the New Testament. Hebrews chapter 11. Where in the New Testament is one of the few places in the New Testament where you have anything like a definition of faith. Because the rest of the New Testament speaks of faith again and again, but seems to assume that people know what faith is. And that precisely is the problem.
I have somewhere said before that the Reformation did us a great service by pointing to us the importance of faith, and that justification is on the basis of faith. What the Reformation unfortunately did not quite manage to do was to make very clear to us what faith really is. And up to this day, as I said, many seminarians have done their doctoral theses on faith. And after I don't know how many theses on faith, we are not much clearer as to what it actually means. Now we have, like you can say, a vague or general idea of what faith is. But it is too vague and too general. And we need to become somewhat more precise than that, if at all possible by the grace of God.
Now, we of course are not going to read the whole chapter of chapter 11 of Hebrews. That would take us much too long. In this chapter alone, faith is mentioned some 24 times. And we shall go from chapter 11, verse 1, very quickly to chapter 12, verse 2. In between we have a lot of illustrations, and I will leave you to read those illustrations for yourself. The illustrations of faith. I shall concentrate on the definitions of faith.
Now let us read chapter 11, verse 1. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Verse 2. "For by it," that is, by faith, "the men of old received divine approval." That is, they were accepted by God. And in the last message we saw that the important question that we face is not whether you and I accept God or accept Jesus, as it is so often said. The important question is whether God accepts us. Now, you can accept God, but if He doesn't accept you, what good does your accepting God do for you? Or you can accept Jesus, if you like, as many people do in this or that meeting, or evangelistic rally or whatever, you can accept Jesus. But what good will that do if He doesn't accept you? And we saw last time that it is a serious mistake on the basis of scripture to imagine that because you accept Him, He will accept you. That is an error, the cost of which will be too high to estimate.
We see even at the end of Matthew chapter 7, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we saw last time, that the Lord Jesus warned: "In that day there will be people who will come to me and say, 'Lord, Lord, did we not do this in your name and that in your name? We cast out demons, we healed the sick, we did all these kind of things.'" And the Lord will say to them, "I don't know who you are. Depart from me, you evildoers." You see, they accepted Him as Lord. He didn't accept them. And we went on to study what that means, why He did not accept them.
Now here, this second verse also tells us: "For it was by faith that men of old received divine approval." You see, the question is not whether you approve of the gospel of the Christian faith or not. More fundamental even than that, is whether God approves of you or not. Whether He approves of me or not. The Western world is full of so-called Christians. Everywhere, Christians. "Are you a Christian?" "What do you think I am? If I'm not a Christian, you think I'm a heathen?" Well, the blunt answer is yes. But they think that they are Christians because they got baptized somewhere or other, maybe as a baby or as a grown-up, whatever. But here it is important, especially in Western society where Christianity becomes a cultural tag, to realize that your being a Christian does not guarantee you anything in the sight of God, much less a reserved seat in heaven. You approve of Christianity, certainly. That is not the point about salvation. The point is whether God approves of you.
And this is the importance of verse 2. The importance of verse 2 tells us: it is by faith that men of old were approved. They received approval by God. Divine approval. Now, I will concentrate basically on these two verses to start with. And as we go on, I want to ask you to think in a very practical way. Maybe you have approved of Christianity. Maybe you have approved of Jesus and accepted Him. But presumably, your acceptance of Him means that you approve of Him. But I am going to ask you this question: does He approve of you? Does He approve of the kind of person that you are? Of the kind of Christianity you think you embrace? Does He approve of the kind of life that you live from day to day? Because, remember, I would like to stress this one more time: the question is not fundamentally whether you approve of Him. The question is fundamentally whether He approves of you. Because if He doesn't approve of you, you can say, "Lord, Lord," as much as you like, like those people in Matthew 7, and He will say to you on that day, "I don't know who you are. Depart from me." Put in other words: get out of my sight.
Now, how are we going to receive divine approval? By faith. Now, you see, that's why I say faith is so fundamental. And you think you know what faith is? We shall see by the end of this message whether you think you know what faith is.
