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Scripture Reading: Phil. 1:20b-21a; 6, John 14:10-20a; 3:36; Heb. 7:16b; 2 Tim. 1:10b; Col. 3:4a; John 11:25; Rom. 8:2a, 9b; Gal. 2:20; Rom. 12:5; Eph. 1:23; 3:19; Matt. 5:13-16; Eph. 3:8-11
In this series of messages, we want to fellowship concerning the Christian life. Such a topic may seem common to us, but I must honestly tell you that to my impression it is very hard to find one believer who knows what the Christian life is. The Bible is a very complicated book. Some fundamentalists say that the Bible does not contradict itself. But the more we study the Bible, the more contradictions we find in it. We have to realize that in the whole universe if there is no contradiction, nothing can remain, nothing can exist. All things exist by contradiction. Do we always laugh? We laugh, and we also weep. Someone may say, “I am a happy person.” But this is not completely true, because this person is also full of anxiety.
To know the Christian life is not an easy thing. Do you believe that the apostle Paul was always victorious? Today among us we have a saying — “Revived every morning; overcoming every day.” Do you believe that you can be revived every morning and overcoming every day? If within a day you do not have any defeat to match your victory, you actually do not have a good day. Can anyone among us say that we had one day in our entire life that was full of victory with no defeat? Today we are in the “kitchen” of the Christian life. While a meal is being cooked in a kitchen, everything is a mess there. Today our experience is in the kitchen, not on the dining table. In our Christian life, when everything is cooked and put on the dining table, that will be the New Jerusalem. In our present experience, however, the New Jerusalem seems mostly like a “bird in the air.” I have spoken much about the New Jerusalem, but this New Jerusalem “bird” has never been fully in my hand even though it is always in my expectation.
The Christian life is a mystery. I cannot tell you that I know what the Christian life is in an absolute way. Some may ask, “Since you don’t know, why do you speak about it?” I am still endeavoring to know. On the one hand, I say that I do not know. On the other hand, I can say that I do know what the Christian life is to some extent. We need to see what the Christian life is from the Bible. Furthermore, I hope that what I have seen and experienced in the Christian life can be a help to you.
In this chapter I want to cover two main points. The first point is that the Christian life is the life in which the believers of Christ live Christ and magnify Christ. The second point is that the Christian life is the life in which the Christians live Christ and magnify Him corporately in their locality as a local church to be a local expression of Christ as a part of the universal Body of Christ. The Christian life is and should always be in these two aspects — the individual aspect and the corporate aspect. We need to live an individual Christian life for a corporate Christian life. The corporate Christian life is the church life. This refers specifically to the local church. If we do not have a local church life, we cannot experience anything of the universal Body of Christ.
Now I would like to point out why I said that the Bible is contradicting. This is because the truths of the Bible are not written and presented in an orderly sequence. Instead, these truths are here and there, scattered, throughout the Bible (cf. Isa. 28:13). The Bible is like a great jigsaw puzzle with many small parts, but all these parts are scattered. The Bible does not arrange the truths in a certain sequence, putting the parts together to present a full and perfect picture. We have to gather the many parts of a truth to see it in a complete way. In your study you may have picked up ten parts, but none of these parts are connected to one another. Every part stands by itself. You need to spend time to collect more parts of the puzzle and put them together gradually.
I have been studying the Bible for over sixty-five years. I have found that it is very difficult to put the parts of the Bible together. We should not hold just one part and think that this is everything. We have to be patient and go on to pick up more and more parts until we have a complete view. In the past thirty years there were times when I thought that I had put all the parts of the Bible together. I thought that I had a completed jigsaw puzzle. But eventually there was still something more. Through the help of others’ understanding of the Bible, I have put many parts of the Bible together, but I cannot tell you that I have finished. I have spoken much throughout the years concerning the Divine Trinity. This is because the parts in the Bible concerning the Divine Trinity are scattered from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of the book of Revelation. In this series of messages we want to put together the parts of the Word concerning the Christian life so that we can see what the Christian life is.
The Christian life is the life in which the believers of Christ live Christ and magnify Him. This is based upon Philippians 1:20-21a, which says, “According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death. For to me, to live is Christ.” Paul said that for him to live was Christ. This means that we need to live Christ. If we add a preposition to the phrase to live Christ, this changes the meaning. To live out Christ, to live by Christ, to live through Christ, to live with Christ, and to live in Christ are not quite the same in meaning as to live Christ. According to my knowledge, I never heard anyone use this term — to live Christ. This describes the fact that Paul’s life was to live Christ. He lived Christ because Christ lived in him (Gal. 2:20).
The term to live Christ bears a particular significance. We are here to live Christ. We are not just living by Him, living with Him, living in Him, or living Him out. We are living Christ, and this living of Christ is for us to magnify Him, to make Him larger in others’ eyes. Paul was confined in prison. He was fearful that he might not magnify Christ, not make Christ larger; he could have made Christ small in the eyes of those observing him. Paul desired, even in prison, to make Christ bigger, to make Christ larger, to magnify Christ.
