Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Eternal life is promised to everyone who "believes" in Jesus: "If anyone keeps My word He shall never see death," He said (John 8:51). "He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life" (5:24).
But what does it mean to "believe" in Him? The Bible warns us of a massive counterfeit of "believing" in these last days (Matt. 24:23, 24, for example).
Genuine believing has to do with the Father giving His Son for the world: "God so loved the world that He gave ..." (John 3:16), not lent Him. That means a totality of giving and an eternity in its duration. It also means an appreciation of His dying for us because the only way we can "believe" is by seeing Him "lifted up" as Moses "lifted up" a snake on a pole "in the wilderness" (vss. 14, 15).
That directs us to the kind of death that Jesus died--on a cross (12:32, 33). Therefore, "believing" in Jesus means a heart-appreciation of the Father's giving Him and of Christ's giving Himself in dying for us our "second death" which we had earned for ourselves (cf. Heb. 2:9, Rev. 2:11).
Such "believing" transforms the believer. It is a genuine new birth because the love of self is "crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). Genuine believing in Jesus means therefore that there is a well of "rivers of living water" springing up from within the depths of the heart of every true "believer" in Him (John 7:37, 38). That's what it means to believe in Jesus! You are a channel through which that "water of life" flows to thirsty people.
We must ask seriously, Do I truly "believe" in Him? Lord, help my unbelief!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 23, 2005.
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