Faith is the Substantiation of God’s Facts through the Exercise of our Spirit of Faith

Faith is the substantiation of God’s facts, the substantiation of the substance of the truth, which is the reality of the contents of God’s New Testament economy by the exercise of our spirit of faith. Hallelujah!

This week in our morning revival on the topic of, God’s Economy in Faith, we come to the subject, The Intrinsic Significance of Faith.

This word, faith, is one of the most frequent words in the New Testament. “Faith” or “believe” are mentioned at least one hundred and fifty times in the New Testament, thirty-five times as a noun, and the rest are in a verb or to believe.

However, this word is one of the most misunderstood and misapplied matters among Christians today.

There are many mistaken concepts concerning what faith is, and there are many natural concepts concerning faith or what it is to believe.

First of all, faith is not blind trust; faith doesn’t mean that we refuse to think and we blindly trust what God says.

Faith is not just trusting someone or trusting God in a blind way. It’s good to say that we trust in God, but faith is not mere trust in God in a blind way, without knowing Him or having seen Him.

Faith is not empty hope; some Christians confuse faith with hope, thinking that to have faith is to hope.

But faith and hope are two different things: hope refers to something in the future, something that is yet to happen, while faith relates to the present, even to something that has been done and accomplished.

Faith is not man blindly trusting in God, nor is it man hoping for things that God said He would do.

We need to be delivered from any natural concept concerning faith and see the intrinsic significance of what faith is according to the Word of God.

Faith is not mere mental agreement or mental consent; merely agreeing with what the Bible says doesn’t mean that you have faith.

Many Christians agree with a lot of things in the Word of God and may speak them, but they may not agree with other things, so they don’t speak them.

Agreeing with what the Bible says doesn’t mean that you believe, and consenting to what the Bible teaches is not faith.

May the Lord enlighten the eyes of our heart and renew our mind concerning what faith is so that we may know what is it to believe and have faith in a genuine way.

Faith is the Substantiation of God’s Facts through the Exercise of our Spirit of Faith

According to Heb. 11:1, faith is the substantiation of things unseen – faith is the substantiation of God’s faith, and this is by our spirit of faith.

God’s facts refer to the divine facts concerning God revealed in His Word, the Bible.

There are many facts presented to us in the Bible concerning God, such as God being one, God creating all things including the heavens, the earth, and man, and that God is love, for He loved the world so much that He gave His Son for us.

All these are facts, even though there are those who don’t believe these facts.

The Bible clearly tells us that God so loved the world, God is on the throne ruling all over the earth, God administrates over all the affairs of the earth, and He is the One in control.

Faith is the substantiation of these facts of God; although these facts are true, for they exist in themselves, we can make them real and substantial by faith.

God is the one true God, the Creator, the One who loves man, the Most Powerful One, and the One on the throne; how can these divine facts be made real to us?

To an unbeliever or an atheist, they think this is nonsense, something that is unbelievable.

But to us as believers in Christ, God’s facts are real because we have faith. Faith substantiates God’s facts.

Faith is the substantiation of God’s facts by the exercise of our spirit of faith. In order to know the substance of something and to substantiate something, you need to use the right organ.

For us to see what is in front of us, we need to use our eyes; for us to hear what others speak, we need to use our ears.

For us to detect the colours around us, our eyes are necessary, but for us to detect the sounds, the ears are necessary; we cannot use our ears to hear the colors, nor can we use our hands to see.

Similarly, for us to substantiate God’s facts we need to use our spirit, which is of faith.

Heb. 11:1 says that faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

The word “substantiation” means the capacity to make something real; a certain object exists, but it is made real by being substantiated.

It is one thing for an object to exist, but it is another thing for this object to be substantiated.

All of God’s facts recorded in the Bible are real; however, these facts can be substantiated only by faith, because faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

We human beings have eyes to see, nose to smell, ears to listen, hands to touch, and a mouth to taste; these organs are our substantiating means for us to substantiate the objects and things around us.

In order for us to sense or substantiate things in the spiritual world, in the spiritual realm, we need another organ; our physical organs do not suffice – they are not adequate.

We need the organ that the Bible calls, faith; faith enables us to substantiate the things we hope for and have the conviction of things not seen.

We need faith to substantiate a spiritual, divine fact, just as we need eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to substantiate physical objects.

Faith is not a mere understanding or agreement with the divine truth; faith is the seeing of a divine fact and the substantiation of it.

The accomplished facts of Christ’s person, living, and work must be substantiated by us – they must be made real to us by means of faith.

The Gospels do not merely present us stories concerning a historical figure who was born, lived, worked, made miracles, died, and then resurrected two thousand years ago.

Rather, all these things are spiritual facts, and they are made real to us by means of faith.

Believing is exercising our spirit of faith (2 Cor. 4:13) to substantiate the divine facts, God’s facts.

Once we believe by saying Amen to God’s word, we substantiate the divine facts and have them!

Amen doesn’t mean that we wish these things were true or that we want them to be accomplished; saying Amen is declaring that they will surely be accomplished and there’s no doubt about it!

When we believe, we are accepting what the Lord has already promised to do. In the church life we say Amen a lot; saying Amen doesn’t mean merely that we wish what others said was true, it means that we agree with it and it is true, it is done.

2 Cor. 1:20 says that, as many promises of God as there are, in Him is the Yes; therefore also through Him is the Amen to God!

