Search
Scripture Reading: Eph. 3:8; John 16:13-15; 1:14, 16; Phil. 1:19
We have spoken about the surpassingness of Christ, the transcendence of Christ, and the glory of Christ. Now we come to the riches of Christ. In the New Testament this is a central subject and an important revelation. Many of today’s Christians, however, have never seen this revelation. Many people have been Christians for years, but they have never heard the term the riches of Christ. However, Ephesians 3 clearly speaks about this matter.
I have treasured the book of Ephesians since I was young, and I have read commentaries written by others on this book, but I never saw that anyone pointed out the central subject of “the riches of Christ.” In the past, because no one saw this or led us to see this, I was like a blind man who saw nothing and gained nothing. It was not until many years later that one day the phrase in Ephesians 3:8, the unsearchable riches of Christ, shone on me and jumped out at me. This phrase is not only the riches of Christ; it is even more the unsearchable riches, the immeasurable riches, of Christ. The emphasis on the word unsearchable here is not on the mysteriousness but on the quantity or measure. The riches of Christ are unsearchable and immeasurable.
What are the riches of Christ? First, the riches of Christ are the reality and contents of the gospel. Ephesians 3:8 says, “To me...was this grace given to announce to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel.” According to this verse, we see that the riches of Christ are the reality and contents of the gospel. Without the riches of Christ, the gospel is empty. The reality of the gospel hinges on the riches of Christ. The riches of Christ are the contents of the gospel. Paul did not say that God gave him this grace to announce to the Gentiles Christ’s forgiveness of sins as the gospel. The forgiveness of sins is only one item of the unsearchable riches of Christ. The gospel that many people preach today is just one item out of the thousands of items, and that item is the forgiveness of sins. That by itself is not the unsearchable riches; the reality and contents of the gospel make up the riches of Christ.
Today our gospel preaching is the preaching of Christ. To preach Christ is to tell people who and what Christ is. From stanzas 2 and 3 of the Chinese Hymns, #403, we can find at least fourteen items of the riches of Christ. [The English version of this hymn, Hymns, #542, contains twelve items.] First it says, “O the riches of my Savior, / All-embracing...” Then it goes on to list these riches: life, light, wisdom, power, healing, peace, joy, complete redemption, full salvation, justification, sanctification, release, resurrection power, and transcendence, for a total of fourteen items. The Chinese Hymns, #388 [an abridged version of the English Hymns, #510] speaks of even more of Christ’s riches. Christ is the Lamb of God, the Sun of Righteousness, the tree of life, the fountain of life, the Priest, the Prophet, the King, the Savior, the Mediator, the Physician, the Shepherd, the Counselor, the Head, our Brother, our Father, our God, our Lord, our Teacher, our Beloved, our Friend, life, power, wisdom, righteousness, holiness, redemption, peace, joy, hope, comfort, glory, light, and way, for a total of thirty-three items. Never think that this Jesus Christ whom you have heard, believed in, and received is that simple. He is too marvelous and very rich. His riches are the reality and contents of the gospel.
Second, the riches of Christ are all that He is. The phrase all that Christ is sounds a little peculiar. Can we not simply say that the riches of Christ are all that is Christ’s? If you say it this way, the meaning is different. For example, I could say, “All that is Brother Lee’s.” You would think of Brother Lee’s hymn book, Bible, shoes, socks, tie, suit, hair, and so on. Thus, all that is Brother Lee’s emphasizes what he has and what he possesses, not what he is. In the same way, if we say “all that is Christ’s” instead of “all that Christ is,” then we would think that all that is Christ’s refers to His greatness, His superiority, and so on. We would not think of all these items as the riches of Christ. What Christ is does not refer to what He has; the emphasis of what Christ is, is on His being.