Let's go back then to realizing this very important thing. The first point I would like to establish is in verse 1. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." I don't want to get into a lot of technicalities, because this translation itself has problems of a most serious academic kind. And since I'm not going to go into an academic dissertation here, I will keep these technical comments to the minimum. Yes, it is not without importance. But let us concentrate on one point first. Assurance. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.
In this connection, let us turn to Romans 8:24. Let me read to you from Romans 8:24-25 about hope, the meaning of hope. Romans 8:24-25. Perhaps we will read from verse 23 again to try and get the context. "Not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." Paul is saying that we as Christians are waiting for our adoption as sons, and for the redemption, the redemption of our whole being, and specifically our bodies too. In verse 24 He goes on to say: "For in this hope" — here it is — "for in this hope we are saved. For hope — for who hopes for what he sees?" And in verse 25 says: "But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
Now twice it says something about seeing and not seeing. Who hopes for what he sees? Hope by its very definition has to do with something that you do not see. You hope for it. Like we were hoping to see Chung Pang and Viola. Now we didn't see them, but finally yesterday, for some of you, you saw them, and for some of us, we see them today. But before we saw them, we hoped. Who hopes for what he sees? If they are here now, we don't have to hope that they are going to arrive, because they are here now. But if we hope for what we do not see, then we, like they, have been waiting in patience.
So with this understanding of hope, then — hope has to do with something that we do not see. Assurance. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. That means things that are not seen yet. That we shall see one day, but we do not yet see. Now we can see the parallel with the second part of verse one: the conviction of things not seen. Now we see that this verse has two parts parallel to each other. "Hoped for" and "things not seen" have basically the same meaning.
Now let's grasp this first point very clearly. Faith has to do with things not seen. That is, it has to do with spiritual things. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians, that we look to the things which are not seen. Because the things which are seen are temporal, that is, transient. Everything you see here — look around you — they are all transient. I have stressed this before many times. But it seems very hard for many people to let that sink into their mind. Everything you see here is transient. You can't look at a single thing in this room, or outside this room, or anywhere in this world, that isn't transient. It's all passing away. You look at me, and I am transient too. At least as far as this physical body is concerned, I am transient. In another five years, none of us will look exactly like we look today. Some of us will have a few more grey hairs, and some of us will have fewer hairs, grey or not grey, and some of us will begin to look more and more different as age takes its effect. We have a little bit more fine lines on the face, being sculptured in by time, and hopefully making us look a little more dignified — though ladies don't think so, but men hopefully think that they will look a little more dignified with time. But nothing that your eyes can see at this moment is permanent. Everything is transient. All physical things. All things that your eyes can see is transient. That is a law that cannot be contested. It is not a matter of argument; it's a matter of fact.
And so Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we look with our eyes not to the things which are seen. Why? Because all this is transient. It's all passing away. But we look to the things which are not seen, which are eternal. The unseen things. The things which at the moment our physical eyes cannot see. These things are eternal. The entire spirit world is eternal. It will be here in a million years, when all of this human history has passed away into oblivion. Spiritual things are eternal. But we shall study this more fully in a moment.
Let us just establish one point at a time. The first point then is that faith has to do not with the things which are seen. Not with the church as you see it here. This is some kind of church building. Well, this church building will be no more in some time. It will vanish away. The structures, the physical structures of the church will pass, as truly as the preachers will pass. The Christians will pass. The pastors will be no more. And you and I will be no more. In a hundred years, none of us will be here. All physical things will be gone. And many of us will be gone long before a hundred years. Maybe at the end of this year, some of us will not be around anymore. But what are we saying? We are not speaking in order to become depressed or sad. We just want to look at the facts. Those are facts that we want to talk about. And the fact is that nothing visible endures.
Faith then, in other words, has to do with unseen things. It means it has to do with spiritual reality. A man who says, "I have faith in this church" — what is he talking about? Does he mean the building? Does he mean a group of people? Faith, insofar as it has to do with transient things, is not an object of faith as far as the Bible is concerned. Faith has to do with God, who is eternal. It has to do with eternal reality. With Jesus. With the Holy Spirit. With the Jerusalem above, the spiritual Jerusalem. The church as a redeemed and spiritual body.
