Search
In this chapter I have the burden to fellowship about how to contact the all-inclusive and subjective Christ.
In the preceding chapters we have seen clearly not only what Christ is in Himself but also what Christ is to us. He is the center, He is the Head, He is the life, and He is the hope. He is so subjective to us. He is more subjective than objective to us. We have to know and experience Him as the subjective Christ. All our experiences of Christ are based on our real knowledge of Christ as the subjective One. Our urgent need today is to know Him in a subjective way. If we desire to have a genuine church life, we must realize that all the life matters depend on our real experience of the subjective Christ.
We have such a Christ who is central, universal, all-inclusive, and subjective, but what is the proper way for us to contact such a Christ? This is something clearly revealed in the Scriptures, and it is also clear to many experienced Christians. However, Christians in general are not clear about this matter. Many Christians today do not know how to contact Christ in a practical and living way.
First of all, we have to know that if we are going to contact Christ, the living Christ, the subjective Christ, we have to realize what He is. I do not say who He is, but what He is. What He is, is different from who He is. Here we have a podium. This podium is something of wood; it is a wooden podium. What is Christ? We need to realize what He is, and then we will know how to contact Him.
Let us read 1 Corinthians 15:45: “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul’; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” This verse speaks of two Adams, the first Adam and the last Adam. The first Adam became a living soul, and the last Adam, Christ, became a life-giving Spirit. The Greek word for life-giving is the verb form of the noun life. Christ is the Spirit who gives life, or the life-giving Spirit. This is very important. I was in Christianity for many years under some good teachers. I was taught that Christ is God, the Lord, the Head, the Master, and many things, but I was never taught that Christ is the Spirit. I was taught that in the Godhead there is the Holy Spirit, but I was never taught that Christ is the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit.
We have other verses to confirm the fact that Christ is the Spirit. Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” According to the context of this verse, the Lord here refers to Christ the Lord (2:12, 14-15, 17; 3:3-4, 14, 16; 4:5). This then is a strong word in the Bible, telling us emphatically that Christ is the Spirit.
Then Romans 8:9 says, “You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him.” First, it says, “The Spirit of God dwells in you,” and then it says, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ.” First it mentions “the Spirit of God,” and then it changes to “the Spirit of Christ.” This proves that the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God. We should not consider them as two Spirits. Then verse 10 says, “But if Christ is in you.” First it is “the Spirit of God”; then it is “the Spirit of Christ”; and then it is “Christ” Himself. Are these three or are these one? Of course, if we read the context of this passage, we will realize that these three are one. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ is Christ Himself. So by these verses we can clearly know that Christ today is the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit. Then we have to read John 6:63: “It is the Spirit who gives life.” Who is this Spirit? In 1 Corinthians 15:45 we get the answer — “the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.”
When I was a young Christian, I always had the wrong concept that Christ and the Holy Spirit were separate persons. We have to realize that Christ Himself is the life-giving Spirit. If you have the Spirit, you have Christ because the Spirit is Christ Himself. The Spirit is the reality of Christ. Outside of the Holy Spirit, you cannot find Christ or meet Christ. Outside of the Holy Spirit, there is no Christ. Christ is the Spirit. If we want to contact Christ, we must know that He is the Spirit.
Now we have to find out where the Spirit is today. Some Christians may consider that they know a lot. They know the Scriptures and the doctrines concerning the Trinity, predestination, justification by faith, sanctification by faith, etc. But what they have is mere objective knowledge. They do not have much of the true, living, practical, useful, and subjective knowledge. Many Christians know that Christ is the bread of life, the living bread, but nearly no one can tell you how to take Christ as the bread of life. If you have only the knowledge of Christ as the living bread yet no way to experience it, what good is it to you? You may know that Christ is the life, but do you have the proper, real, practical, and living way to experience Him as life? Many times, what we know is just something in our mentality according to the letter, but we do not know the real thing in the spirit in a living way. Most of the time we know the Scriptures just according to the traditional teachings of theology, but we do not have the personal, living, individual, and practical experience of the Scriptures.
Now we come back to the question, “Where is Christ the Spirit today?” The answer is that Christ, who is the Spirit, is in our spirit. We say this based on Romans 8:16: “The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit.” This means that the Holy Spirit surely is within our spirit. He cannot witness with our spirit unless He is in our spirit. Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” We are one spirit with the Lord. If we did not have a spirit, we could never be one spirit with the Lord. But praise the Lord, we have a spirit, a human spirit created by God. It is in this spirit that we are one with the Lord because the Lord Himself is also the Spirit. The two spirits are mingled as one. Now I believe we are clear that, first, Christ today is the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, and second, this wonderful Spirit is now in our spirit. Thus, He is subjective to us, even to the extent that He becomes one with us.
We should have the true realization that we and Christ are one. This should not be merely a doctrine but a reality, a fact, in our experience. We cannot fight a battle with anything objective. We must have something real, living, and strong. This is the living Christ, the living One, who is the Spirit and who lives in our spirit. We have to realize Him in such a way.