When you watch one- or two-year-old children, you can see that they really enjoy their mothers. If you give a little girl a huge diamond, she may not want it, but she definitely will want her dear mother. As long as her mother is there, she does not care about diamonds. You can see that she wants what her mother is, not what her mother has. We Christians often do not know what being is; we only understand what possessions are. If the Lord were to give us a big house and the best European car and then allow us to go to heaven after we die, we would think that we have enjoyed all that is Christ’s. Actually, even if we have enjoyed all these things, we still will not have touched the edges of Christ. See how pitiful we Christians are! We are worse than little children. Little children know how to enjoy their mothers; this is not acquired from teaching but received from birth. When we are regenerated, we also have an innate capacity to enjoy Christ, and we simply like to enjoy the Lord Himself. However, after being saved, because we received improper teachings and influences, we began to long for things other than Christ and to forget Christ Himself completely.
Therefore, when we were raised up by the Lord sixty years ago in China, the work was very difficult in the beginning. We saw this vision and truly received the revelation, but our vocabulary and expressions could not be found in the dictionary; they were all coined by us after intense laboring. The emphasis of the riches of Christ is not on what Christ has but on what He is. Little children do not care one bit for what their mothers have; they only care for their mothers. We love the Lord, and we should love Him thoroughly and absolutely like little children. If the Lord allows us to be sick, we still want Him; if the Lord makes us strong, we still want Him. In woe or blessing, death or life, in nothing shall we be ashamed. Our goal is to gain Christ and to magnify Him.
John 16:13-15 says, “When He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality...He will glorify Me, for He will receive of Mine and will declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine; for this reason I have said that He receives of Mine and will declare it to you.” It says here that when the Spirit of reality comes, He will guide us into all the reality. The Lord Jesus is the tabernacle, the Lamb of God, and the Redeemer. How can these objective matters become subjective, practical experiences to us? We must wait for the Spirit of reality to come. When the Spirit comes, the reality comes. Thus, the reality of the tabernacle is the Spirit, and the reality of the Lamb of God is also the Spirit. All that Christ is, is the Spirit. When this Spirit of reality comes, He glorifies Christ. How does He glorify Him? He does this by making all that Christ is real to the believers.
The second part of verse 14 continues, saying, “He will receive of Mine and will declare it to you.” This means that the Spirit of reality will declare to us all the riches which He has received of Christ, that is, all that the Lord Jesus is. The Greek word for declare, or disclose, means to put on display. The Spirit of reality does not merely tell us everything that Christ is, but He also puts everything on display in front of us. All that is put on display is all that Christ is. He is the Lamb, the door, the way, the reality, the life, the resurrection, the embodiment of God, and so on. All that He is, is too many items to count. When the Spirit of reality comes, He displays in us all the items of what Christ is.
Verse 15 says, “All that the Father has is Mine.” This shows us that all that the Father has is received by the Son and becomes the Son’s. Furthermore, whatever the Son receives, He gives it to the Spirit. Therefore, the Spirit displays to us what He has received from the Son, which is what the Son has received from the Father, in order that we may understand. Stanza 3 of Hymns, #501 says,
This stanza was written with the words of John 16. All things of God the Father belong to Christ the Son and are received by Christ the Son. After they have been received by Christ the Son, they become all that Christ the Son is. Then all that Christ the Son is, is given to the Spirit. Moreover, this Spirit enters into our spirit as the reality of all that Christ is to make Christ our experience.
John 1:14 and 16 say, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us...full of grace and reality...For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” When Christ came, He was God becoming flesh. When Christ came in time into the human race, He was God tabernacling and dwelling among men. When Christ dwelt among men, He was full of grace and reality. Now Christ has become the Spirit to dwell in us; therefore, we have received the grace of Christ. It is not that we have received only some thing, but we have received of His fullness, even grace upon grace. To receive of His fullness and grace upon grace is not only to receive of His fullness but also to receive it with grace upon grace. We praise and thank the Lord that we do not receive only a little, but we receive of His fullness. Moreover, we receive not only of His fullness, but we also receive it with grace upon grace.