Now, this is the first and basic point that we must get into our minds very clearly. And we shall see why in a moment. Faith then, as I stress again, as this passage tells us and defines for us, that faith has as its object only the things which are spiritual, which are eternal, and which are therefore unseen. This means that faith is a way of seeing what cannot be seen. Now, faith — if it is going to have as its object the things which are spiritual and eternal — means that spiritual and eternal things are perceived by faith, though not perceived with our physical eye.
Now, this is very important, and I'm going to take a little time to try to get this very clearly across into your mind. Let us look at this chapter here, and you will see that faith is constantly spoken of as the parallel to our physical sight. For example, we have physical sight right now. We see. Because I have sight, I can see the things which are seeable, which are seen. If I were blind, I would see nothing that is here. And though these things are real, they would be invisible to me. I mean, this is so basic that it's clear. But it's amazing, when we come to spiritual things, we are so dull. It is obvious that if the faculty of sight is lacking — if I were blind, or so badly short-sighted — then I could not see anything around here, and I would not know whether this thing is there or not, because I can't see it. If therefore I do not have faith, then spiritual things, of course, are invisible to me. That means I have no faculty whatever for perceiving spiritual things. That is, I mean, God might as well be a theory. God might as well be the subject of some philosophy. And Jesus — who knows who He is? I mean, He was somewhere born at Christmas time, somebody tells me, and He was born in Bethlehem, and some nice story about stables and mangers and the like. But what has that got to do with being an object of faith? Is your faith in stables, or is somebody born in a stable, or some babies that we believe in? Unless Jesus is spiritual, then the object of our faith has got something wrong somewhere.
But to be able to perceive the spiritual is what faith is about. Can you perceive the spiritual? Because if you don't perceive what is spiritual, then spiritual things are — putting it bluntly to you — absolute nonsense. It's nonsense. But if you are so kind as not to term it nonsense, then you will be so kind as simply to call it a hypothesis, a philosophical theory, an idea, and other such nice names, which could all amount, in plain language, to nonsense. Because lots of ideas and hypotheses are just plain nonsense. So unless you have faith, spiritual things will just be unreal to you. The only real things to you are the things which you can see. Cars, houses, pillars, curtains, walls, whatever. These things are real to you because these are the only things you can see.
But only to the man of faith do spiritual things become real, because they see. But then, now they see, not with the physical eyes, but with spiritual eyes. Let's look at this chapter to make sure that we are expounding this chapter. Let's look at verse 7, for example. Because we are going to see, throughout this chapter, which illustrates faith, that faith is always being spoken of as a form of spiritual seeing. I will just take a few examples as we go through this chapter. Chapter 11, verse 7: "By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen" — events unseen — "took heed and constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which comes by faith." He being warned about events unseen. These things were not realities that could be experienced or perceived. So if these events are not seen, how do you know they are true? Maybe this is just pure imagination. But Noah perceived, in the way that most people do not perceive, events unseen. You say you are a Christian. Well, let's talk about a Christian doctrine about things unseen. Jesus is coming again. Maybe to you this is real or not real, depending, of course, on whether you have faith. Otherwise, I mean — Jesus is coming again? I mean, He lived once in this world before, He was resurrected, and He ascended into heaven, and the Christian doctrine says He's coming again. Well, you can say, "Come on, this is a mind-boggling idea. I mean, somebody rises from the dead, He's caught up and He goes up to heaven somewhere, and then one day He comes back again?" What kind of things? Events unseen have a way of becoming also unreal unless you have the perception of this remarkable thing called faith, that can see with spiritual sight the thing which the physical eyes have no way of seeing.
Nobody said it exists. But He — where is this place? For him, it was at the ends of the earth, in such a place, even — what? Around? But God says, "I want you to go there." And He would go to a place His eyes had never seen. A place He knew nothing about through first-hand experience. God told Him to go; He went. Now you see, one has to do with an event in time that one couldn't see; the other has to do with a place that one couldn't see, that He had never seen. And God told Him to go. By faith, Abraham went to a place unknown to Him. And so it goes on through this chapter.
