Engrafted by faith

When Peter tells Christ in John 13, "Thou shalt never wash my feet," verse 8 says, "Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."

Jordan explains, “His disciples are clean but now Jesus Christ is going to wash their feet. That’s that experiential, continual kind of cleansing. That’s where people get the idea of keeping ‘short accounts’ and keeping a right walk with Him all along the way.

“The Word is what’s going to cleanse them and it’s the Word that gives them the total permanent cleansing, and they take that cleansing that is theirs in totality and bring it into their experience. That’s why He says, ‘Abide in me.’

“Abiding is, ‘You’re in me, now remain in that position, that identity, that fellowship, that understanding and truth. Don’t go out here and try to do it yourself.’ He’ll tell them in a minute that, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’

“Again, the old covenant is ‘you do it,’ and the new covenant is ‘I’ll do it for you.’ It is the Word that cleanses us.

“In Psalm 119:9, David says, ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.’

“James 1:21 says, ‘Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.’

“Don’t you like the way the Bible talks? You might not understand what it says but it sounds good, doesn’t it? See the word ‘fluity’ in there? Superfluity is something that’s overflowing.

“Saying you’re naughty is sort of the British understatement way of saying things. The King’s English has a way of understating the obvious so that you don’t have to overstate it.

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“That’s a great expression—‘the engrafted word.’ You have God’s work grafted into your soul, he tells these folks. A graft is a living kind of thing. In horticulture, you can make a graft, cut a slit into a trunk, graft in a cutting from another tree, bind it up and cause it to grow. It’s a thing about putting life into something.

“Hebrews 4 says, 1] Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
[2] For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

“Again, this is the same kind of context we’re going to find in John 15 where there’s this fruit you have to bear.

“If the Word’s going to profit you, you don’t just hear it and know it. It has to be mixed with faith. In other words, you have to believe it. And when you believe it, it gets engrafted by faith into your soul. There’s a spiritual transaction where that Word literally gets implanted into your inner man.

“So when he says ‘receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your soul,’ in James what it’s saving their soul from is the false religious system that’s come to deceive them.

“James 1 says, [22] But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
[23] For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
[24] For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
[25] But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

“If they are only hearers of the word, and no doers, one of the reason for that admonishment is the Word gives them something to do! If you don’t do what God’s Word says to do, then did you believe it? No. If you believed it, it became a part of your inner man and you’re naturally going to bear the fruit that it discusses.

“The mirror’s just a reflection of who you are and that’s just what the law was. It reflects back to you who you are, and he that beholdeth himself and goeth his way, you look into the mirror, you see who you are and then you just go away and it doesn’t bother you at all. You forget what’s there.”