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Walking in Faith --

Our Enduring Heavenly Substance

     One of the hardest concepts for the sons of God to grasp is the concept of faith.   What is faith exactly?  Paul in Hebrews 11:1 defines it as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”   “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” says the NIV.    “Substance” is translated from a Greek word meaning “essence, assurance, confidence.”  We can think about these definitions of the English and the Greek word, but it is still difficult to understand what it means.   We need a key to open its meaning.

     A passage six verses before Paul’s definition of faith may be that key.  The apostle is saying that we know we “have in heaven a better and an enduring substance” (10:34).  He is talking about something that believers have that is in heaven that is better than anything we have here on earth and that endures.  This substance that Paul is referring to is something that is eternal, enduring, ever lasting, always going to be there.  It is not something temporary, temporal, ephemeral, or fleeting.

     Paul speaks of this “enduring substance” in another passage.  “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (II Corinthians 5:1).  The heavenly “enduring substance” believers have is a spiritual body reserved for us.  And it is just waiting till the first resurrection, to come down and swallow up this earthly mortal shell of a body we are walking around in now.  The reason we have the Spirit, the treasure, in mortal can-die earthly bodies is so that we will eventually learn in this sojourn that it is God who is and has the power, and not us in this earthly state.

     We are to feel the sufferings of mortality.  It is a fellowship that we are invited to join to be worthy to partake of His resurrection power.  We are to conform to His death.  When He died, sin died and every evil attribute of man died along with it.  We are to carry this knowledge around in our thinking—never forgetting from whence we have received this new abundant life (II Cor. 3:7-10). 

     “If one died for all, then were all dead…” so that they could live unto Him and not unto themselves.  We are a new creation in Him.  “All things are become new (II Cor. 5:15-17).  Through His sacrifice we now yield our hearts to Him, letting our old self die with Him and by faith, we are now walking in a newness of life.

     “He now has committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”  We are now His representatives, His ambassadors.  We must let God through us beseech the world to be reconciled to Him.  He wants to use us to reach the world.

To Walk in Faith Now Is to Act as if We Already Have Our Immortal Spirit Bodies

     Now “walking in faith” means to keep the “substance” in the forefront of our minds.  We should walk here on earth mindful that we do have an immortal body waiting to engulf us and swallow us up into eternal life.  It is there!  He said it was there for us. “Walking in faith means  to  act  as  if  we  already  have our immortal spirit bodies!  If we are to believe the scriptures of truth written down by the holy apostles and prophets, then we should walk in this knowledge.  We already have an eternal house in the heavens just waiting to swallow our mortal shell up.  We are to walk in the Spirit by walking as if we were already made immortal (“do before you get it as you would if you had it…”).

     This power comes when we walk in full humility, which is not believing that we are still there as the object of God’s blessings.  When we refute all our own earthly worthiness and self-justification, then it will come.  We do this by always carrying around in our earthly bodies  the realization that our old nature died with Yahshua.  We carry around in our earthly bodies, in our hearts and minds, that He died and with His death He made a way for us to sacrifice our old life.  And with His resurrection He made a way for us to walk in a new life.  This is how we are partakers of His divine life.  We must suffer our own death in order to be counted in the resurrection, when our old earthly mortal bodies will attain immortality.  Walking in faith is keeping all this in mind.  It is looking to the invisible.

Looking to the Invisible

     Doing this is difficult for us, for we are earth bound, chained to fleshly pulls.  We need to be able to talk and listen to a sage, a prophet—someone who has been there to the other spiritual side that can help us. 

     What if you could talk to someone who had been to heaven—I mean really had been to the throne room of the God who had created everything in the universe?  What if you could sit at the feet of someone so privileged—someone who had seen the risen Saviour, who had listened to His voice and heard His wisdom firsthand, in the very heaven of heavens?  What if you could sit down and read and study that fortunate person’s writings about going into the very presence of God and living to tell about it? Is there such a person who has left us a substantial catalogue of writings?

     The apostle Paul says that he is the witness.  Speaking about himself, he said that he “was caught up to the third heaven…into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” II Cor. 12:7.

     And so we have this man, and we see him going through great trials and persecutions.  He wrote about physical death in II Corinthians 1:8-9.  “We despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”  Knowing that we are going to die a physical death keeps us humble.  For even if a human being is blessed to have received His spirit, knowledge of one’s impending demise shows us that we cannot trust in ourselves to have power to change ourselves from mortals to immortals.  We rather must look to the invisible things of the Spirit for our change; we must look forward to a future resurrection when we will be changed into an immortal being. 

     For we know that if our earthly house…were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  II Corinthians 5:1.  This is a spiritual body or building or temple that now is in heaven, Paul is saying.  We cannot see our new body; it is invisible.  It takes faith to believe that it is there waiting till that great day when He dissolves this mortal flesh and swallows us up with our glorious spiritual body at the resurrection of the dead.