Look at verse 10, for example. "And Abraham looked for" — looked forward to — "the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." He looked now for a city whose maker is God. That means He was not looking for any earthly city. He was looking for the Jerusalem above, that Hebrews talks about later on, the heavenly city of God. This must be all wild imaginations, is it right? But Abraham saw, with the eyes of faith, the city of God. He turned His back on His earthly inheritance. He turned His back on all these things in the world. He didn't want this world. And like a man fascinated with the things eternal, He was going towards the city of God, oblivious, forget, of this world and its riches and its attractions and its pleasures. His eye was fixed on that city that God grants to those who walk with Him.
Does that sound like you? Maybe not. Maybe you don't see these spiritual things. These spiritual things are perhaps all a lot of nonsense to you. Jesus coming again? Some city built by God in the heavenly places? We are talking fairy tales. Well, but there it hinges. That is why I would like to stress that faith has to do with what is not seen. And whether the things which are spiritual are real or not to you is the crucial question. If salvation is by faith, then it is not a question of salvation by dogma, as we shall see. It is quite something different. It means that if salvation is by faith, only those who, like Abraham, who like Noah, and like all those other people mentioned in Hebrews, perceive with spiritual eyes the things which are not seen — it is these who will be saved, who will be approved by God. And not whether you belong to this or that church, whether your Bible has a gold edge or not a gold edge, whether you have read your Bible 25 times or 30 times, whatever, whether you go to all the Bible studies, whether you accept this creed or that creed, or this Christian church or that Christian church. The eyes of faith to perceive the things which the natural eyes cannot see — that is faith. And it is those who have this kind of faith who will be saved.
We can go on right through this whole chapter, but we don't have time. As our time is running off quickly, let us just come to verse 27 to make this point very explicit. Verse 27: "By faith he," that is Moses, "left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king; for Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible." There you have it. Moses endured all the anger and the persecution of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. How could He go through this kind of problem? Why should He endure this kind of suffering, when He, as a prince of Egypt, could have enjoyed the pleasures of Egypt? But no, He didn't want to enjoy this pleasure. He had His eyes on what is invisible to the physical eye. He endured as seeing God, who is invisible. Now here we can see it all. Here it is, as plainly stated as it can be made. No plainer statement can be made.
Let me put this question straight to you. You say you are saved by faith. I see. What kind? Can you endure as seeing Him who is invisible? Or is it that your Christianity is merely the acceptance of a Christian philosophy about the existence of God? The Christian idea about God? A God who is kind, who gave His Son, who died on some cross somewhere in Jerusalem or outside Jerusalem? That is Christianity to you? Well, you can accept that because your mother told you that, your father told you that, your grandparents believed that, and everybody ever believed that in your family. That faith? If that is faith, then all we need is Christian culture to be faith. We don't need faith. We just need Christian culture.
Let me establish this point clearly in your mind. Faith has to do with this capacity, if you like, to see spiritual things. Moses endured by seeing, through all these transient things.
# Faith: Seeing the Unseen (Part 2) — The Veil of the Flesh and Spiritual Sight
That is the reason why he was able to endure through the wilderness. Endure through suffering and turmoil and persecution and distractions. His eye was on the invisible God. The eyes of faith. If justification is by faith, then bear this clearly in mind. You ask yourself whether you have faith of this kind, because that's the biblical definition of faith. And I ask you to check carefully, because I am not here to invent a definition of faith. I am merely here to expound it.
Now this is the first point I have wanted to mention very clearly to you: that faith is seeing what is invisible. Let's go on to chapter 12 and verse 2. Which is what every Christian is to be doing. Chapter 12 and verse 2. It says, "Looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. And where is he now? Is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." I'll get this picture clearly together. The writer of Hebrews is saying to these Christians, "Looking to Jesus." Looking — present participle — looking to Jesus. But where is He? "I'm looking to Jesus." I don't even see where He is. Where am I looking to Jesus? I mean, how do I fulfill this kind of a command? If you are talking about physical eyesight, this statement is absolute nonsense. Because there's no way you and I can look to Jesus. He isn't even around. Why? Because this passage told us He is seated at the right hand of God. Well, can you see the right hand of God? Now, straighten your eyes more carefully and see if you can see the right hand of God. Maybe we need to buy a more high-powered telescope and try to focus up on the right hand of God and see if we can see Him out there. Clearly, we are talking about spiritual sight. There you are.
