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According to our study and observation, we feel that we still need to prepare a set of materials for the perfecting of the home meetings. This set of materials will be specifically for the new believers in the first year of their Christian life. It should be not only concise but also practical. We hope to help the new ones to get into Life Lessons immediately after they are baptized. We believe that they will be perfected in many ways by the supply in these materials, and they will be helped to receive the various truths in the Bible.
On the one hand, a person who serves the Lord should have outward activities and work, but on the other hand, he should never forget that all work must come from the inner life. Without life, all work is empty and vain. Only life is the content and reality of our work. Therefore, we must work for God and bear fruit, and on the other hand, we must be witnesses of the Lord’s life. Apparently, to be a witness does not have much to do with life, but in actuality, to be a witness is to bear witness for life. Being a witness is not a work but a testimony of life.
As we all know, the Gospels speak of a person, Jesus Christ. After passing through death and resurrection, this person wrought Himself into those who believed into Him. Those whom we see at the end of the Gospels, the ones who followed the Lord Jesus for three and a half years, were the ones into whom the Lord entered after His death and resurrection. The end of the Gospel of John tells us that the Lord Jesus, after passing through death and resurrection, came into the midst of these disciples. No one can understand the way He came. At that time the disciples were in a room with closed doors and windows, yet He entered with a resurrected body. He was able to do this only because He was the Spirit. However, we should not say that He was only the Spirit, because He came also with a resurrected body. He entered into the closed room with a resurrected body, came into the midst of the disciples, and breathed into them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). From that day on, He breathed Himself into them. In this way He and the disciples became one. This is a wonderful matter.
From its beginning, the Gospel of John tells us that the Lord Jesus is God, He is the Word of God, and He became flesh and lived on the earth. After this He went to the cross to be crucified, and He was resurrected. In His resurrection He became the wonderful One. We can say that this wonderful One is God, but He is also a man. We can say that He is a man, but He has a body not of the old creation but of the new creation and of resurrection. We cannot clearly explain how He was able to come in and out of a room with the doors and windows shut. He could show His body to the disciples, yet He was a Spirit. This is indeed wonderful. We cannot understand this with our human mentality. There are many things in the universe that we do not understand and cannot explain to others. Among them the most wonderful thing is the resurrected Jesus. We cannot say that He is not physical, because He has a body that the disciples could touch, with the mark of the nails and the wound from the spear in His side. He was physical and could be touched, yet He freely went in and out of a room that was closed, and He even breathed Himself into those who believed into Him. These things are difficult for anyone to understand, yet they are recorded in the Bible.
These wonderful things happened at the end of the Gospel of John. After that, the book of Acts begins. Acts records how the Christ who passed through death and resurrection and entered into the disciples lived and moved with the disciples for a period of forty days. Sometimes He was hidden, and sometimes He appeared to them. He came and left, left and came again. In reality, however, He did not come and leave. Rather, He appeared and hid Himself, then hid Himself and appeared again. He was omnipresent. Sometimes He appeared, but sometimes He was hidden. He appeared in the upper room, and He also appeared outside the room. However, after people saw Him in His appearing, He became hidden again. This was to prove that this Christ who died and resurrected had already entered into His disciples in His resurrection. He was already in the disciples, but from the disciples’ point of view, He was sometimes visible and sometimes invisible; sometimes they could feel Him, but other times they could not feel anything. He was indeed a wonderful One, for He is the Spirit and the reality.
Today the Lord is the same to us. This is hard for us to explain, but it is a fact that He is in us. Sometimes we sense His coming, and sometimes we sense His leaving. Sometimes we feel that He is here, and sometimes we feel that He is not here. This is our inner story, and we all have this experience.
In Acts 1 the disciples who personally observed the Lord’s death and resurrection immediately became witnesses of the Lord. Verse 8 says, “You shall be My witnesses...unto the uttermost part of the earth.” By this we see that the Lord Jesus wanted the disciples to go out not to do a work but to be a certain kind of person. What kind of person should they be? They should be witnesses of Christ. To be a witness is not to go to court to testify of things you have seen and heard or to give details of a particular story. Rather, to be a witness means that the person for whom you are witnessing has become you and that you have become Him. Your going is His going; your being there is His being there. You are there to be His witness.
