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The Remnant’s faith is real!

Posted by appolus on August 6, 2009

Tozer writes…

Faith is of two kinds:nominal and real. The nominal faith is the faith that accepts what it is told and can quote text after text to prove it. It’s amazing how nominal faith and nominal belief can weave these texts into garments, cloaks and curtains for the Church.

But there is another kind of faith; it is faith that depends upon the character of God. You will remember that the Scriptures does not say “Abraham believed the text and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” It says “Abraham believed God.” (Romans 4:3) It was not what Abraham believed, it was who Abraham believed, that counted. Abraham believed God, and the man of true faith believes God and his faith rests on the character of God. The man who has real faith rather than nominal faith has found a right answer to the question, “what is God like?” There is no question more important. The man of true faith has found an answer to that question by revelation and illumination.

The difficulty with the Church now-even the Bible believing Church-is that we stop with revelation. But revelation is not enough. Revelation is God’s given Word. Its an objective thing, not subjective; it’s external, not internal. It is God’s revelation of truth. A man may believe that and believe that soundly and hold to it to be truth. And yet he will have only an objective revelation of truth that has been objectively revealed. Tozer,A.W The Attributes of God,p 18

Tozer is correct of course. Its why the current state of the church, under its present leadership in all it’s many forms, is getting ready to be swept away. Objective faith is no faith at all. Its not the externals that make and change a man, it’s the internals. The true man of God is a new creature in Christ, this is not an objective truth, its an internal reality that grows from the inside out. The man who has only objective truth has no illumination and applies his own wisdom to the revelation of God’s word and then applies it to his life, trying to change his life from the outside in. It always fails, it cannot work. It ends in total failure or it ends in self-righteousness which is total failure cleaned up and made presentable, even beautiful.

The religious man worships the Word of God, the man of true faith worships Jesus. The religious man will be an angry man, but mostly he will be a fearful man. He will be fearful of the world. He will despise the world. He will think himself and others of like-mind, better than the world. His fears will spill over into many different aspects. He will fight feverishly in the political realm to preserve his way of life, but mostly he will be fighting out of fear of an ever encroaching world.  The man who worships Jesus will love the world. The man whose Father is God will love the world. He will abandon his rights in favor of sacrifice. He will forgive and have mercy on a dying world that is destined for hell. He will love the world for “God so loved the world.” He will know that God loved  the world when it was yet in its sin. He will cry out “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” even if they are being persecuted and killed all the day long by that very world.

You see, a man can have many things, he can have knowledge, wisdom, he can be used to perform miracles, he can do all manner of charitable works and he can even give his life as a martyr for the cause of Christ, yet if he does not have love then he has nothing. How clever is the deceit of the religious man? It is so clever that the one deceived barely knows that he is deceived. This “nominal faith,” that Tozer speaks of is the predominant faith of the day. The nominalists run most of the church’s, they are the deacons and the elders and they are the Christian leaders of the day. The last few generations of Christianity have been dominated by these of “nominal faith.” Almost every leader that we would know today, that have the national and international spot-light, are of the “nominal faith.”

A nominal faith has no spiritual power to transform. The nominal faith works on the outside, it is external and can only be so. Those with a real faith have an internal witness. They “know.” They “know,” by illumination as well as revelation. Revelation is the word of God, illumination is the opening up of the Word by the Holy Spirit. The Remnant have this internal witness. They love the Word of God because it is the diary of someone they “know,” and love. They devour the Word of God not because they worship the written word, but because they worship the living God. Those of the nominal faith know in their hearts that they do not “have,” what these others do. It does not sit well with them. They instinctively do not like them. They are irritated by them. It is the Saul and David relationship. David was a constant reminder to Saul of what he did not have. You see, you can have the whole world, a kingdom of your own, and yet if you do not have God then you do not have anything.