And He is saying that the way the Christian is going to make it at all is through the faith that keeps on — present participle means constantly — looking to Jesus who is at the right hand of God. There you are. You see Him again. Now how do you hope to be saved, brothers and sisters, if salvation is by faith, and faith is looking to Jesus who is at the right hand of God, who we cannot see with our physical eyes? I hope by now this point is beginning to become very clear to your mind.
You see, there is a fact that we must distinguish between two distinctly different things which are called faith today. Let me ask you: on what basis do you believe in Jesus? There is a physical seeing, there is an intellectual seeing, and there is a spiritual seeing. But none of these three ways of seeing can be confused at all. An intellectual seeing, I must stress to you, is not a spiritual seeing. Because many people's so-called faith is merely an intellectual sort of seeing. For example, I ask you — I explain something to you, and then I say, "Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I mean?" And you say, "Yeah, I see." What do you mean? You mean you have understood with your mind what I have said. That is intellectual seeing. Now that is not faith in the New Testament. Get this very clear in your mind.
Now, what do we mean? Many people say, "Well, I believe in Jesus." And I ask you, "Why do you believe in Jesus?" "Oh, well, because — because my friend, he believes in Jesus." So why do you believe in Jesus? Because your friend believes in Jesus? "Oh, because he is a very reliable person. I absolutely believe his word." Now, I don't ask you to doubt his word. But he says — you see, then you will recount to me, you know, "I saw — he told me about the experiences that he had. Spiritual experiences. One day he actually heard God talking to him. Wow, it's amazing. In this 20th century somebody heard God talking to him? Oh yeah. He heard God talking to him. And I know he speaks the truth. He is never a liar. He speaks the truth. And because he heard God talking to him, it means that God must be real."
Now, is the reasoning false? Alright. There's nothing wrong with the reasoning. The reasoning is perfectly alright. There is no need to doubt that this person heard God speaking to him. Why should we do that? Can we limit the possibilities of what God will do in this world of His? But you see, for that person, his faith in God is a direct faith. But for you, your faith is second-hand. You believe in his faith. Your faith is intellectual. His faith is spiritual. Now that's a very different thing. You see, your faith is a second-hand thing. You believe in what he believes because he is a reliable witness. Now there's nothing wrong with believing what he says. But that is not faith according to Hebrews 11:1. That's the important thing to grasp. An intellectual faith can serve as an introduction to spiritual faith. It can serve as a preamble to spiritual faith. But it is not spiritual faith itself. And that is where the error is committed.
For example, you read the testimonies of books. Many people become Christians, so they say, by reading autobiographies or biographies of various people. Sundar Singh, that great Indian Christian. Amazing things that he experienced. I mean, God's work marveled through this man. And I don't doubt these accounts to be true at all. I believe those accounts. They are correct. There's no doubt about it. And when you yourself experienced many of these things, you know they are true because you have experienced them yourself. But other people believe them even though they themselves have never experienced it. They still believe the accounts concerning Sundar Singh. Or maybe you went to a meeting and you saw a sick man healed. I don't say you have to doubt that the healing was false. Sometimes they are false. Sometimes they are true. I once saw a man's limb, through prayer, being extended — actually, his leg bone was short, so that when he walked, one leg went down and one leg was longer than the other, so he would be unable to walk properly because one leg was shorter, one leg was longer. And the man prayed for him with the laying on of hands, and the TV camera was right there, zoomed in right onto the leg bone. You could see the leg bone. And as the man prayed for him, the leg bone extended, right there in front of the TV camera. What can we say? There is the evidence of your eyes. Do you believe what your eyes see? And your eyes tell you that happened. The TV camera was there. I mean, I don't know by what imagination or what trick could be performed to make the leg bone extend in front of a TV camera with a zoom lens right onto it. Why should God not be able to extend a man's leg bone? Why is that so amazing to us? He who created heaven and earth — is it staggering that He can extend the leg bone? Well, you said you believe that He created everything, but you are staggered. You are staggered that this should happen.