It is not easy for Christians to understand the Bible, and it is even harder to comprehend spiritual things. In the matter of being the Lord’s witnesses, we often like to say, “We need to witness for the Lord.” This saying is not accurate. As witnesses of the Lord, we often think that we need to give a good testimony for Him, testifying to people how lovely, real, reliable, and powerful our Savior is. However, such an understanding is not proper. Today we are the Lord’s witnesses, testifying nothing other than the Lord’s death and resurrection.
In fact, a witness of the Lord is one who has died and resurrected. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, every day He lived a life of death and resurrection. He said, “The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works” (John 14:10b). In other words, the Lord did not speak from Himself but from the Father. This means that the Father spoke His word through the Lord. This is the meaning of death and resurrection. To experience genuine death and resurrection means that a person lives not by himself but by putting himself aside. In other words, he puts himself to death. As the Lord put Himself to death, the One who was in Him was lived out. It is the same with us. Only when we put ourselves to death can the Lord Jesus be lived out from us.
The two — the Lord and the Father — are one. The Lord said that He was in the Father, and the Father was in Him (v. 10a). His speaking was the Father’s working in Him. His speaking was not His own, but He spoke what the Father spoke. When He spoke, it was the Father who was speaking in Him. Therefore, He and the Father not only lived one living, but they also lived by one life; the two were one. This is very hard to explain, but it is the same with us today. The Lord and we, we and He, are living one living and are living by one life. Therefore, we can say that it is no longer I but Christ (Gal. 2:20). This is the meaning of death and resurrection. It is no longer we. Our old man has died. Now it is Christ who lives in us. He and we, the two, are just one.
The Lord Jesus never acted alone in the Gospels. He said that the Father never left Him, but the Father was with Him all the time (John 8:29). He never spoke by Himself, worked by Himself, or acted by Himself. All His moving was one with the Father. His move was the Father’s move, and His speaking was the Father’s speaking. All that He did was the expression of the Father, so the two were one. The Lord Himself always stood in death, and once He stood in death, the Father was able to live out from within Him.
When the Lord Jesus began His ministry, the first thing He did was to be baptized. Baptism denotes death and burial. Through baptism the Lord Jesus proclaimed to man that He needed to die and be buried. He came out to work not by Himself but by the Father. Therefore, He needed to die and be buried and let the Father live in Him. From that day onward, these two — the Father and the Son — were one life and had one living. The man Jesus Christ lived a life of dying, and God the Father lived out from Him. This was the Lord’s living of death and resurrection. He did not wait until His crucifixion to pass through death and resurrection. In fact, He died and resurrected daily while He was living on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. In principle, He always said, “My Father,...not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26:39). Not as I will implies that the Lord was dying; but as You will denotes that the Father was lived out. This is the meaning of death and resurrection.
We who serve the Lord today, either to go out to knock on doors or to perfect the home meetings, must see the truth expressed as, “I have died, and it is Christ who lives in me.” Paul says that we who serve the Lord die daily so that we may no longer live to ourselves but to Him who died for us and has been raised (2 Cor. 5:15). This means that we die, and He lives. This is death and resurrection. This is not an exchange of two persons, an exchanged life. Rather, this is the joining of two lives, as in grafting. To graft a branch into a tree is to join the two lives together. One is eliminated, and the other one is lived out. The result is that the two lives join together as one life.
If we pay too much attention to the number of people and to the outward activities in the church life, I am afraid that we will all become “athletes” who know only how to run a race; that is, that we will have only physical activities without functioning in spirit. If this continues, we will all become like robots, moving when the machinery moves and not moving when it stops. We may pray for twenty minutes before going out for door-knocking, and our prayers may be thorough. Moreover, we may truly be filled in our prayer and have the feeling that the Spirit is with us in our going. In spite of this, what worries me the most is that the Spirit is with us only at the time we pray. When we go out to knock on doors, our going may become a mere activity.