The Christian life is not merely an ethical life, a good life, or a moral life. The Christian life, of course, should be ethical, moral, and excellent. But strictly speaking, it is not an ethical life. It is something higher than an ethical life. The Christian life is a life that lives Christ. In our living as a Christian, others should not see merely our goodness, our ethics, or our morality. They should see Christ. We Christians should live a life that lives Christ and magnifies Him.
Christ is the center of the Godhead. The Godhead is the Divine Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — and Christ is the center of the Divine Trinity. As the center of the Divine Trinity, Christ expresses the Father and is realized as the Spirit (John 14:10-20).
What is it for Christ to express the Father and be realized as the Spirit? In the four Gospels we see a wonderful person by the name of Jesus. He spoke the Father’s word (John 14:10, 24) and did the Father’s work (4:34; 17:4). He did whatever the Father did (5:19). John 14 shows that the Son is the embodiment and expression of the Father (vv. 7-11) and that the Spirit is the reality and realization of the Son (vv. 17-20). Christ is the Son, and He is the Father (Isa. 9:6; John 14:8-9). He is also the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 15:45b). When He was in His earthly ministry, many knew that He was a Nazarene and the son of Mary. Yet He was also the embodiment of the Triune God. He was the Son who was with the Father (John 8:29; 16:32) and by the Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20; 12:28). He did everything with the Father and by the Spirit. He expressed God the Father, acted by the Spirit, and was eventually realized as the Spirit. In the Gospels we can see the Father, Son, and Spirit in one person, Jesus. This is the One whom we need to live as our mysterious life.
This Christ is the life, the unique life, and no other life is the real life (John 14:6a). The Christ who is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is the life.
At the end of Matthew the Lord charged the disciples to go and baptize people into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (28:19). But in the Acts and the Epistles we cannot find this saying again. Acts says that they baptized people into the name of the Lord Jesus (8:16; 19:5), and Romans 6:3 and Galatians 3:27 speak of being baptized into Christ. This shows that Jesus Christ is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. To baptize people into the name of the Lord Jesus and into Christ equals and is to baptize people into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
A person’s full name is actually composed of three names — the first name, the middle name, and the last name. This is following the pattern of the Triune God. One God has three titles — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. As the embodiment of the Triune God, Christ is the life, the unique life. No other life is the real life (1 Tim. 6:19b).
Christ is the eternal life, eternal in time, quality, perfection, and completion, indestructible and incorruptible (John 3:36; Heb. 7:16b; 2 Tim. 1:10b). Everyone who believes into the Son, Christ, has eternal life. The life that Christ is, is eternal. Christ is perfect, not temporarily but eternally. Christ is also eternally and entirely complete. With us human beings, nothing is eternal or entirely complete.
Many immigrants who come to the United States try to get permanent residence here, but who is permanent? Very few have lived in the United States for over a hundred years. Everyone eventually departs because human life is temporary. To God one thousand years equals one day (2 Pet. 3:8). Thus, one hundred years is only one-tenth of a day in God’s sight. To remain somewhere for only one-tenth of a day is not permanent. God, however, lives from eternity to eternity. Psalm 90 speaks of this. This psalm actually was the first psalm written, because it was written by Moses. In Psalm 90:1 Moses says, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place / In all generations.” Then he says, “From eternity to eternity, You are God” (v. 2). This means that Moses realized that God was his eternal dwelling place. From eternity to eternity, He is God and He is our dwelling place. He is eternally perfect and complete. Even though we are not able to reside on the earth permanently, we already have a permanent residence in God, the eternal One.
The eternal life, Christ, is also eternal in quality. In quality this life is eternally good. The quality of our human life, using Jeremiah’s word, is like broken cisterns (Jer. 2:13). Our qualities are all broken qualities. We may be clever, but our cleverness has been broken into pieces. Our human life, unlike the divine life, is not eternal in quality.
The eternal life is also indestructible and incorruptible. We human beings can be destroyed by anything, and we are corruptible in ourselves. I have some old books written by Brother Nee. They are becoming corrupted by time. Today I dare not touch some of these books, for fear that they will fall apart. Time wasted these books because they are corruptible. We also become old and pass away because we are corruptible. Our nature is corruptible. But Christ, the One who is our life, is incorruptible.
Christ is life to His believers in resurrection (Col. 3:4a; John 11:25). Resurrection means that this life has gone through death. People put this life into death, and this life came out of death. Today He is a life in resurrection.
Christ is in the believers as the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2a, 9b). He is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 15:45b). When I came to this country about thirty years ago, I began to tell people that Christ is the Spirit. We wrote a number of hymns in our hymnal concerning experiencing Christ as the Spirit (see Hymns, #493, #539). Brother Nee wrote some of these hymns, which stress that the very Christ, whom we experience today as the life that we live, is the Spirit (#490, #491, #492).
Christ lives in the believers so that they may live by Him (Gal. 2:20). We need to be clear that it is not wrong to say that we live by Christ. But we need to see that to live by Christ signifies one thing and that to live Christ signifies another thing. Christ lives in us so that we may live by Him.