Now, many people say, "Hallelujah, I believe in God. I have seen it done. I believe." Is that saving faith? We cannot deny that that is faith. You believe. You believe that God has done it. You believe that it's real, and you may be right to believe it. But here is where the shock comes in: that, my friend, is not saving faith. That is not saving faith. When Jesus was on earth, when He walked in Galilee, blind men were healed in front of crowds of people standing there. They saw the blind man's eyes open as the Lord Jesus prayed for them. Their eyes were open. And it says in the gospels, many believed on Jesus because they saw the miracles that He did. And just look at the gospels, it's all recorded there for us. He did all kinds of miracles. A paralytic man lying there, the Lord Jesus said, "Stand up and walk. Take your bed and walk." And he got up and walked, in front of crowds. There was not one or two people. Whole crowds were watching this thing. Lazarus was blind. Everybody in his neighborhood knew him for years. Lazarus died. Everybody knew he was there. And everybody knew he died. He was dead four days. And the Lord Jesus said, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out of the tomb. Multitudes were there. The gospel tells us the whole crowds were watching this thing happening. They believed in Jesus. But they believed what their physical eyes saw.
What does Hebrews 11:1 say? Faith is the taking hold, the seeing, of things the physical eyes cannot see. That is faith in the Bible. Saving faith is of this kind. Now to believe because you saw miracles happening is perfectly alright. Nobody has anything against that. But that is a preparation for faith. It is not saving faith itself in the New Testament. I hope by now this point is becoming very clear to your mind. And you must ask yourself, what kind of faith do you have? Did you become a Christian because you read some good biographies? Very good to read biographies. Excellent. But your faith is second-hand. You build your faith on somebody else's experiences. You build your faith on what your physical eyes have seen of some miracle. But the saving faith of the New Testament is a faith that has to do with God — you yourself endure as seeing Him.
Intellectual faith, put in another way, is the analysis of certain reports and facts and circumstances, by which you come to a deductive conclusion. You deduce that from these propositions, this conclusion is correct. You deduce that because you saw this miracle, it is to be concluded that God is real and has the power to heal. You deduce these things as a logical process. That is intellectual faith. It's the kind of faith that, in a courtroom, for example, the jurors listen to the witnesses, the judge listens to the witnesses. He assesses their intentions and their thoughts. He looks at the facts. He looks at the articles presented as evidence. He comes to the conclusion: this witness has spoken the truth. I believe him. That is the intellectual faith. I believe on the basis of an intellectual analysis. And that is perfectly alright. We have to live in this world using intellectual analysis and believing certain things and not believing certain things, which we are doing every day. Every day we are doing these things. We have to assess: is this true? Is this false? Because we have to make decisions. That is rightly called believing. You believe the witness.
But you see, that is why I say you must distinguish between two different meanings of belief in the New Testament. One is the intellectual acceptance of certain things to be correct, and there is nothing wrong with that. I emphasize that. That is a preamble or a preparation for spiritual faith. But it is not the saving faith itself. Saving faith is something not second-hand, deduced through a process of logical reasoning, but it is seeing directly of the things which are eternal and unseen with physical eyes.
Let me move on very quickly. And I have to develop these points very slowly, and I hope you will bear with patience some amount of repetition, because I have many times experienced in my experience as a preacher that I have often expounded something and right after the message somebody said to me, "I didn't quite get the point." So that's why. Let me come very quickly to the next point.
The next point is simply this: the physical prevents us from seeing the spiritual. The second point is very simple: the physical in us prevents us from seeing the spiritual. This is the reason why they are being baptized. This is the meaning of baptism. And as we want to have baptism in a moment, I'm using this baptism to illustrate the message that I'm preaching to you today. What do you mean — why is there a need for baptism at all? Why is baptism, as everyone knows, symbolizing death — the death of the self, death of our old way of life in the flesh? Why is this death required at all? Oh, you say, "Right, quite simple. We die to sin, right? We die to sin because unless we die to sin we cannot go on into the spiritual life." But the matter is not quite as simple as this. You see, you cannot die to sin until you die to the flesh. Now this point is very important for you to grasp, and I say this to those being baptized as to all of you: there is no way you are going to die to sin until you die to the flesh. Now I would have thought that Christians would find this obvious. Not so obvious, as I have discovered.
