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Scripture Reading: John 1:1, 14, 16
The way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit — the aggregate of the all-embracing blessing of the full gospel of God — comprises at least twenty-five items in the Gospel of John. In this chapter we will cover the first thirteen items.
Most Christians are very familiar with the Gospel of John. After I was saved, I spent time in the Gospel of John and discovered that there were many things in it that were difficult to understand. I had many questions that could not be answered even by the Christian workers, such as, What is the Word (1:1)? What is regeneration (3:6)? and What is eternal life (3:16)? The Gospel of John may be very familiar to us, but we should not consider that it is a shallow or superficial book. It is a book that is full of depth. Therefore, we need to “dive” into these depths and “mine” the treasures in the depths of this book.
The apostle John uses very simple words and language in his Gospel. This is a strong characteristic of his writings. The language he uses is simple, but the matters conveyed by his words are very profound. Because many things in the Gospel of John are quite deep, few have spent the time to dig out the things in this Gospel. Thank the Lord that through the years, by reading their books, we have received help from others. The Bible has been read again and again throughout the past twenty centuries by millions of Christians. We are standing on the shoulders of all the foregoing saints. I am grateful to the Lord that the top understanding of those in the past was preserved in their books. Today, because of their writings we are able to know what the brothers in earlier years understood.
The first way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit in the Gospel of John is by receiving Christ as the Son of God through believing into Him, to be born of God (1:12-13).
In 1964 I was invited to speak to an independent Bible church in the city of Las Vegas. While I was there, I spoke on man’s heart and spirit. I said that God created man with a heart to love Him and a spirit to receive Him. I said that man can receive God by means of his spirit and that he can love God with his heart. During my visit I stayed in the home of one of the leaders of the congregation. I found out that the wife of that brother was very bothered about my speaking concerning the difference between the heart and the spirit. To her realization the two were the same. She felt that I had gone too far in differentiating between the heart and the spirit. The next morning she served us breakfast. As she was coming with the eggs, I said, “Sister, give me an egg.” As she gave me an egg, I said again, “Sister, give me an egg.” At this, she said, “Brother Lee, here it is.” I said, “I surely would love to have an egg.” As I said this, I kept my hands off the egg. At first, she did not understand what I was demonstrating. Then I said, “Sister, I would like to show you the difference between receiving and loving. You cannot receive the egg with your heart, and you cannot love the egg with your hands. To love the egg, you must use your heart, but to receive the egg, you must use your hands. God created us with a heart so that we can love Him. But just as I cannot receive the egg without hands, I cannot receive God without a receiving organ. This is why God created a spirit within man as well as a heart.” After this brief explanation the sister received a complete understanding and was very happy.
The word receive is used in a strong way in the Gospel of John. John 1:14 and 16 say, “The Word became flesh...full of grace and reality...For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” Many Christians know that the word believe is used many times in the Gospel of John, but few know that the word receive is also used very strongly in this Gospel. John 1:12-13 says, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Verse 12 speaks first of receiving the Son of God; then it speaks of believing into the Son of God. Thus, to receive Christ is to believe into Christ. When we believe into Christ, we receive Christ and thus gain Him.
The purpose of believing into Christ is to be born of God. Before regeneration we were created by God but were not born of Him. We were His creatures, but we were not His children. John 1:12-13 says that those who receive the Son of God through their believing into Him are born of God to be children of God. How wonderful that we fallen, sinful human beings can be born of God to be His children! When the Lord Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about his need to be born anew (3:3), Nicodemus misunderstood the Lord’s word to mean that he needed to go back to his mother’s womb and be born again physically. However, his need was to receive Christ as the Son of God through believing into Him so that he could be born of God to be a child of God.
To receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, we must take Him as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (1:29, 36). Christ’s being the Lamb of God is one of the deep items in the Gospel of John. The Lamb of God, no doubt, is Jesus, yet He is certainly not a lamb with four legs and a tail. Jesus was called the Lamb of God because in the eyes of God He was the sacrifice, the offering, for the sin of the world. The world here is a composition of the people of the world. The people who constitute the world are sinful, and the world as the composition of these people also is sinful. According to Isaiah 53:7, Christ was led like a lamb to the slaughter. All the people who dealt with Him at the time of His crucifixion led Him like a lamb to the cross, the place of slaughter. On the cross God collected all our sins and put the totality of sin upon Him. Thus, in the eyes of God, He became the Lamb of God. Through His death He took away the sin of the world. When we believe into Christ as the Lamb of God, we gain Christ. This is the basic way to take Christ and to enjoy Him.
To receive, experience, and enjoy Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit, we must follow Christ as the Messiah (John 1:37, 40-41, 43-45). The word Messiah in Hebrew is the equivalent of the word Christ in Greek. Christ means “the anointed One,” and the anointed One is also the appointed One. We must follow the One who has been appointed and anointed by God to be the Executor of God’s economy. We need to realize that the very Jesus whom we are following is the Messiah, God’s elected One, His chosen One, the One anointed and appointed by God.
To receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, we need to be born anew of the Spirit (3:3, 5-6). John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” This verse indicates that to be born again is altogether a matter of the two spirits, God the Spirit and our spirit. We were born again not in our physical body but in our spirit, not of blood or flesh but of the Spirit of God. Our human spirit was born of God’s Spirit. To be born again is a very subjective way for us to gain Christ for our enjoyment.
The entire Gospel of John is on the enjoyment of Christ by the Spirit. Without the Spirit we do not have the way to enjoy Christ. Receiving, experiencing, and enjoying Christ are absolutely related to our spirit and the Spirit of God. Before being born again, the Spirit and our spirit were separated and far apart. But through regeneration the two spirits have been brought together as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Through this one spirit we have the way to receive, enjoy, and experience Christ.
We also receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ by receiving the Spirit from Him not by measure (John 3:34b). If the Spirit whom we receive from Christ were measurable or limited, He would not be adequate for us to enjoy. The Spirit whom we receive of Christ is without measure and is unlimited. Not only the Spirit is without measure, but the receiving of this Spirit also is without measure. Hence, the enjoyment of Christ is unlimited.
The way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ is by drinking the living water that He gives and that becomes in us a spring of water gushing up into eternal life, through worshipping God as the Spirit in our spirit (4:10, 14, 24). As we drink the living water, it becomes a spring of water within us, gushing up into eternal life. To drink the living water is to drink eternal life. According to the clear revelation of the New Testament, eternal life is God embodied in Christ and dispensed into us by the Spirit (11:25; 14:6; 16:13-15). Thus, eternal life is the Triune God Himself. We are drinking the Triune God, and our drinking is counted by God as our worship of Him.
According to John 4, to drink Christ as the living water is the genuine worship to God (vv. 10, 14, 24). The real worship of God is not to give something to Him or to kneel down before Him; the real worship of God is our enjoyment of Him by drinking Him. The more we enjoy Him, the more we worship Him. The angels may sing to God, but they do not have the capacity to receive Him. God’s real desire is to have some who will drink Him. Man was made with a capacity to receive God and to drink Him as the living water. This is the real worship of God.
In the night in which He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and having given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is given for you; this do unto the remembrance of Me” (1 Cor. 11:24). Similarly, He took the cup also and said, “This cup is the new covenant established in My blood; this do, as often as you drink it, unto the remembrance of Me” (v. 25). Our eating and drinking of Christ are our remembrance of Him, and our remembrance of the Lord is our worship to Him as the processed Triune God. Eating and drinking Christ is the way to worship Him, and it is also the way to receive, experience, and enjoy Him.
We receive, experience, and enjoy Christ also by hearing Christ’s word and believing the Father who sent Him, that we may live in our spirit and have eternal life (John 5:24a, 25). We were saved first by hearing the word of Christ concerning the Father and then by believing in the Father, who sent Christ. The Father sent Christ so that we could live in our spirit and have eternal life.
Eternal life is difficult to explain, but according to our experience, we can testify that from the day we believed into the Lord Jesus, the Triune God — the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the life-giving Spirit — entered into us. This Triune God is eternal life (14:6; 1 John 5:12; Rom. 8:2). Because the Triune God is within us, we can live in our spirit. The worldly people do not have the capacity to live in their spirit, because they do not have eternal life in their spirit. After we believed into Christ, the Triune God entered into us as the eternal life, giving us the capacity to live in our spirit. This capacity is the Triune God Himself. As we live in our spirit, we live the Triune God.
We receive, experience, and enjoy Christ also by eating Christ (taking Him as food into our spirit) and living because of Him (John 6:57). We eat Christ by taking Him as food into our spirit. To eat physical food we must take it into our stomach. Similarly, the Triune God embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit to be our spiritual food and life supply must be taken into our spirit. In this way we live because of Him.
Before I speak in the meetings, I often feel empty within. So I must have some time with the Lord by myself to look to Him, to pray to Him, and to talk to Him. Sometimes, after only five minutes I am filled. At the beginning I feel like a “flat tire,” but after a few minutes my “flat tire” is filled with “air.” At that time I have the assurance, the boldness, and the power to speak. This power is just the Spirit. We need to come to this Jesus, to this Spirit, to take Him as our spiritual food and life supply.