We must remember that we are not the ones who cause people to receive life. We may baptize people, but we cannot give them life. We must learn that it is no longer I but Christ. It is not I who goes door-knocking, who speaks, and who baptizes people, but it is Christ. Everything is Christ. We must use our spirit and exercise the life and faith within us, declaring to God and to all the enemies in the universe, “It is not I who goes door-knocking, but it is Christ who goes. It is not I who speaks to people, but it is Christ who speaks. It is not I who causes people to believe, but it is Christ who does it. It is not even I who baptizes people, but it is Christ who baptizes them.” If we have such an attitude, such a spirit, such a life, and such a faith, we will live a life that is always dependent on Him.
Depending on Him in this way moment by moment is our abiding in the Lord. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He abode in the Father day by day. He was never detached from the Father. His move was the Father’s move, and His speaking was the Father’s speaking. Today as we are serving the Lord, we must exercise to the extent that our going is the Lord’s going, and our move is the Lord’s move. At that time we will realize that we are not alone. Instead, it is the Lord and we together, two spirits joining as one spirit and two lives joining as one life. Although our body acts, visits people, goes door-knocking, and baptizes people, our spirit is joined to the Lord as one spirit.
We need to exercise to be joined to the Lord as one spirit and pray all the time, “O Lord, I have no way to impart life into others, but this is what You can do and should do. Lord, I rely on You in doing this. You and I have become one spirit. As I am here baptizing people, it is Your Spirit who baptizes people into the Triune God. Lord, I can only put a man into a bathtub and immerse him in water, but I have no way to baptize him into the Triune God. Only Your Spirit can do this. Thank You, Lord, that You and I have become one spirit. Whenever I am moving here, it is You who moves.” This is the faith that we should exercise to have.
We also need to walk according to the spirit. Although we have received some training, we still need to follow the spirit when we go out. Sometimes we think that we should do something in a certain way, but the spirit within us directs us in a different way. We must follow the spirit immediately and walk according to the spirit. In this way, everything we do will have the spirit as its base and life as its content.
According to our observation, there is the danger that when we go door-knocking to lead people to salvation and baptize them, what we do may become “mechanical.” This may be due to the fact that our spirit is not strong enough and that we do not want to exercise our spirit. Due to the training that we have received in the past, we have become very experienced in door-knocking and baptizing people, even to the extent that our wealth of experience has become a mechanical method. The result is that there is not much life and spirit in what we do.
Consider our practice of baptism. I believe that many of us have the feeling that when we go door-knocking and baptize people, our way is sometimes too careless. We do not take this matter seriously, nor do we impress people deeply with baptism. Baptism is a matter that concerns man’s coming out of death and entering into life, coming out of the world and entering into God’s kingdom, and coming out of the self and entering into the Triune God. Hence, it is a very serious matter.
We need to see that going out to baptize people is a great matter. If we had other options, we would prefer not to baptize anyone in a bathtub but in a pool or a stream. Nevertheless, we must still take it seriously and give the baptized ones the feeling that this is a very important matter, a matter that concerns their being delivered from perdition to salvation and their coming out of death and entering into life. This is a life-changing matter — they are coming out of themselves and entering into the Triune God — and we should give people this feeling. If we baptize them in a loose manner, giving them a poor feeling, they will avoid us on our next visit.
If there are any special needs that arise from our door-knocking, we should have fellowship right away so that the situation can be studied without delay. For example, some young people accepted the gospel and were baptized while their parents were not at home. Then their parents returned home, and they were forced to give up the gospel. When we next visited them, their parents refused to let them open the door. This is understandable, and we were forced to accept their decision. Another situation arose when a husband was not home during our visit. The wife believed in the Lord and was baptized, but when her husband returned home, he annulled her faith. When we visited them again, she kept the door shut. This also is understandable, and we were forced to accept it. In a third kind of situation, we baptized certain ones, but afterward some from Christianity contacted them and led them away before our next visit. This situation is also understandable, although not entirely acceptable, because it shows that we did not adequately protect and care for the new ones. A newborn baby needs to be protected the moment he comes out of his mother’s womb. If we protect him, he will survive; if we do not protect him, he will die. What happened with these new ones is yet another kind of situation in which people do not like to see us, lose confidence in us and respect for us, and reject us due to our improper approach. We need to be greatly adjusted in these matters.