What does it mean to receive of His fullness, and grace upon grace? Let me give you an illustration. For example, as you are now receiving this message, you may say, “This message is really good; I praise and thank the Lord!” Yes, you have received some supply, and you can count that as your receiving grace and reality. However, I cannot say that you have received of His fullness, and grace upon grace, because you still may have some reservation within you. You may think that I am too much to say this, but in effect you may be receiving “grace under grace.” This is why I am so repetitious and why I use many words so that the “film” in the “camera” within you can be sensitized to such an extent that you will keep receiving without reservation. This is to receive of His fullness, grace upon grace. We need to receive all that Christ is in fullness and grace upon grace.
When we receive of His fullness and grace upon grace, that is, when we receive unreservedly and unconditionally, then we experience the Spirit and enjoy the riches of Christ as our bountiful supply. How is it that the riches of Christ can become our supply? It is by Christ becoming the Spirit of reality. Christ had to become the Spirit of reality for us to receive of His fullness and grace upon grace; the riches of Christ can now become our supply. The riches of Christ are indescribable and immeasurable; therefore, the supply of the Spirit must be bountiful, all-inclusive, and inexhaustible. The Spirit supplies us with whatever we need. Christ is all that we need and desire. We need to enjoy the bountiful supply of the Spirit of reality in our spirit. The bountiful supply of the Spirit of reality is the unsearchable riches of Christ. The unsearchable riches of Christ are already there; when we receive of them in full and grace upon grace, His riches become the bountiful supply in our spirit. The riches of Christ are to be enjoyed by us and are to supply our needs so that we may become His fullness.
With the foregoing knowledge, we are clear that the riches of Christ are the Triune God Himself. The Bible says clearly that God is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He is not three Gods but one. How can this one God be the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? Countless people throughout the generations, including theologians, Bible expositors, and preachers, have all studied and discussed this question to a great extent, but after two thousand years of research and discussion there is still no complete answer.
In Christianity today many people have been influenced by tradition to believe that the Father is one God, the Son is another God, and the Spirit is still another God, and that these three Gods added together make up a corporate God. Anyone who has gone to the Vatican, the capital city of the Roman Catholic Church, knows that there is a certain gallery. This gallery does not exhibit many paintings, but it does have two large oil paintings that go from the ceiling to the floor. One painting shows a white-haired old father with a handsome son beside him and a dove above their heads. This is what some in Christianity refer to as the Holy Father, the Holy Son, and the Holy Spirit. This painting shows that they worship three entities: a Father, a Son, and a dove. The other painting shows the same three plus a lady; they have brought the “Holy Mother” into the Godhead.
Because Christianity has been influenced by tradition, it has lost the reality of Christ. Our God is not three, but one. However, He is triune — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — yet one God. What does this mean? Why is our God one and three? Some people once asked Martin Luther this question, and he answered, “I do not know. If I say that I know, then I would be God.” Martin Luther was not God, so he did not know. His answer was very reasonable. The persons of the Triune God are very mysterious. We have no way to use our limited intelligence to analyze and understand Him. We can only receive this mysterious revelation according to the plain words of the Bible.
The Bible clearly states, “There is no God but one” (1 Cor. 8:4, 6). Furthermore, God repeatedly says in the Bible, “Apart from Me [singular] there is no God” (Isa. 44:6, 8; 45:5-6, 21-22). Also, Psalm 86:10 says, “You alone are God.” The Bible never says that we have three Gods. We have only one God. However, in the Bible God does refer to Himself as “Us” and “Our” many times (Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 11:6-7). In Isaiah 6:8 God refers to Himself, on the one hand, as “I” and, on the other hand, as “Us.” This is very mysterious, and it is very hard for us to comprehend; therefore, the best we can do is to receive the biblical revelation according to the plain word. There is only one God, so He refers to Himself as “I.” But this one unique God also refers to Himself as “Us.” Even though there is the aspect of God being the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, They cannot be divided and are still one God. Any theology that explains God by separating Him into three separate persons is a great heresy.
In the Gospel of John the Lord Jesus clearly said that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him (14:10-11; 10:38; 17:21) and that He and the Father are one (10:30), and He also told us that the Spirit is from the Father (15:26). In Greek the word from in John 15:26 is a preposition that literally means “from with.” This means that the Spirit of reality comes not only from the Father but also with the Father. Thus, when the Spirit comes, the Father and the Son come together with the Spirit. This is because the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are coexistent and coinherent.