Another way to receive, experience, and enjoy Christ is to eat the word spoken by Christ as spirit and as life. John 6:63 says, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Christ speaks the word, the word is the Spirit, and the Spirit is life. Thus, the word, the Spirit, and life are three-in-one. The Speaker of the word is the processed Triune God, and His speaking transmits the processed Triune God into us in the form of the word. After entering into us, this word becomes the Spirit, and the Spirit is life. Then, when we utter this Spirit out to others, the Spirit becomes the word to them. When others receive the word into them, it becomes the Spirit again. Then, when they speak the Spirit out to others, He again becomes the word. Hence, when we receive the word into us, the word becomes the Spirit, and the Spirit becomes our very life. This is the transmission of the Triune God into us as our life supply, first in the form of the word, then in the form of the Spirit, and ultimately in the form of life. In this way the Triune God becomes our enjoyment.
The way to receive, experience, and enjoy Christ is also by drinking the Spirit through believing into Christ to flow rivers of living water out of our innermost being (7:37-39). The rivers of living water are the many flows of the different aspects of life (cf. Rom. 15:30; 1 Thes. 1:6; 2 Thes. 2:13; Gal. 5:22-23), originating from the one unique river of water of life (Rev. 22:1), which is God’s Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). The one river in Genesis 2:10-14 became four heads. In the same way, not just one river but many rivers flow out of our innermost being.
Another way to receive, experience, and enjoy Christ in the Gospel of John is by following Him to have the light of life and by no means walk in darkness (8:12). By following Christ, we will by no means walk in darkness. I am grateful to the Lord that I have the feeling that I am walking in the light and that I am not in darkness. A living person has light, but a dead person is altogether in darkness. An electric light may shine intensely, but a dead person will receive no light because he has no life. He will remain in darkness. However, a living person under the same light will immediately receive light because he has life.
Another way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ in the Gospel of John is by leaving the sheepfold of religion and following Christ according to His voice to enjoy the freedom of His salvation and partake of the riches of His feeding pasture (10:1-4, 9). Nearly every person on this earth has a religion. If he does not have another person’s religion, he has his own religion. A person may say that he does not have a religion and that he does not believe in God. However, such a person is his own god and is his own religion.
Every religion is a sheepfold. Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism are all sheepfolds. Judaism was the sheepfold mentioned by the Lord Jesus in John 10. In a positive sense, a sheepfold keeps and protects people, but in a negative sense, it imprisons people. For years we were imprisoned within many different sheepfolds. Even we ourselves were a prison to ourselves. Then one day we believed into the Lord Jesus and were released from our prison.
If we would receive, experience, and enjoy Christ, we must leave all the religious sheepfolds and follow Him according to His voice. In John 10:27 the Lord Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” Today we must not follow Christ according to any kind of religion, nor should we follow Him according to our own thought, which in reality is our own self-made religion. We must follow Him according to His voice. This is why we must pray to Him and listen to both His living speaking within us and the Holy Bible outside of us. We need the Holy Bible outside of us because our listening to His voice within may be inaccurate. The holy Word is our safeguard. Therefore, we must know the Bible. Today the Lord Jesus always speaks to us as the Spirit according to the Bible and through the Bible.
By leaving the sheepfold and following Christ according to His voice, we enjoy the freedom of His salvation and partake of the riches of His feeding pasture. The Lord Jesus said that we would go in and go out and find pasture (v. 9). This is freedom. Christ Himself is the rich pasture upon which we feed all the time. By feeding upon Him as the rich pasture, we enjoy Him.
In the Gospel of John we receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ by taking Him as the resurrection and the life through believing into Him to live the eternal life. In John 11:25 the Lord Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes into Me, even if he should die, shall live.” It is difficult to understand such a verse, but it is very easy to experience Christ according to this verse. If you tell the Lord, “I believe that You are the resurrection and the life,” immediately you will live the eternal life in all kinds of situations. If you repeat this prayer before having any dealings with your wife, you will live the eternal life. But if you do not pray such a prayer, you may lose your temper and be altogether in the flesh. Praying such a prayer will save you out of your flesh and transfer you into another realm, the realm of eternal life. This is not superstition or psychology. Many students of Confucius love his teachings very much, but they also mistreat their wives. But I have never seen one person who could say, “Lord Jesus, You are the resurrection; You are the life,” and then turn around and mistreat his wife. The reason for this is that Christ is the unique One who is living and real.
Christ is the resurrection and the life. He is not only life but also the life that overcomes death. He is the resurrection. He is living and powerful. If you mention His name, immediately He will “electrify” you, and you will become a different person. By calling on Him, speaking to Him, and praying to Him, you will experience and enjoy Him. Many experienced brothers and sisters have written hymns concerning their enjoyment of calling on the name of the Lord Jesus many times a day (see Hymns, #208 and #73). To call on the Lord a thousand times a day, or even every minute, is not too much. By calling on Him we enjoy Him.
The thirteen items mentioned in this chapter are the subjective ways to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ. Eating, drinking, and calling on the name of the Lord are all subjective. When we exercise our spirit to contact Him as the life-giving Spirit, He becomes our experience and enjoyment.