Because we have never taken the new way before, we need to study it as we go on. We can compare this to following a car. If the car in front comes across a problem on the road, it can report the road conditions to the cars behind. Then they can consider what to do. In the same way, when we go to knock on doors, baptize others, or perfect the home meetings, we should follow the principle that we fellowship immediately whenever we discover a difficulty. Then we can discuss the way to deal with the problem in a proper manner. If we do not have fellowship when we discover difficulties, but instead discuss them in private, we are simply gossiping, which is neither appropriate nor proper.
I hope that from now on we will be particularly alert when we go out to baptize people. We must never be careless or casual. Instead, we must be very serious. We should never act rashly in order to save time. We should rather spend a little more time and baptize them in a respectable and serious manner. Even though a person may be baptized in a bathtub, our attitude must still be serious. We should fill the tub in a proper manner, accompany him to prepare and change clothes in a proper manner, and have clear fellowship with him to help him to realize that he has been saved. If we do this in a serious manner, the newly saved one will have a deep impression about his baptism. He too will respect it and be serious about it.
We should tell those who are being baptized that baptism is a very significant matter. It is the reality of coming out of death into life, coming out of darkness into light, and being saved from Satan’s hand and entering into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love. From then on they will be in the grace of God, enjoying God’s full salvation. This kind of speaking will edify them and give them a serious feeling toward baptism. At the same time we need to explain to them the significance of water in baptism so that they can understand its meaning. We should believe that when we are serious, our words will certainly be of the spirit, having reality and power to impress people. When people are baptized in this way, they will have this impression: “I am a different person now. I have come out of death and entered into life, and I have been delivered from Satan and entered into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.” In this way it will not be easy for other people to damage them. Parents may obstruct and husbands may restrict, but within the ones whom we contact there will be a clear realization that they have been baptized and that a reality has entered into them. This is something that they will never be able to forget for the rest of their lives.
We must pay special attention to a particular matter. If there is no bathtub in a person’s home, we should never simply sprinkle him with water. This way is too careless and casual. We would rather not baptize him at that moment but make an appointment with him for another time at another place in order to baptize him in a serious manner. We should never be careless about baptism, lest people have a dubious impression of us. These are areas in which we should be careful and cautious.
Regardless of whether we knock on doors to baptize people or go to perfect a home meeting, we should act and move in the principle of death and resurrection, living in the spirit and following the spirit. We need to leave people with the impression that these matters are very significant and serious.
Question: Can we affect someone’s thought about baptism by speaking more to him about it?
Answer: With whatever organ you speak to people, that organ in others will be touched. If you speak to people with your spirit, you will touch their spirit. If you speak to them with your mind, you will touch their mind. Moreover, if you speak to them with a suspicious, analytical, and argumentative tone, you will stir up a debate. It all depends on you. We must exercise our spirit and learn to speak in the spirit, telling people, “Dear friends, this is a great matter. This is the day that you can ‘walk out of hell.’” When we speak in this way, the Spirit will work in them. We may ask them in the mind, “Do you know that today is the day that you are walking out of hell?” Then they will answer, “No, I don’t.” Hence, it matters how we speak. We must speak from our spirit and give others the feeling that our speaking is in the attitude of the spirit, the tone of the spirit, and is not merely from our mind. We should realize that the attitude and the tone of our mind only stir up debate.
We must never baptize people in a loose manner. This is improper. We should not care about the number of people we baptize each day. This does not depend on what we think; rather, it depends on the work of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit saves one person, we will baptize one. If He saves ten people, we will baptize ten. How many will be baptized is not up to us. Rather, it is up to the Holy Spirit and the cooperation of the environment.
With regard to idol worship, we must have a time of clear fellowship with the newly saved ones that since they have believed in the Lord, they should forsake all the idols. If they do not forsake the idols, the Lord cannot accept them. We cannot baptize those who are not willing to reject the idols. If they say that they want to reject the idols, we should help them to smash them. The idols must be done away with. However, we do not necessarily need to resolve matters such as smoking and drinking right away, because both smoking and drinking are a kind of habit. To deal with these requires the newly saved ones to overcome by the Lord’s life after their baptism. Idols, however, need to be dealt with right away.
