The Word is Nigh

Romans 10   
 ⁶But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh in this manner: “Say not in thine heart, `Who shall ascend into Heaven?'” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) <sup>7</sup>or, “`Who shall descend into the deep?'” (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead).   
 ⁸But what saith it? “The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart,” that is, the word of faith which we preach:  ⁹that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
 ¹⁰For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

In reading Romans 10 recently, I was struck by the verses above, particularly 6 and 7. There was a time, near the end of my hyper-Charismatic involvement, that I came to sense we were nothing more than the prophets of Baal loudly working ourselves into a frenzy in order to bring our God down from heaven to take the action we desired.

As I write this, I recall that raspy voice from some CD shouting “Show us your glory!” That was a constant cry: We wanted to see the glory of the Lord. Why, I’m not sure. I suppose so that God would just take over everything and make life good for us. If nothing else, it would be exciting.

Paul is teaching that we don’t have to look up or down, not to the past or to the heavens, and certainly not to any mystical super-spiritual experience. We have what we need here and now, inside of us, if the word of God i.e. Christ is dwelling in us.

God dwells on high, but for the Christ follower in faith, He is also near, “even in thy mouth and in thy heart,” Paul writes.

Verse 7 talks about descending into the deep, bringing “Christ up from the dead.” We do this when we worship the saints and ancestors of the past. We exalt their gifts and divide Christ’s body by their names. I go to a Mennonite church which gets its name from Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest who joined the Anabaptists in the 1500s. You may be a Calvinist, following John Calvin’s teachings, or a Lutheran. It goes on and on.

But it goes beyond this. Today, there are some who cast themselves as modern day carriers of ancient mantles. Todd Bentley was linked with William Branham. Some actively seek the “gifts” supposedly possessed by the dead. A Google search will reveal photos of some ministry school student laying hands on the graves of departed evangelists, even the graves of their wives, to “soak up the anointing.”

Shall we bring Christ up from the dead? Clearly, Christ is not dead. He rose from the grave and is seated at the right hand of the Father, very much alive and living in each believer as we submit to His will and ways.

The problem with grasping on high or digging the deep for God is a very ancient one. It is a belief—a form of Gnosticism—that you need certain mystical knowledge released only to the select in order to attain or know God. That is why I, in my ignorance, ran to conferences to listen to this man or woman and have them lay hands on me and prophesy to me. I saw them as above me. I had fallen for a heresy, something quite easy to do when you are listening to teaching CDs and reading the books of the “Great Ones” instead of reading the Bible.

The Bible teaches that God richly dwells in each of His true followers. The same God dwells in me as dwells in Billy Graham. I do not have to go to Graham’s house and ask him to anoint me. I do not have to kneel at his grave someday when he is released to glory and soak up his anointing.

If ever you see Christ show up in a difficult and trying time, you will never be satisfied with a counterfeit. He is not a god who can be pulled from the pie in the sky. He does not dwell in the grave. He is within you, living, renewing, shaping, creating one great miracle after another—that is the transformation of the sinful self-centered man and woman into the glorious likeness of the living God our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

 

   
 

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