THE INDWELLING LIFE OF CHRIST: ALL OF HIM IN ALL OF ME

By Major W. Ian Thomas

41

The Law of Faith

God’s sovereignty is absolutely unchallengeable. He is God! He can do anything He

pleases, but the incredible thing is this: in order to have each of us, a creature who can love
Him in return, He in His unchallengeable sovereignty has deliberately chosen to limit the
exercise of that sovereignty in the option He has given to human beings. That is why you and I
have been granted the greatest liberty possible, that of exercising the disposition of our
choice toward the God who created us.
God brings us to the conviction that the Word of God is true, but then He waits until we
respond with “the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26, KJV). It is true that our faith is created
and cherished by God Himself, for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”
(Romans 10:17), but our faith is inoperative until we yield obedience to the faith God has
produced.
In other words, we mix His Word with the obedience of faith, then He moves into action
and demonstrates the glorious truth of His Word. Otherwise we are like those disobedient
persons described in Hebrews 4:2: “For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to
them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those
who heard it.”
You must act on what you have come to know and believe before it will ever become
real in your experience, before you realize by personal experience that Jesus is alive not just in
heaven but in you every moment of every day, as the Father was alive in Him. Then your
actions will be the activity of faith.

Without faith, you cannot do what only Christ can do. You end up a dead
loss. With faith, you allow Christ to do through you what only He can do.
Faith is the law that governs our relationship to God and God’s relationship to us. Just as
God has designed a rigid interlock between the instinctive thrust and the animal soul, so faith is
the moral interlock between the Holy Spirit and the human soul, to establish our love for God,
in dependence on God, through our total obedience to God.
That threefold moral relationship allows God to accomplish His will in you and through
you. He does it one step at a time, in every new situation into which that step takes you.
Faith on your part invites and invokes Christ’s activity; for without your faith and this
moral relationship, He would be violating your humanity. He would be treating you like an
animal that must do what instinct commands by the law of compulsion. You and I, however,
 THE INDWELLING LIFE OF CHRIST: ALL OF HIM IN ALL OF ME
By Major W. Ian Thomas

were created to act and respond on the basis of a law of love. In love and dependence and
obedience, we let Him do it.
This is what it means to walk by faith, in the Spirit, and this is what satisfies God. Some
mechanical conformity to religious demands that squeezes you into a religious strait-jacket can
never satisfy God. What satisfies Him is to see you, in every situation, bowing yourself out and
bowing Him in, and saying, “God, I believe exactly what You have told me. Without You I am
nothing, have nothing, and can do nothing, for the only way I can please You is by faith. I let
You do it. Thank You!”

Then life becomes a miracle.

Without having seen Him, you love Him; though you do not even now see Him,
you believe in Him, and exult and thrill with inexpressible and glorious
(triumphant, heavenly) joy.
1 PETER 1:8, AMP

Questions (W. Ian Thomas):

 How are you inviting and invoking Christ’s activity in your life by faith?
What does this mean practically?
 How are you seeing that your life is a miracle, as you please God by faith?

Questions (Ney):
 Why is it important that we are free to choose or not choose God?
 Contemplate the freedom God has given us. Can we truly choose
anything?
 What is God most interested in: is it in WHAT we do or in HOW we do it?
 What is the Threefold Moral Relationship to God?