You can choose to believe it . . . . or not
As followers of Jesus, there is an essential new set of truths to live by. Because we tend to latch on more easily to the things we can see and identify them as real, honestly appropriating God’s truth to be our truth can be a personal challenge. God doesn’t want us to be confined by what we understand and believe solely through the material world we live in. He wants to lead us into a broader understanding of reality, a reality as seen through His eyes and His infinite wisdom. His realities are truth, and that is what prompts him to tell us “as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18)
Verses like Galatians 2:20 saying “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” are intended to cement in our minds that we are now dead to sin, free from its guilt and bondage and free to live a Christ-like life. We are told that God, through Christ, has bestowed on us His righteousness and we are to live our lives possessing righteousness (despite our failures) because we have faith to believe what He says. “For in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.” (Rom. 1:17) God has both saved us and will keep us by His grace.
From the moment we trusted Christ for salvation, we experienced a change in our identity. While our outward appearance did not change (don’t go hoping for that), we experienced a change in our standing before and orientation towards God as citizens of His kingdom. With any change of citizenship, there are new ways of looking at yourself and the kingdom to which you belong. There are new truths about us other than what we have experienced, what we think about ourselves, or how others have shaped our thinking by how they view us. How God sees us needs to be understood and become preeminent.
While “experiential” truth (what we have observed or have experienced) is of great value, a new orientation to truth called “positional” truth is greatly significant with respect to our spiritual well-being. Positional truth is how God sees us (irrespective of how we may tend to see ourselves) as revealed through his word. Would you agree that how God sees us is pretty significant? Our faith, if we will nourish it, will develop a strong reliance on the truth of God’s word and will help us replace doubts and lies with the truth from God. These truths will become what we begin to lean on and live by . . . they will become the default positions we need to live by in the reality of God’s light and not be swayed by lies and distortions which are pressed on us by the enemy, others and sometimes ourselves.
When we say we believe in God and believe God, we must likewise put our trust in every word that proceeds from his mouth and into the pages of the scriptures we have at our disposal. To know God, to be “schooled” in His positional truths, we must invest time in His word. There are no shortcuts. Don’t just take my word for it. It’s in the book. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Rom. 10:17) This prescription for “hearing” is equally applicable for us as we read what God has given us in our Bibles. Think About It.