New Commandment: Have God’s Faith in His Promise to Glorify Us

We can never please God without faith (Heb. 11:6). And there is no greater faith than God’s own faith in Himself and His word. It is His faith that He has “delivered to” those He has saved (Jude 1:3). And this is where Christ issues another new commandment. “Have the faith of God” (Mark 11:22). Have God’s faith residing in you, by making our hopes real by believing having not seen. That is what faith does. We have to reckon it so (Rom. 6:11).

Since we are now dead and have received the Spirit of Christ that has “raised us to walk in a newness of life,” we now live “by the faith of the Son of God” (Rom. 6:4; Gal. 2:20). We now live by Christ’s belief system. Whatever He believes, we believe through Him.

And He now commands us, “Have the faith of God.” Take it. Walk in it. Have it. Believe His word, which gives us many promises. The most breathtaking promise is that He will glorify those whom He has chosen when He returns to earth to usher in His government throughout the earth.

Have God’s faith is a new commandment given to us by Christ. We love Him and serve Him now, having not seen as of yet His promise of everlasting life. We have not yet seen with our eyes a “glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). The glory that the Spirit of Christ speaks of is the glorious spiritual body that we Christians will receive upon Christ’s return.

The whole creation is as it were, waiting “for the manifestation of the sons of God (8:19). At Eden, the Adamic race became destined to suffer the throes of an assured decline into the grave. The whole creation including mankind is bound for the dusty tomb (Gen. 3:19).

But God has a great hope for us and has provided a way to “deliver us from the bondage of corruption” and physical decay.

And so the earth and its inhabitants and “ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit,” we all are groaning…waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:22-23). And the Spirit of truth that now resides in believers “helps our infirmities” and “makes intercession for us with groanings (vs. 26-27).

And then comes the verse that almost all Christians know and quote. “And we know that all things work together for good…” And then most stop right there unfortunately. Things work out good for whom? “…To them who are the called according to His purpose” (v. 28; II Tim. 1:9).

The Spirit explains just who these “called” are. “For whom He did foreknow, [God knew them before their earthly existence] He also did predestinate [He gave them a destiny predetermined—but for what purpose?] to be conformed to the image of His Son [to be like the Son of God]…” (Rom. 8:29; II Cor. 3:18; I John 3:2).

Predestined them, called them, justified them, and glorified them. He promised us glory. We will receive this glory when we receive our glorified body just like Christ’s. This is being “conformed to the image of His Son.”

This is the “eternal life” He has promised us. This is the ultimate victory over death and the grave. God is for us. And “if God be for us, who can be against us?” asks the apostle Paul (Rom. 8:31-39).

The kicker is this: In God’s mind, this is already done. “God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17). He declares the end from the beginning. That is His faith, and His faith, His belief system, has now become ours. This is contained in the new commandment, “Have the faith of God.”    Kenneth Wayne Hancock