After I was saved as a young man, immediately I began to love the Bible. Whenever I came to study the Bible, I exercised my mind and desperately tried to grasp, apprehend, and comprehend all the teachings from the Scriptures. But the more I read and studied, the farther I was from Christ and the emptier I became. I was full in my mentality, but I was empty in my spirit. At that time my studying of the Word had nothing to do with Christ in a subjective way. But today by His mercy I can fellowship with you that when I consider the Bible even just a little bit, my spirit contacts the living One. Whenever I contact the Word, at the same time my spirit has some real contact with the living One. I cannot separate His Word from Himself. If we are not in the spirit but just in our mind, then the Word in black and white is separated from the living One — Christ. So we have to know that Christ, the living One, as the Spirit is in our spirit. This is a reality and a fact.
When you are contacting the written Word, you must have the sense in your spirit that you are contacting the living Word. The living Word is the very essence, the very substance, of the written Word. You cannot separate the written Word from the living Word. It is possible to contact the living Word only in our spirit, not in our mind. Brothers and sisters, we have to learn to realize, to experience, Christ in our spirit in such a real, substantial way. If we are in the spirit, in our human spirit, in our own spirit, we will realize Christ as the Spirit. He is speaking to us, revealing something to us, quickening us, and imparting Himself to us. He as the living Spirit lives within us, waiting all the time for a chance to impart Himself into us, impress Himself in us, and reveal Himself more and more to us.
We need to know how to exercise our spirit because our spirit is the switch. We have electricity installed in this hall for many purposes. But we have to know where the switch is and how to handle the switch. If we know neither where the switch is nor how to handle it, the electricity will not do us any good even though it has been fully installed in this hall. Praise the Lord that we have the wonderful Spirit, who is Christ Himself, installed in our spirit, and we have found out that our spirit is the switch.
Now we need to consider how we can exercise our spirit to turn on the spiritual switch. We can exercise our spirit by prayer. When a person walks, he exercises his two feet. Before a child learns to walk, he has to crawl. I know many Christians who do not know how to pray by exercising their spirit. They pray by considering something in their mind. They know how to pray by their mind but not by their spirit. Do you pray by your mind and even by your emotion? Or do you pray by your spirit? You need to consider the way that you pray. As a rule, a prayer must be by the spirit. This is the right organ for us to use when we pray. We know we have many organs that function to do certain things. The ears are for us to hear, the eyes are for us to see, and the tongue is for us to taste. In our physical body, the hands are for us to touch, and the feet are for us to walk. If we are going to think, to consider, we must do it by our mind. But we have to realize that prayer is something different from all these things. We pray by our spirit; we pray by the exercise of our spirit.
There are some verses in the Scriptures that show us we need to pray by the spirit and in the spirit. Romans 8:26 says, “In like manner the Spirit also joins in to help us in our weakness, for we do not know for what we should pray as is fitting, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Ephesians 6:18 says, “By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints.” Jude 20 says, “Praying in the Holy Spirit.” We have these verses confirming that prayer must be carried out in the spirit. To walk or run is to exercise the feet, to see is to exercise the eyes, and to hear is to exercise the ears. In the same way, to pray is to exercise the spirit.
The problem is that many times when we pray, we do not exercise our spirit. Rather, we exercise our mind. Sometimes we become quite emotional when we are happy. Maybe we have received some money, or we have obtained a good job. We are very emotional, and we pray to the Lord. I am afraid that that kind of prayer is not a prayer in the spirit but a prayer in the emotion. Sometimes when you are depressed, suppressed, or even oppressed, you shut up your mouth and cannot pray for a prolonged period of time. This simply means that you are not strong in your spirit. Sometimes when we come together, some brothers compose a good and nice prayer with the best terms, phrases, and terminology, but that is a prayer by the mind. That kind of prayer cannot touch people’s spirit.
When a person prays in the spirit, his prayer will touch your spirit. So we have to learn to exercise our spirit to pray. To exercise means that we have to learn, to practice. I know many Christians who love the Lord but do not know how to pray to contact the Lord in a living way. Sometimes they just pray in a simple way by exercising their mentality to utter some words with their mouth. That kind of prayer is dead and dry because they do not pray in their spirit. When we exercise our spirit to pray, our prayer will be living and refreshing. Our prayer will water others’ spirit.
Some of us may say that we do not know how to pray. But praise the Lord, there is a way for us who do not know how to pray. The way is to groan. Many prayers with clear words are not genuine prayers. When we pray with many clear words, this proves that our prayer is of the mind. When genuine prayers come out, many times they come out in a stammering voice, a groaning voice. Romans 8:26 speaks of “groanings which cannot be uttered.” I would give you a suggestion. If you do not have the clear word to express, do not think, do not consider, do not exercise your mind. Forget about your mind. Simply exercise your spirit, and if you do not know what to say, just groan. If you would groan for a while, you will be watered and refreshed by the Lord. You will not be so dry. After you have groaned for a while, you will have a lot of things to speak. However, if you go to the Lord with your mind in the same way that you go to the laboratory, the more you pray, the drier you will become. Learn to forget about your mind. You are too much in your mind. Learn to exercise your spirit.
