Please help me to understand what "the word of faith" means. Ever since I was a little boy that word has puzzled me.
W. R. The expression occurs in Rom. 10:8: "But 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." The expression also occurs in the plural in 1 Tim. 4:6: "Nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine." "The word of faith" means, first of all, that on which faith can be based; it is God's Word. So it is on God's part. All God's words are words of faith; that is, they are words upon which we can base faith and rest. On our part, it is God's Word received by faith; and received by faith it becomes nigh us, even in our mouth and in our heart. That is the Word which Paul says he preached. That is to say, he did not preach a mere ethical religion, he did not give them a mere code of precepts, he did not tell them the cold duty which they were to do. What he did do was to present before them the Word which faith could appropriate, which faith could receive, and which would become in them power and life. So the Thessalonians received it, and therefore Paul said to them, "For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." Therefore "the word of faith" is that upon which we can base our faith and not be disappointed, and which received in our heart will work out for us all that the Word demands. God's commandments received in that way become enabling acts, furnishing us the very power to do them through Christ. We read of the word of promise, Rom. 9:9 — that is, it is a word which contains God's promise, and a word which received makes God's promise effectual in the soul which receives it. Our inquirer asks also, "Is there a difference between faith and belief?" There is. "Belief" is used sometimes in the strong sense of faith, but "faith" means more than mere belief. For instance, there is one God, and there are thousands that believe that; the devils believe it, and tremble at the thought of it, but they do not have faith in Him. They have not had that experience with Him that will lead them to leave all to Him and take all from Him that He has to give. That is what faith does. Faith yields all to God, and faith accepts God's Word for all that it is to us, all that God desires that it shall be to us. For instance, that Word tells each man that he is a sinner; and the soul that receives it by faith says, "Amen; so it is, Lord; I am a sinner." The Word says, "Thou art worthy of death." The soul says, "Even so; I am worthy to die, and there is no hope for me in myself." But the same Word that condemns the sinner, and declares that he is worthy to die, says also that there is hope in Jesus Christ; there is in Him forgiveness of the sin; and there is in Him life to redeem from death; there is in Him righteousness for the sin, life for the death. And the same faith says, "Even so, Lord; I accept it," and faith makes it real. Faith grasps it as a fact. There may be feeling, or no feeling; that has nothing to do with it. Feeling will come, however, when the soul yields to God, as the fruit of faith. But faith may be exercised when there is no feeling at all; and that, above all other times, is the time to exercise faith. Faith, too, is based not on our conception of God, but on God's Word. It is not based on what we think God's Word is; it is not based on what men think God's Word is; but it is based on the Word of God itself. And when faith is, and when faith grasps that Word, when we ask and do according to God's will, we have all the will of God in that word of faith to do all that He asks; and if that will says, "Remove the mountain," it will remove the mountain; and if the will says, "Open the Red Sea," it will open the Red Sea. But we can not trade on that word of faith; we can not say, "I will do that so that people will see what I can do." That is another thing. We have heard of the old lady who had a hill that annoyed her near her house, and she prayed and prayed that the Lord would remove that hill. But in the morning the hill was there, and she remarked that it was just as she expected. In the first place, it was not the Lord's will to remove that hill, and she had no word regarding it. In the second place, she did not really expect what she was praying for, after all. Now there are things just as great as the removal of a hill or a mountain, things that are even more impossible to us than the removal of a mountain; for a man in a lifetime, and sometimes in a good deal less than a lifetime, might remove a mountain by the physical help of others, and by the various means which men have nowadays in the way of explosives, steam machinery, and electricity. But there is one thing that men never can remove, and that is sin. Man can not cleanse his own heart; he can not make pure the tremendous, great fountain of sin, can not remove the traces of original sin that are in him. But the Lord Jesus Christ can do all this, and will do it by the reception of His Word, which becomes to us a word of faith.