Foundational Teachings – Faith in God – Part 1
What is faith?
In order to understand the kind of faith revealed and taught by Jesus Christ. It is imperative for us to “pair” it as the antithesis of repentance from dead works as one of the six elements in the Foundation of the Life of Christ. In other words, if repentance is about us turning away from a vision of life under the dominion of sin and death; then faith is about a new vision of life under the government and the power of the life-giving Spirit of Christ or the spirit of Sonship. It is indeed a life of grace and from glory to glory.
Throughout the Church Age, due to the veiled minds of man, faith in God is often misconstrued in fractured ways of understanding. Mainly, there are two schools of presentation:
- Philosophical or intellectual reasonings and arguments, which is often presented as a set of theological truths in a treatise such as a body of creeds or dogma of belief. Its core and practice seem often to be no other than what Jesus described the “teachings of the Pharisees”. Even it is taught as a teaching of grace. There is not much evidence of the work of the power of the Holy Spirit in much these ministries, which is a sure sign of God’s work in the midst of mankind.
- The other one is well represented by the Charismatic Movement, esp. the so-called “word of faith” movement. It is very limited if not distorted an idea of what faith and the work of faith means. Sound understanding and a clear vision of the life of Sonship is greatly missing in its inventive ways of presenting the power of faith, which is more about the exercise of diverse spiritual gifts rather than the maturity of one’s life in God as a son.
In this discussion, we hope we have helped you to recover the true meaning of faith and hope in the NT, esp. in Paul’s epistles.
Foundational Teachings Meeting – April 2, 2019
Kingdom Age
www.kingdomage.org
Port Angeles, WA
Olympic Peninsula