Let us turn to Romans 7, in the remaining minutes that we have before we close. In Romans chapter 6, Paul has been speaking about baptism and death to sin. In Romans chapter 7, he points out that nobody can die to sin without having died to the flesh. Now let us look at this passage very carefully. We start again from the well-known verse in verse 17. Perhaps we will go back to verse 15 again. It's so important to get the context. "I do not understand my own actions." In verse 15 of Romans 7, Paul says, "For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." I want to do good. I make a New Year's resolution, and I discovered that my resolution was good, but I couldn't keep it. I'm sure you have discovered that already. You want to do a good thing, and you find that you can't do it. You're overpowered by something in yourself. You want to do this good thing, and you end up doing something not so good, indeed bad. Verse 16: "Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law of God is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me." Now sin is living in me. Why don't I do the good that I want to do? Because there is some power inside of me. Sin is not just an action; it is a power. And that power is compelling me to do something that I didn't want to do.
Verse 18: "For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh." Please notice these words: "nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh." "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil that I do not want, that I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me." And so he goes on explaining this point, and then to verse 23: "But I see in my members" — the members of my physical body; we speak of our arm, our legs; these are members, and this, when used as a plural, refers to the body generally — "but I see in my members another law at work, warring with the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members." I can see that which dwells in my body. And so the last line of chapter 7: "With my flesh I serve the law of sin." Those are the tragic closing words of chapter 7. "With my flesh, my physical body, I serve the law of sin."
Now you can see that what I said earlier — there is no way you will get rid of sin without getting rid of the flesh — it's quite plain. Now you understand why in baptism there is death. Death in baptism represents the putting off of the flesh, to be finished with life in the flesh. And that is why we come to Romans chapter 8, verse 9. And this is what it says. After you have put off the flesh in baptism and have received the Holy Spirit, what does Paul say? Romans 8, verse 9: "But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you." You are not in the flesh anymore. That's a remarkable statement. You say, "I'm not in the flesh?" It looks as though I'm still in the flesh. But again, Paul is speaking spiritually. You have put off the control, the power of the flesh. He doesn't mean you have committed suicide through baptism. What He means is that you have finished with a life that has been dominated by the flesh, controlled by the flesh. Now you are in the Spirit. That is, controlled by the Spirit.
Christians are a defeated bunch today. They live in defeat, and they are wondering, "It seems to me Romans 7 is true of me. I try to do good, and I'm doing evil." That's right, because you have not been freed from the dominion of the flesh. Now the flesh — so long as you are in the flesh, you are under the power of sin, as Romans chapter 6 has been saying through the whole chapter. And because you are in the flesh, the flesh is like a veil, a veil covering your face, so that you cannot see the things which are spiritual. You cannot. No man in the flesh can see spiritual things. He cannot. And you will know right now whether spiritual things are real to you, or whether they are just mythological to you. Because to the man in the flesh, spiritual things are just mythological. They are just ideas, fancies, philosophies. They are not real. What's real? Real is this material. This is real. This body is real. This pillar is real. This wall is real. These are real. The things that I can see, I can feel, I can touch, I can smell, I can taste — these are real. But spiritual things? Oh no.
And that is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that spiritual things and the things of God are foolishness to the natural man. That is, they don't make sense to the natural man. The only reality is physical reality. That is why becoming a Christian is a fundamental change. It is a fundamental change. And I would like you to bear this in mind when, in a few moments, the baptism takes place. Because what they are doing is putting off the flesh through baptism. Now baptism has no magic. There's no magic. We don't have any special acids in there that will dissolve the flesh when they go in there. I am sure you can have any chemist to test the water, so there is no dangerous acids in there. No, no. The transaction has taken place on the spiritual level. That is, through faith, at baptism they are putting off from their lives the control of the flesh and putting themselves now under the control of the Spirit. That is a transfer.
