The NATURAL MAN’S FAITH

NATURAL MAN’S FAITH

NATURAL man does not have the same kind of faith that the Believer enjoys. The natural man believes in the things he can see, hear, taste, smell and feel. (Read my book, “The Two Kinds of Faith.”) It was hard for us to grasp this. For a long time, I could not understand the meaning of the word, “believe,” in relation to natural man. Then the Spirit unveiled it to me. “Believe” is an action word, a verb. “Faith” is a noun, the result of action. Then, believing, for the unsaved man, would be to act on what God has spoken. He says to the unsaved man, “If you will take Jesus Christ as your Saviour and confess Him as your Lord, I will give you Eternal Life.”

Then the natural man simply acts on the Word, and the Father gives him Eternal Life. As soon as he has done this, the Father owns him as His child. In the mind of the Father he is a believer and possesses all things. Eph. 1:3 will illustrate it. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.” All things are his, but he may not know it. As he grows in Grace, he will come to know what he is in Christ. He cannot grow in Grace without the Word. He has the Living Word, the Written Word, and he has the great, mighty Holy Spirit as his teacher so that he may grow in the Word.

As he grows in the Word, he grows in Grace. That is, his spirit begins to take on the Love Nature of Jesus. He becomes gentle and beautiful in his spirit. He may have been very critical and hard before, but now the very gentleness of the Master has taken possession of him. The Pauline pictures of full-grown faith are a challenge to him, so he feeds upon the Word daily. He studies to show himself approved unto the Father. He begins to take over the burdens of those who are weaker than he. Romans 15:1 becomes a favorite with him, “Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”

He has been an abnormally selfish man, but he now becomes an abnormally unselfish man. You see, this new babe in Christ is growing very rapidly. The very Life of the Father is being reproduced in him. The Word of Christ dwells in him richly. He is passing out of the bondage that held him. His whole mental life was full of unseemly things. Now his recreated spirit, filled with Love, is gaining control of that unruly mind and imagination. He is bringing it into subjection to the Word. The Word truly begins to dwell in him richly. He feeds upon it, lives in it. He acts upon it.

The Word has become a love letter from the Father to his heart. It is a daily message from Heaven’s Throne Room. It is his communication with the Father and the Master.
After a while the Word abides in him to the extent that his Faith life becomes outstanding. John 15:7,8 becomes a beautiful reality. “If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disciples.” I hear him say, I want that eighth verse made real in my life, I want to bear much fruit. I want Him to look upon me as a disciple, as a student, as one that is sitting at His feet practicing the Word.

You see, this new man that has been begotten in Him, that new self, has utterly displaced the conduct and the practices of the old self. People cannot understand this. He no longer blasphemes or cares to go with the old crowd. Whenever he goes with the old crowd, it is as an evangelist. He is out seeking the lost. He has taken Jesus’ place. The Jesus Life now rules him. You know, this is the most wonderful thing about this life. As a natural man, he didn’t understand any of these things; he didn’t care about them. Yet his old associates and old life and the habits have all dropped off. He has become an utterly new man.

The Limitations of Natural Man

He is the slave of his senses. We think of him in the Garden, walking with God as a spirit-ruled being. His spirit then dominated everything. God could communicate with him with the utmost freedom, but when he fell, his spirit became a partaker of Satan’s nature. He lost his contact with God, and when he was driven from the Garden, he became utterly dependent upon his senses to support and protect and care for him.
He is out in a world now where Satan rules. He must have eyes to see the dangers, and ears to hear his enemies. He must have taste to know what to eat. He must have a keen sense of smell so as to detect an enemy or poisoned fruits. He must have a sense of touch.

He lives in the realm of his senses now. All that man has learned since the fall has come through his senses. Man has had no other means of knowledge. He has been shut away from God. “Now the natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually revealed.” 1 Cor. 2:14. There can come no spiritual revelation to that man from God. If he gets any spiritual revelation, it will be from the devil. That is the reason why angels were the agents of communication under the Old Covenant. God could not reveal Himself to natural man, but angels could be seen and heard. Natural man could receive messages from them. A voice could speak out of Sinai that Moses and the elders could hear.

How different was the Pauline Revelation! No angels came to Paul and told him what to write. God was in his spirit, and the Revelation came through the spirit. God gave to Paul a Revelation of Jesus, an unveiling of Jesus in his spirit. Then his spirit-ruled mind was able to write what the Holy Spirit had given in regard to Jesus. Since the Fall of man in the Garden, he has been ruled by his five senses. Satan has been his over-lord.
Natural man had Satan’s nature, so it was easy for Satan to reveal his will to him; it is easy for natural man to do the will of Satan.

The Believer has the nature of the Father, so that it is easy for the Father to reveal Himself to His child through the Living Word. You see, the Satan-ruled man cannot know the things of the Spirit. All that he knows are the things of Satan, the god of this world. He can understand the deep things of Satan, but he cannot understand the Bible nor its marvelous Revelation. This Satan-ruled man believes in experiences; either his own, or the experiences of other people. That is the reason that you can draw a great congregation of unsaved men, if you can get some folks who have had marvelous experiences to tell them. This attracts the man of the senses.

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