Colossians 2:6-7 6 As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
Phillips Translation: Just as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so go on living in Him – in simple faith.
Passion Translation: In the same way you received Jesus our Lord and Messiah by faith, continue your journey of faith, progressing further into your union with Him!
The word “as” means in the same manner. So what was the “manner” in which we received the Lord? By faith.
Romans 10:6-10 6 But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above)
7 or, ” ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach):
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Lately we’ve been watching a series by Andrew Womack in Bible study, called “the Balance Between Grace and Faith”. He makes these points:
- Grace is about what God has already done and given.
- Faith is our response to what God has already done.
People have the wrong idea that faith causes God to move and “talks Him into” doing things for us. No, what faith does is connect the conduit to what God has already poured out and opens the channel to get it to us.
2 Peter 1:2-4 2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
He has already supplied everything that pertains to our life and godliness. “Pertaining to godliness” would be spiritual things, and “pertaining to life” is everything else!
It is so easy to get into “performance mode”, thinking that it is your behavior that earns things from God. Now we have a pretty good handle on it for salvation – we know we can’t earn it – but many Christians fall into that trap concerning other things that come from God.
Take healing. Healing has already been provided. It already belongs to us (see Healing for Today). Yet we approach healing as if we have to convince God to heal us.
If I pray enough, if I believe enough, if I confess enough and make enough declarations, if I have enough faith, then God will heal me. I, I, I , I… Now we do need to believe, but it is very easy to turn it into a works/performance thing.
The same way we got into the kingdom is the same way we advance in the kingdom.
It very much follows the theme of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Galatia was the province (a region of cities, like the San Francisco Bay Area) where Paul went on his first missionary journey. He began several (Gentile) churches there. After he had left and moved on, Jewish Christians came up from the Jerusalem church and started teaching these Gentiles that yes, salvation is by faith in Christ Jesus, but if you wanted to become really spiritual you had to keep the law of Moses.
Galatians 3:1-3 1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?
2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
So the issue with the Galatians was that although they had received the Lord by hearing Paul preach, and receiving it and believing it by faith, they were not continuing their walk with the Lord in the same manner. They (under a corrupting influence) got off into works of the Law.
Receiving is not passive
Now whereas we can’t do anything to earn the promises of God, that doesn’t mean they will automatically come to pass in our life.
It’s like one of those contests where you have to be present to win. You don’t need to do anything to earn the prize except “put your hat in the ring” – you do have to enter the contest – but you do have to show up to claim your prize.
I have a real life example. Many years ago (in the 80’s), I worked for an insurance brokerage and wrote some policy software for them. We had a booth in a trade show where we were presenting our software. They had a raffle going on where the grand prize was a free one week trip to Hawaii, air fare and hotel included. All the presenters had free tickets.
I was in the back still in our booth when they called off the name. It wasn’t mine. So I kind of stopped listening. What I didn’t realize is that nobody responded to that name. Then they called another – and again no one responded. Then they called my name, but I wasn’t listening so I didn’t know. Some people around me that knew me hollered and said “Scott! They called your name!” “What?” “You won! They just called you!” “Really?” So I trotted up to the podium in the front to receive my prize. They handed me an envelope which had contact information for a travel agency that I could call and arrange when I wanted to go.
But you know, at that point, I still had to do something if my wife and I were ever going to get to Hawaii. I had to call the travel agency and give them a date so they could book the flight and hotel. Which I did, and we went and had a great time. They even showed Star Trek IV on the flight, which had just come out.
One humorous thing, is that the second person they had called (although I didn’t know it because I wasn’t listening) was actually someone else from our office who had left early because she had a headache. On Monday morning in the office she just came over to my cubicle and stared at me. Then she said, “OK, when are we going?” “Well, I’m not sure what my wife would think about that.”
I was there to receive the prize, my colleague was not.
Eligibility
For the Hawaii trip, attendees of the trade show that had signed up were eligible, because our names were on the role.
To be eligible for the promises of God, you have to be in Christ Jesus. In the contest, only one person whose name was on the role was called. For the promises of God, we are all eligible! It would be like they said all attendees of the conference get a free Hawaii trip, come to the table and claim your prize.
2 Corinthians 1:20 20 For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
Receive
Is it a contradiction to say on the one hand that God has given us everything we need, and on the other to say we need to do something to receive it? Not at all.
Grace reveals what is offered to us, what is available. Let’s start with something that everybody can agree on – salvation.
