Take Possession Collectively

What we today need is none other than the exercising of faith towards the promises God has given us. Draw out by faith what God has provided us in the Lord Jesus. In order to possess and enjoy the inheritance, he who would inherit must take two steps: one, he must believe that there is such an inheritance; and two, he must singularly arise to take possession of this inheritance. Disbelieving this inheritance will automatically check him from taking possession of it. Consequently, we must first of all confess that God has indeed made Christ to be "unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor. 1.30 mg.). Whatsoever the Lord Jesus has accomplished and conquered is our success and is our victory. If we lack in this kind of faith, we not only will be forever deprived of the hope of spiritual experience, but we also will actually offend God inasmuch as we doubt His work. Moreover, we can easily notice that those of the world manage their properties with their fleshly strength. But we must manage our spiritual inheritance with spiritual strength and power—which for us is faith. We must take the step of exercising our faith to appropriate our inheritance in the Lord Jesus, using it and managing it as though this spiritual property were ours.

There is another example in the Scriptures that can serve to illustrate the relationship of fact, faith and experience which we are at present discussing, and this is found in the Old Testament. It is that part of Biblical history which concerns itself with the entering into Canaan of the children of Israel. In the ancient days God had promised to give the land of Canaan to the children of Israel. He had personally spoken to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and to the tens of thousands of the people who came out of Egypt. So far as God was concerned, He had given the land. He had promised to fight for them and cause them to conquer all their foes. That God had given the land and inhabitants to the children of Israel was already a fact. But though there was fact, there was not yet the experience. Though this land was theirs in fact, they nevertheless had not possessed an inch of the land in their experience. It was therefore necessary that they should "go up at once, and possess it" since they were "well able to overcome it" (Num. 13.30). Due to their lack of faith, however, they did not possess the land (experience) even though God had already given it to them (fact). A generation passed away, and then God said to Joshua, "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it, as I spake unto Moses" (Joshua 1.3). They needed to possess the land God had promised them by their treading upon it with the soles of their feet. And these who were of the next generation did indeed go up, and they possessed it.

This teaches us the secret of experiencing the perfection of Christ. God has already given us all that Christ is and has and does. All which is His is ours. Now it is for us to experience all of His. Yet for this to become our experience there is no other way but to confess that Canaan is good and by faith to tread with the sole of our foot upon every inch of the land and to possess it. God gives, we believe, and then we possess. Fact—faith—experience.