Genesis 17:

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty (El-Shaddai – margin), walk before me and be blameless…”

 

Abram was called to be God’s friend long time ago. But he fully obeyed when he turned seventy-five, following the death of his father, Teran, with whom he lived in a city established and built by his brother, the city of Haran. He was graciously loved by God and became a recipient of God’s rare revelation of Himself to mankind.

He’s now ninety-nine years old, childless, with no heir apparent, the highest peak of human pride. Abram craves a biological son who will inherit his achievements of wealth, material, splendid name and glory. But it is evident that the Lord God Almighty has another plan, plan of redemption, the redemption of mankind.

Of immediate concern in this meditation is Walking in the the Confession of Faith. Faith here denotes complete learning of the heart on the spoken word of God and discerning His heart to live it out on earth. This is God Almighty living and expressing His own life on earth through us. The earth is a place of expression of nature or character, especially the nature that is divine. Which is why demons, long sojourned on earth even before the coming of man, always aspire to invade and possess man in order to express their nature through him.

Abram is undergoing salvation process which is both being physically and spiritualily saved from harm. Salvation is living for God; it is God. It is however first spiritual before being physical. The vehicle of salvation is faith; it is a spiritual thing and is more real than the physical. It’s living out the moral excellence of the unseen God by faith; it’s identifying and merging into His eternal essence and righteousness which the natural man cannot attain to.

God Almighty says to Abram in this other appearance, “….walk before me and be blameless.” The word be blameless in the NIV bible is translated as be perfect in KJV. The Lord Jesus in his message on the mountain said to his audience, Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Mathew 5:48). When God said that Abram should walk before Him and be perfect, He also implied this: I’m perfect; let me live my life through and in you. I’m your perfection. 

Believers in Christ are spiritually motivated to live for God by faith, and this is their perfection. It’s easy for none believers to live here according to the pulling of their natural instinct, their flesh or sinful nature but not so those who, because they are one with God, who walk or have learnt to walk in the spirit by faith. For this latter group, it’s their pursuit to distinguish the pull of the flesh from that of the Spirit of God and to live contrary to the pull of the sinful nature or flesh. So I say live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you don’t do what you want (Galatians 5:16-17).

Be perfect. God says to Abram to be perfect, to be upright and to be the vessel through which He can make Himself seen on earth. This is living by the Spirit. Live by and as the Spirit.This is a tall order as no man since creation to the present, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, has been able to fully live in and by the Spirit even as man; not even the Bible designated righteous ones. True righteousness is reckoned or credited to man because of his faith in God. ….We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness (Romans 4:9). This is the walk of Abram by faith. He, having received a promise of becoming a father of many nations from God, refuses to waver or be discouraged when after more than twenty years there is no evidence that this promise will come to fulfilment. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations…. without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he didn’t waver through unbelieve regarding the promise of God but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why it is credited to him as righteousness (Romans 4:18-23. This is my walking the Confession of my faith: I’ll continue to believe God’s promises and plans in the face of hopelessness; I’ll not consider impossibility as a reality; I’ll express the strength of my faith by giving glory to God. 

Believers in Christ have entered the estate of God’s righteousness by faith in Him. It’s not by work but by faith, and even this faith is not from the individual but is ministered to him by the Holy Spirit. I’m aware that this is what is called grace, a favour unmerited. Pa Austin Spark says of grace:

grace is not by works 

But grace works.

It is my life of faith therefore to live as God will live in me in the Lord Jesus Christ in whom I have been made the righteousness of God. The life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself to me. I concede the fact that I’m continually besetted by the sinful nature. But I must walk in my confession of what God has accomplished for me in Christ. Am I tempted to do away with my faith? But rather, I’ll tell myself to look up to the Lord. Am I tempted to steal? I must consciously resist and tell myself that I am a new creature in Christ. Am I being drawn away by the lost of flesh? I must remind myself that He that is in me, greater than he that is in the world, doesn’t indulge in the lost of the flesh. Is my life being drawn to sin, the very principle of the other nature, I confess that sin must not be my master because I’m not under law but under grace; sin cannot lord it over me for I’m of heaven and not from below…. This is how I daily walk the confession of my faith

Thank You Lord for this