John 3:16 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
1 Timothy 2:1-4 1 Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men,
2 for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
John 3:16 tells us that eternal life is available to whoever. 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us that God desires all men (mankind in general, not just males) be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
If it was just up to God’s grace, then everybody would be automatically saved, right? There are some who believe that. But John 3:16 also reveals a condition of obtaining eternal life – the person has to believe in Jesus. We use the terminology accept the Lord in your heart or receive Jesus.
Come and get it
Hebrews 4:14-16 14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
There is a throne of grace where mercy and help is available (and we all need both)! But we have to come and get it. It even describes the manner in which we are to come – boldly.
If what you need is mercy, it is probably because you have done something wrong, that you know you shouldn’t have. We would have a tendency to be very hesitant about approaching God when we’ve done wrong. But we are told to come boldly – without hesitation or trepidation. Our Lord understands the pressures that temptation brings because He went through it Himself. The difference is that He never gave in to the temptation. In Gethsemane His struggle was so strong that He sweat blood. And we might have walked into the temptation hardly resisting at all.
Grace is when we receive something that we don’t deserve.
Mercy is when we don’t receive something that we do deserve!
Notice that we are to come to the throne of grace, boldly, to obtain. The reason we can have boldness is because we can expect that we shall obtain what we need – mercy and help. That gives us confidence. The confidence comes from what we believe will happen when we get to the throne of grace.
If you don’t come, you won’t obtain.
If you don’t come boldly – i.e., if you don’t come expecting that you will get the help you need – what you can receive will be limited.
Obtain – Greek, lambano. Various ways it has been translated is Accept, Catch, Find, Obtain, Receive, Take. Most often it is translated the last two, receive and take.
The fact that it is often translated take shows that it is an active form of receiving. You are not sitting there having something dumped on you, you are reaching out and taking something.
Specifically, lambano means to take what is offered.
If you take something that is not offered to you, that is stealing. If you take something that is offered, that is receiving.
The example I like is when someone walks up to you with a big plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies (or my favorite, Peanut Butter Oatmeal Scotchies, which are oatmeal cookies with peanut butter in them, and butterscotch chips) and says, “Here, have a cookie!”. What are you going to do? You’re going to reach out and take one. Now you have received a cookie.
The promises of God are like God showing you a big plate of wonderful things – salvation, healing, being filled with the Holy Spirit, blessings – and saying “Here, have all you want.” Or maybe another way to look at it, is He has a banquet table loaded up with these wonderful things, and announces to a full room, “Come and eat!”. Now in the natural, people would get up, form a line, grab a plate, and put whatever they want on it. In the natural, if you are at the end of the line, they could run low on some items.
But not with the promises of God. It’s like God prepared a table just for you (hmmm – isn’t there a scripture about that somewhere?) loaded with more than you could possibly consume. And His promises never run out or expire!
Act on the Promise
We mentioned that Andrew Womack describes faith as our response to what God has already done. If we have no response, then we do not receive.
The Bible tells us in the New Testament that salvation is by faith, and not by works. The Apostle Paul makes this argument in many places.
Ephesians 2:8-9 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
But then James comes along in chapter 2 and says that faith without works is dead.
James 2:17 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
Read all of James 2:14-26.
Are Paul and James contradicting each other? No. And it becomes clear if instead of the word works in James 2, you substitute corresponding actions. James is saying that faith – which involves what you believe – is dead or inoperative unless it elicits a response in corresponding actions.
To put it another way, if you really believed something, how would you act? You need to “put legs to” what you believe.
One of the very first things we can do when we receive a promise is to thank the one who made the promise. We do that, even before the promise is fulfilled, if we believe the one who promised is trustworthy and true to their word. Well, God is the One most worthy of our trust and true to His word of anyone in our universe and beyond.
The next thing we can do is talk the promise. In the contest I talked about earlier, the first thing I did when I got home is tell my wife “We’re going to Hawaii!”. All I had at that point was a piece of paper and a promise.
Our corresponding actions were, we started to make plans. We had to work out what would be a good time to take a vacation. We also had two small children that wouldn’t be going with us, so we had to arrange for someone to take care of them. We did that before we contacted the travel agency to book a date.
Now with the promises of God, what we do as corresponding actions (other thank thanking God and talking the promise) is an individual and varied thing. You’ll need to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit on that.
For more on Faith, see Faith Parts One, Two, Three, and Four. Part Three specifically addresses corresponding actions in more detail.