Now I believe we are clear that Christ is the Spirit, and this Spirit, who is Christ Himself, is in our spirit. The best way, and in fact the only proper way, for us to contact such a Christ is to exercise our spirit to pray. We need to learn to pray by exercising our spirit. I know that whenever we go to the Lord, we go with many problems in our mind. We are bothered by the problems, troubles, difficulties, tests, trials, sorrows, pains, and others’ unfair dealings with us. The most bothering matter is the unfair dealings. A certain brother has dealt with me in an unfair way that I cannot forget for eternity. It is very hard for me to pray with him because his unfair dealing impressed me deeply and affected me to such an extent that I can never forget it. It bothers me all the time. This is why I say that when you go to the Lord, you have to cut off the thoughts in your mind. Forget about everything. Forget about all your troubles, sorrows, pains, testings, trials, etc. Just go to the Lord in the spirit and by the spirit. When you pray, do not try to remember so many things. Some people try to consider too many things when they go to the Lord to pray. Some people asked me, “Brother Lee, if you speak in this way, then what about our prayer list?” If you go to the Lord in a living way, you will know what to do with your prayer list.
Now we know that we need to contact the Lord by exercising our spirit. And in order to exercise our spirit, we need to forget about many things. If we are occupied with many things, that will only help us to exercise our mind and hinder us from exercising our spirit. From now on, whenever we go to the Lord, let us forget everything in our mind, in our memory.
A husband may ask, “My children are sick, and my wife is not well; should I not remember these things before the Lord? Should I forget about these things?” Or a wife may say, “My husband is out of a job; should I not pray for this?” I would tell you that if you could forget about these things, you will be very much blessed. Your wife and your children will be quickly healed, and your husband will get a better job. You are too much concerned in your mentality, in your understanding, and in your realization. You are too much occupied by other things, not by Christ. Let us learn to realize that today Christ as the Spirit is in our spirit. The only way, the proper way, for us to contact Him is to pray to Him by exercising our spirit. When you pray in this way, eventually you will realize that it is not only you praying by yourself but also Him praying within you. You will realize that while you pray, He prays. He prays with you, and He prays in you. He becomes your prayer.
Andrew Murray once said that the best prayer is the Christ within praying to the Christ above. This means that the Christ within, that is, the indwelling Christ, prays to the ascended Christ. The same meaning is expressed in the last two lines of stanzas 8 and 9 of Hymns, #762 by A. B. Simpson. Stanza 8 says, “Teach us! Pray in us, till our prayer shall be / Christ in us praying to the Christ above!” Stanza 9 says, “Teach us! Pray in us, till our prayer shall be / God in us answering to the God above!” The real prayer is something in the spirit. While you are praying in your spirit, Christ as the Spirit indwelling you prays with you. He prays in your prayer, and you are praying in His prayer. You are mingled with Him.
The more you pray in this way, the more you will enjoy Christ. You will absorb something of Christ. Also, your prayer will be answered. However, your prayer’s being answered is the secondary thing. The primary thing is that while you are praying in this way, you enjoy Christ and absorb Christ. The more you pray in the spirit, the more you contact Christ as the Spirit. Then you will realize Him as the life, the food, and the supply within. By praying you enjoy Him, absorb Him, and can apply Him to all the happenings in your daily life. This is the proper way for you to contact Christ.
When you are so much mingled with Him and one with Him, it will be difficult for people to tell whether you are praying or Christ is praying. Even you yourself will not be able to tell clearly which part is your prayer and which part is Christ’s, because you are so much mingled with Him. This is the genuine prayer, and this is the New Testament principle of life. The principle of life in the New Testament is that the Triune God — God the Father, in God the Son, and through God the Spirit — mingles Himself with us in our spirit.
But in order for this to take place, we must give Him the ground within us. This means that we have to pray by exercising our spirit. The more we exercise our spirit, the more we give Him the ground. Then He will occupy us, saturate us, and mingle Himself with us to make Himself us and to make us Himself. Then we are one with Him in the spirit in a very practical way. It is by this that we can be overcoming. We can overcome many difficulties and sins that are contrary to Christ. It is only when we are in Christ, living by Christ and being blended with Christ, that His victory is ours. When we are in Christ, we enjoy Him as everything — as life, as power, as the light shining within us to guide us all the time. All these things are subjective within. This is exactly what we need today.
If we are one with Christ and blended together with Christ, it is easy for us to receive healing when we need it. But we do not pay attention to the healing but to the Healer. We do not pay attention to the gift but to the Giver. Of course, when we have the Healer and the Giver, we have the healing and the gift. We do not pay attention to the power, to the might, but we are satisfied and happy with the mighty One. It is not some thing but a living person whom we possess. It is not something of Christ but Christ Himself (see Hymns, #513 by A. B. Simpson). This is the reality of the Christian life. This is also the reality of the church life. This is what God is seeking and what Christ is looking for. We have to realize that He is such a One living within us so that we may experience Him in such a living and experiential way. May God be merciful to us.