We must be clear that the Bible does not say that when the Son came, the Father no longer existed, and that when the Spirit came, the Son no longer existed. That is the teaching of the erroneous theology called modalism. The modalists say that the Father was in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, in the Gospels when the Son came, the Father ceased to exist, and then after the Gospels, when the Spirit came, the Son was no more. This is heresy. The pure revelation of the Word says that in the Old Testament the Father was there, and the Son and the Spirit were also there; the three were all there. In the four Gospels of the New Testament, the Son came, and the Father and the Spirit also came; the three were there simultaneously. In the Epistles the Spirit came, and the Father and the Son also came with the Spirit. They did not come in the way of replacing one another; rather, They came in the way of coexistence. Furthermore, They do not merely coexist; They coexist in coinherence. This one complete Triune God and all that He has accomplished become the riches of Christ for our enjoyment as the bountiful supply in our spirit. However, most people who oppose modalism and who claim to be fundamentalists believe that in the Gospels the Son came by Himself, leaving the Father in heaven, and that in the Epistles the Spirit came, leaving the Father and the Son in heaven. This is to lean toward the other extreme, tritheism, which actually is also a great heresy.
Christ was originally the infinite God in eternity; in Him all the fullness of the Godhead was hidden (Col. 2:9). However, He became a finite man in time. This is the incarnate Lord Jesus. Before Christ was incarnated, He was only God without the element of humanity. After He was incarnated, He became not only united but also mingled with man. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He was not only the union of God and man but also the mingling of God and man. He was not merely God; He was a God-man. This incarnate Christ was a God-man and a man-God. He was both the complete God and the perfect man, with the divine nature and the human nature mingled together yet not producing a third nature.
This God-man, Christ, lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years and died on the cross. Through His death He accomplished eternal redemption for us. Moreover, through His all-inclusive, overcoming death, He completely solved our problems, including Satan, the world, and all the old creation. Then He rose from the dead and was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit. Although He is still Christ, the Christ after resurrection is different from the incarnated Christ who had not yet passed through death and resurrection. The incarnated Christ was in the flesh; He was the Lord Jesus who lived on earth. The Christ after resurrection has become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), the all-inclusive, omnipresent Spirit.
When we speak of Christ in the flesh, everyone understands correctly that this was the Lord Jesus who lived on the earth. The Lord Jesus was the Christ in the flesh; the two were one. No one would understand that the flesh was one person and Christ was another. But when we speak of the pneumatic Christ, many easily misunderstand and think that the Spirit is one person, while Christ is another. This is because of the influence of traditional theology.
Gerhard Kittel, the famous German expert on expounding the biblical Greek, put out a lexicon defining more than five thousand six hundred Greek words in the New Testament. He wrote in this lexicon that Christ became the pneumatic Christ after His resurrection. The word pneumatic is an adjective from the Greek word pneuma. Pneuma can be translated as “spirit,” “breath,” or “wind.” In John 3, when the Lord and Nicodemus were discussing regeneration, the Lord said that that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. He also said that the wind blows where it wills. The word for both Spirit and wind is pneuma. The pneumatic Christ refers to Christ as the Spirit.
After His resurrection Christ did not transfer from one form to another. Rather, He was transfigured, changed in form. This may be likened to a seed that is planted into the ground. When it grows up as a little sprout, it is changed in appearance. Originally, it was round, brown, and small, but after it grows up out of the ground, it becomes long, green, and tall. The substance remains the same, but the form is different.
The Lord Jesus Himself as a grain of wheat was sown into the ground, died, and then resurrected. In 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul speaks concerning the body of resurrection, he says that what is sown is one kind of body, but what grows up will be another kind of body. This does not mean that there are two bodies but that the shape has changed. In this same chapter Paul also says that the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. The last Adam was the grain of wheat; the life-giving Spirit was the green ear of wheat. After this grain of wheat was resurrected, it became a green ear of wheat. Thus, it flowed out the supply of life, bearing fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.
The resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ, is both God and man, possessing both divinity and humanity. He is a God-man. All that He is, is truly beyond our enumeration. He is light, and He is love. The reality that comes out of light is truth, and the reality that comes out of love is grace. Light manifested is truth; love expressed is grace. From within these are produced holiness, righteousness, and every kind of virtue.
Philippians 4:8 says, “What things are true, what things are dignified, what things are righteous, what things are pure, what things are lovely, what things are well spoken of...” These six virtues are higher than the benevolence, justice, politeness, wisdom, and trustworthiness taught by the Chinese sages. To be true, dignified, righteous, pure, lovely, and well spoken of are items of what God is. Out of these are produced holiness, righteousness, goodness, meekness, modesty, forbearance, kindness, and so on. All these riches of God, which are also the riches of Christ, become our enjoyment in our experience, and we thereby express the virtues of God.
God is true, dignified, righteous, pure, lovely, and well spoken of. When God created man, He created him according to these virtues. The Bible tells us that God created man in His image and according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26). In other words, God created man according to truthfulness, dignity, righteousness, purity, loveliness, and well speaking. If man had not fallen and not been corrupted by the devil, man’s condition would be true, dignified, righteous, pure, lovely, and well spoken of. The created man was merely like a photograph. Even though he had the outward form of these virtues, he did not have their reality. It is only when Christ enters into us as our content that we have that reality. Christ is the reality of all the virtues. He truly is rich because all the divine attributes and all the human virtues converge in Him. He is the God who became flesh, the Christ who died and resurrected, and even more the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. Truthfulness, dignity, righteousness, purity, loveliness, and well speaking are His riches. After the Lord Jesus resurrected and became the life-giving Spirit, the riches of Christ became in us the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The riches of Christ are unsearchable, and the supply of the Spirit is bountiful, having no lack.
Today the riches of Christ in the Spirit become the bountiful supply in us. You should never ask God to make you humble in a mere outward way. The more you beg for and have this kind of humility, the more you will be proud. When you read the portion in Ephesians 5 which says that wives should submit to their husbands, you may make a decision to be a model wife who absolutely submits to her husband. You might be able to submit temporarily, but eventually you will not be submissive, because within you there is no submission. Instead, you should pray by saying, “Lord, I praise You that You are all things; You are a wife’s submission to her husband. You are submission, and I am not; I do not have submission, and therefore I cannot submit. You are the Lord Jesus; Your name is ‘I Am,’ ‘I Am who I Am.’ You are the Lord, and You are submission. O Lord Jesus! I thank You and praise You that Ephesians 5 is wonderful in that Christ is submission. You are my submission. I enjoy You as my submission.” If you pray like this, you will submit to your husband for the entire day with rejoicing and praise.
It is the same thing for husbands toward their wives; the love with which you love your wife must be Christ. It is the same thing for children toward their parents; the obedience with which you obey your parents must be Christ. Ephesians 6 says that children must obey their parents in the Lord. Therefore, there is no real obedience outside of the Lord. Only in the Lord can there be the husband’s love; only in the Lord can there be the wife’s submission; and only in the Lord can there be the children’s obedience. Only in the Lord can there be truthfulness, loveliness, and goodness. These virtues can be found only in the Lord.
The life of the Lord Jesus, the salvation of Christ, and the bountiful supply of the Spirit are definitely not culture, religion, or philosophy; nor are they ethics, morals, traditions, or customs. The Lord Jesus is the living God who became the God-man and who died for us and resurrected to accomplish redemption and become the pneumatic Christ. Within this pneumatic Christ are hidden all the virtues of divinity and all the perfection of humanity. Today He is the life-giving Spirit who dwells in our spirit as our blessed portion. Therefore, we should not outwardly pursue submission, love, obedience, and other items. Instead, we should live in our mingled spirit to experience the riches of Christ and enjoy the supply of the Spirit. In this way we will live Christ. When we live out Christ in this way, His effulgence will shine out of us, His virtues will be manifested in us, and we will become the expression of the riches of Christ.