The believers who live Him as such a One are His living members, constituting His organic Body. First, we constitute His Body as the fullness of Christ, the One who fills all in all, as His expression (Rom. 12:5; Eph. 1:23). Then we constitute His Body as the fullness of the Triune God, the God who has been processed and consummated, as His corporate expression in the expression of Christ through the church (3:19). These are two layers of expression. We as a corporate church are the expression of Christ. Then in the expression of Christ there is another layer of expression, that is, the expression of the processed and consummated Triune God.
When the church came into existence, that indicated that God had completed His process and that He had been consummated. Before God’s incarnation He had never been processed. God has gone through a long process from incarnation to ascension. Within a short time of less than thirty-five years, He completed this long process. We all need to speak about the wonderful process through which the Triune God passed.
By His being processed from incarnation to His ascension, He was consummated. His work to produce the new creation began from His incarnation, and that work was consummated in His ascension. He came down from heaven to be incarnated, and He went back to heaven in ascension. But after going back, He was altogether a “different” God. Some may wonder how we could say this, but there is such a fact. Before His incarnation He did not possess the human nature. But after passing through the process of incarnation through ascension, He now has both divinity and humanity. Before His incarnation He did not possess such a wonderful death and surpassing resurrection. But today after His ascension this death and resurrection are now elements in His composition.
The church does not express the God who has not been processed, but the church expresses the very God who has completed His process and has been consummated. The church can express Him because the church has become the same as He is. He is divine and human, and the church is human and divine. He possesses a marvelous death and an excellent resurrection, and the church possesses the same. The church is the same as He is, but the church does not have His Godhead. The church has the nature of God, the life of God, and the very death and resurrection, which God possesses. The church is the same as God in all these things but not in the Godhead. The church as the organic Body of Christ is the fullness of the Triune God, the God who has been processed and consummated. We are Christ’s living members, constituting His organic Body to express Him.
The Christian life is also the life in which the Christians live Christ and magnify Him corporately in their locality as a local church to be a local expression of Christ as a part of the universal Body of Christ. The Christian life must be a church life. The Christian life should not be just an individual Christian life. It should be a corporate Christian life, the church life. Wherever you are on the earth, you should participate in the local church there.
Many of us in the Lord’s recovery are very church-conscious. But actually very few Christians today are church-conscious. They do not have any consciousness concerning the church. If there were no local church on the earth, I would not know how to live, how to exist. We all are a part of a local church, and every local church is a part of the universal church, which is the Body of Christ.
The Christian life is not just to live an ethical life with the human virtues, as the salt of the earth and the light of the world, for the glory of God (Matt. 5:13-16), but to live a life that is Christ Himself with His divine attributes expressed in His human virtues to be a part of His organic Body for the universal consummation of the eternal economy of God (Eph. 3:8-11). Christianity teaches that we must have human virtues. Because we are Christians, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The world is rotten and corrupt, so there is the need of salt to kill the germs. The world is also dark and needs the light to enlighten it. This is all for the glory of God. This is a good teaching, but we must realize that the individual Christian life occupies just a small part of the Christian life. The greater part of the Christian life should be the church life.
In the church life we live a life that is Christ Himself with His divine attributes expressed in His human virtues. His attributes are divine, but His virtues are human. The human virtues are to manifest the divine attributes, and the divine attributes are to be expressed in the human virtues. This is for us to be a part of His organic Body. We live a life that is Christ Himself, not just for the individual Christian life but for the Body life. We live as parts of His organic Body for the universal consummation of the eternal economy of God.
Recently, I spoke about the human and divine concepts in Psalms 1 and 2 (see Life-study of the Psalms, msg. 1). We have seen that Psalm 1 is not concerning God’s economy. It concerns only the personal benefit of the individual godly man. But Psalm 2 is altogether concerning God’s economy. This psalm says that God made Christ His Anointed (v. 2). God set up Christ as His King (v. 6) to inherit all the nations and to possess the earth to gain a great kingdom on the earth for God’s economy (vv. 8-11). We have to believe in such a Christ, taking Him as our refuge. We also have to love Him, to kiss Him (v. 12). This concerns God’s economy. All that most Christians think about is their personal benefit. To them salvation is only a matter of either going to heaven or perishing in the lake of fire. There is no consideration about God’s economy. But Psalm 2 reveals that Christ is altogether for God’s economy. We have to believe in Him, to take refuge in Him, and we have to love Him, to kiss Him.
We also have to admit that much of our consideration is for our personal benefit. We may consider whether we will receive a reward from Christ when He returns or will be punished by Him. We do not consider God’s economy that much. The entire book of Psalms, from the first point to the last point, reveals that Christ is altogether for God’s economy. He died for us in order to accomplish God’s economy. He saves us in order to accomplish God’s economy. He also lives in us that we may live in Him for God’s economy. This is why we are not only the church, the Body of Christ, but also the kingdom of Christ, of God. The kingdom of God is the accomplishment of God’s economy. We all have to realize that the Christian life is a life that is for God’s economy.