Christ is the incarnated answer to all of our questions, and His name is called Amen! He is the Yes. He is not both yes and no; He is yes, He is amen.

When we say Amen, we touch the divine reality and we agree that this is true.

We need to exercise our spirit of faith and say Amen to the word of God, and all of God’s facts become real to us, for they are substantiated by us by faith.

Thank You, Lord, for all the divine facts in the Bible. We say Amen to Your word, for we not only mentally agree with it but we believe that You are doing it in us. Hallelujah, all of God’s facts recorded in the Bible are real, and they can be substantiated by us by faith! Amen, Lord, we exercise our spirit of faith to substantiate the divine facts. We say Amen to what You say in the Word of God, and by means of our spirit of faith, we make the divine facts real to us in our experience. We believe into You, dear Lord, and we accept what You have already promised to do in Your word. Hallelujah for all the promises of God, the divine facts, being made real to us by means of our believing through the exercise of our spirit!

Faith is the Substantiation of the Reality of the Contents of God’s New Testament Economy

Though it is very mysterious, faith is very real; faith is the substantiation of the substance of the truth, which is the reality of the contents of God’s New Testament economy (Heb. 11:1).

Among the many divine facts of God recorded in the Bible, the word of God, there is something called, God’s economy.

God’s economy is His eternal plan and arrangement to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity into His chosen people so that God can be their life and their everything with the result that they become His corporate expression.

The economy of God is a divine fact, but the Word of God reveals further that this is what is in God’s heart, His good pleasure, His eternal plan.

God made such an arrangement for Him to be able to dispense Himself into man.

Part of this arrangement is that God became a man; the God of the heavens came to the earth to be incarnated as a man, and He lived a human life for thirty-three and a half years.

At the end of this period, he went to the cross to accomplish an all-inclusive death, through which He solved and took care of the problems of sins, the world, the flesh, and even the devil himself.

Then, in three days, he rose from the dead and became a life-giving Spirit, and then He ascended to the third heavens, where the Father is.

All these are no mere stories; these are divine facts, the many steps that He went through in order to accomplish God’s economy.

When we exercise our spirit of faith to substantiate God’s facts, these facts become real to us. All these are real to us, they are not only true but the truth.

What we call “the truth” is not just some kind of doctrines, teachings, or things that are true; the truth refers to the reality, the reality of what and who Christ is and what He passed through.

When this truth is being substantiated by us through the organ of faith, this becomes faith to us.

Such faith is allotted to all the believers in Christ as their portion, which is equally precious to all who have received it (2 Pet. 1:1; Col. 1:12).

God has allotted each one of us equally precious faith; this faith is equal in quality for all believers, but some may have a larger quantity of faith while others have a smaller quantity.

Faith is the mean by which we come to God; in 2 Pet. 1:1, however, Peter uses faith not in the sense of a means but in the sense of an object, similar to the good land which was allotted to the children of Israel in the Old Testament.

God allotted to us equally precious faith. This faith is actually Christ Himself (Col. 1:12) who has become our faith; God allotted a portion of Christ to each one of us, and by this Christ infused into us as the divine truth, we believe.

As such a portion from God, this faith is objective to us in the divine truth, but it brings all the contents of its substantiation into us, thus making them all – with itself (faith) – subjective to us in our experience.

A very good way to illustrate this is with a photo camera, at least in the traditional or older way of taking pictures.

The scenery outside of us is the truth, and the seeing is faith, while we are the camera; when the light (the Spirit) brings the scenery (the truth) to the film (our spirit) within the camera, both the seeing and the scenery become subjective to the camera.

We may see a wonderful scenery in front of us, but the way we capture it and make it memorable and substantial is by taking a picture of it; nowadays the pictures are saved on the internal memory or an SD card, and the scenery becomes something substantial to the camera by being saved or imprinted on it.

Praise the Lord, by means of our spirit of faith, we can substantiate God’s facts so that they become ours, even being imprinted in us, to become subjective to us.

Thank You, Lord, for allotting to us equally precious faith for us to substantiate the divine facts and make them real to us! Hallelujah, Christ has been given to us and infused into us for us to become our believing ability. Amen, Lord, we say Amen to Your word. We say Amen to all the contents of God’s New Testament Economy. May Your divine light shine on the truth in the Word of God to make it subjective and real to us in our experience through faith! Amen, Lord, we exercise our spirit of faith to believe in all the divine truths and make them real to us. Hallelujah, faith is the substantiation of the reality of the contents of God’s New Testament economy!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers, and portions from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 24, “The Overcoming Life”, ch. 7, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, God’s Economy in Faith (2022 spring ITERO), week 2, entitled, The Intrinsic Significance of Faith.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – What a wonderful change in my living is wrought / By saying Amen to God’s Word. / More of Christ into me at each instance is brought / By saying Amen to His Word. / By saying Amen to His Word, / By saying Amen to His Word, / Thus the Lord takes my heart, and transforms every part, / By saying Amen to His Word. (Hymns #1219)
  – The faith which once for all was giv’n / Unto the saints of old, / Has been committed unto us / To guard, defend, and hold. / And we know whom we have believed / And are persuaded that He is able / To guard, through the Holy Spirit, / Our deposit to that day. (Hymns #1285)
  – One’ Lord in all, and all one in His Spirit, / Heavenly fellowship earth has not known; / Faith sees the riches we shall yet inherit, / Glorious treasure laid up for His own. (Hymns #596)