Now bear carefully in mind: so long as the flesh covers your sight, your spiritual sight, spiritual things will never be real to you. Turn to 2nd Corinthians 3, and I must close on this note. 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, and verse 15. "Yes, to this day" — 2nd Corinthians 3:15 — "to this day, when Moses is read, a veil" — notice the word veil — "lies over their mind. But when a man turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." Do you know what that veil is? Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord" — can you behold the glory of the Lord? Can you see the glory of the Lord? No way, not until the veil is removed. But it is through the Lord that the veil is removed. When a man turns to the Lord, verse 16 — how is the veil removed? When he turns to the Lord, the veil of the flesh is removed, and he beholds with unveiled face the glory of the Lord. And what happens? "And we are being changed. We are being changed from glory to glory, for this is of the Lord who is the Spirit."
What is the veil? All through this chapter, Paul is speaking about a veil. And then in chapter 4, he is still talking about the veil. Chapter 4, verse 3: "And even if our gospel is veiled" — if the message I am preaching to you is veiled today, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. They are perishing. This gospel, this message makes no sense to them at all. The veil is on their face. And if the message, Paul says, we are preaching is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Why? Because they are in the flesh. If you are under the bondage of sin, Paul tells us in Romans, the wages of sin is death; therefore you are perishing. Now it is in Christ that this veil is removed, the veil of the flesh. And Hebrews chapter 10, verse 20, speaks of "the veil of his flesh." The veil is compared to the veil of the flesh in our body.
Now I hope now you have got the picture together, and hope that you will understand the meaning of baptism much more clearly. And now you will see why it is essential for every Christian to put away the old way of life dominated by the flesh, preoccupied with the things which are seen — with cars and houses and TVs and radios and this and that and everything physical — and spiritual things, they are all unreal to them. It becomes intellectual exercises. It becomes believing at second hand, because somebody else believes, so I believe. You know what's wrong with that? What's wrong is that it costs you nothing to believe at second hand. A person who sees with unveiled face the glory of the Lord has had to do away with the flesh. And that is costly. Baptism, in its spiritual meaning, is very costly. But you can believe at second hand, and it costs you nothing, because you believe on the basis of somebody else's belief. You don't have to do away with the flesh for intellectual faith. Do you see that? For intellectual believing, you don't have to remove the flesh, because you will not directly see. You believe on the basis of the witness of somebody else. But there is where the Lord Jesus speaks to us in Matthew 16, verse 24: "Except a man deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." If you take up your cross, you are finished with the flesh. He cannot be my disciple. You see? Nobody can deny himself who is merely committed to intellectual faith. Intellectual faith costs nothing. In fact, it's very interesting. It's very exciting. You can toy around with philosophical ideas or religious ideas. It costs you nothing to play around with ideas. In fact, when you're bored, it's very interesting to fool around with ideas. But spiritual faith means the removal of the veil of the flesh through death, the death of the old way of life in the flesh. Can you see? Are spiritual things real to you?
So let me close then with Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2: "Looking to Jesus." You cannot even fulfill that command. "Looking to Jesus" — it's a command impossible of fulfillment, until the veil of the flesh is removed. How can you look to Jesus? How can Jesus be real to you? No way it can be done.
In closing, let me say one more time: faith in the New Testament is the opposite of physical sight, but like physical sight, it is its own proof. If you ask me, "How do you know that this place or this person exists?" my answer is very simple: I have seen him. Sight is its own evidence. I see; therefore I know. How do I know that God is the living God, that He is real? Because by the grace of God, with the eyes of faith, I see Him. He is so real to me that, as far as this physical world is concerned, it can pass; it doesn't matter. For Paul, Jesus was so real that he was happy to go to be with Jesus, as he says in Philippians 1 — happy to go to be with Him and leave this whole world behind. He said, "I have suffered the loss of everything," in Philippians 3, "and count it as rubbish," because what he has seen of the glory of the Lord is far more meaningful to him than the houses and cars and all this stuff. He says, "I count all that as garbage." He is looking forward to gain, to win Christ.
Do you have this faith that is saving? It is by this faith that we are justified. By this faith, as Hebrews 11:2 tells us, that we will be acceptable to God, approved by God.
Let us pray.