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Scripture Reading: Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22, 24; 2 Cor. 4:16; Rom. 8:13b; 2 Cor. 4:10; Phil. 3:10b
In this chapter I would like to help you to see another aspect of the Christian life, the aspect of being conformed to the death of Christ. Many Christians are unfamiliar with this phrase in the Bible. However, the Lord has shown us this matter through the past seventy years, beginning with Brother Nee. Brother Nee began to minister in 1922, when he was just nineteen years old. Later in that same year the first local church was established in his hometown of Foochow. Approximately ten years later I joined Brother Nee in the work, and I began to learn of him and to practice under him. Then in 1949 I was sent by him from mainland China to Taiwan. Three years later, in 1952, Brother Nee was put into prison; that terminated his personal ministry among us. For the eighteen years that I was with him, I spoke very few messages that were not directly from his teaching. What Brother Nee taught, I taught. This was known among us for many years.
Then I went to Taiwan and began to work seemingly apart from him, because he was on the mainland and I was on the island of Taiwan. For the first two or three years my ministry remained in the sphere of what Brother Nee had taught, but shortly after 1950 the Lord began to show me something further. This has continued until today, for more than forty years.
In 1962 I came to the United States and began the work of the Lord’s recovery in this country. During the past thirty years there has been even further progress in the seeing of the divine revelation. On mainland China we did not emphasize the term economy. Instead of the word economy, Brother Nee used the word plan. In his books he used the term God’s eternal plan; he never used the word economy. After coming to the United States, I did not have the thought of God’s economy until 1964. In that year I spoke the messages published in the book The Economy of God. It was at that time that I began to use the word economy, which is the anglicized form of the Greek word oikonomia. Later, beginning from 1984, I began to stress God’s dispensing for the accomplishment of God’s economy. In 1990 I spoke strongly on the divine economy and the divine dispensing (see A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing, The Economy and Dispensing of God, and The Divine Dispensing for the Divine Economy). I say this to illustrate how the Lord has shown us the divine things in a progressive way.
As believers, we all have our old man and also the new man (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22, 24). We also can say that we believers of Christ are both the old man and the new man. In Romans 6:6 Paul says that our old man has been crucified with Christ. Then in Ephesians 4:22 and 24 he says that we need to put off the old man and put on the new man. Such a thing has not been thoroughly taught in today’s Christianity, but in the Lord’s recovery this has been ministered to the saints throughout the past sixty-eight years. In 1924 Brother Nee began to speak concerning the old man and the new man. In his book The Spiritual Man he makes this matter more than clear. If we check with our experience, we will realize that at times we are the new man, and at other times we are the old man. Thus, we are both the old man and the new man. After our morning revival we are the new man, but a short time later we may be offended by someone and become the old man. Then after repenting and confessing our failure to obtain the Lord’s forgiveness, we become the new man again. This kind of experience is the story of our Christian life. The Christian life is a life in which we are sometimes the old man and at other times the new man.
God’s economy is to have our old man (the outer man) consumed and our new man (the inner man) renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). Being consumed is not the same as being killed. A person may be killed instantly, but the consuming of our old man is a long process that requires many years. I have been in this process for nearly seventy years; nevertheless, the consuming of my old man has not yet been consummated.
Every day in the church life we are being consumed. This consuming is our being molded, or conformed, to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10c). In making cakes, dough is put into a mold and pressed into the mold. In this way the dough is conformed to the form of the mold. If the mold is in the image of a fish, the dough that is pressed into this mold will be conformed to the shape of a fish. The death of Christ is our mold, and we are the dough. Since the day we were saved, we became the dough. This dough is made of fine flour from wheat (Lev. 2:1; John 12:24; 1 Cor. 10:17). Christ is the fine flour for us to be made the dough.
God has put us all into the mold of Christ’s death. The death to which we are being conformed is not Adam’s death but Christ’s death. The death of Christ is a particular death. Out of millions and even billions of deaths, only Christ’s death is a particular death. From the time that we became dough, God put us into this death (Rom. 6:4), considering this death as a mold. Day by day and year after year God is molding us to conform us to this death.
On the one hand, we are happy in the recovery and in the church life, but on the other hand, deep within we are suffering here. However, we have no way to escape. Every day we are being molded. When we come to the dining table to eat, we may not like the food that has been prepared for us. This is part of the mold, the mold of the death of Christ. Marriage too is a part of this mold. Marriage is used very much by the Lord to conform the married ones to the death of Christ.
According to Romans 8:13, we are conformed to the death of Christ through our putting to death the practices of our body by the Spirit. It is not the body itself but its practices that we must put to death. The body needs to be redeemed (v. 23), but its practices need to be put to death. These practices include not only sinful things but also all things practiced by our body apart from the Spirit.
We must put to death the practices of the body, but we must do it by the Spirit. On the one hand, we must take the initiative to put to death the practices of the body; the Spirit does not do it for us. On the other hand, we should not attempt to deal with our body by relying on our own effort without the power of the Holy Spirit.
The putting to death here is actually our coordinating with the Spirit who indwells us. Inwardly, we must allow Him to make His home in us that He may give life to our mortal body (v. 11). Outwardly, we must put to death the practices of our body that we may live. When we take the initiative to put to death the practices of our body, the Spirit comes in to apply the effectiveness of Christ’s death to those practices, thus killing them.
We are conformed to the death of Christ by bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body (2 Cor. 4:10). The putting to death of Jesus refers to the working of death, the working of the cross, which the Lord Jesus suffered and went through. In our experience this is a kind of suffering, persecution, or dealing that comes upon us for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the Body of Christ, and for the sake of the new covenant ministry. This does not refer to sufferings and troubles that are common to all human beings in the old creation, such as illness or calamity, or to punishment, correction, or discipline suffered because of sins, mistakes, or failure to fulfill one’s responsibility. This putting to death of Jesus consumes our natural man, our outward man, our flesh, so that our inward man may have the opportunity to develop and be renewed (v. 16). The experience of the putting to death of Jesus results in the manifestation of the life of Jesus in our body. The life of Jesus here is the resurrection life, which the Lord Jesus lived and expressed through the working of the cross.
Christ’s death did not take place only in the six hours of His crucifixion. Christ’s death began from His birth and continued to His last breath while He was on the cross. Therefore, the death of Christ was a process that lasted thirty-three and a half years. First, after Christ was born, He was not placed in a comfortable home but was laid in a manger (Luke 2:7). A short time later Herod attempted to kill Him (Matt. 2:7-12, 16-18). Then He escaped to Egypt and became an escapee there (vv. 13-15). Later, His parents wanted to bring Him back to Judea, but because Archelaus the son of Herod was reigning over Judea, Mary and Joseph were afraid to stay there, so they took Jesus and settled in the despised city of Nazareth in the despised region of Galilee (vv. 19-23). There the Lord lived not in a mansion but in a carpenter’s cottage. Although Mary, His mother, was very spiritual and knew the Scriptures very well (Luke 1:46-55), at times even she troubled the Lord Jesus (John 2:3-4). Through this we can see that every day and even every minute of those thirty-three and a half years, Christ was dying.
The death of Christ was the aggregate of all His sufferings. We are not the only ones who are being consumed; Christ took the lead to be consumed. From the time that He was born, He was under the consuming. This consuming was His sufferings, and the totality of His sufferings equals His death. Thus, Christ’s death took place over a period of thirty-three and a half years. The death with the greatest suffering is the death that occurs over a long period of time. Christ’s death was such a suffering death. We, His believers, are in the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10b). To be in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings is to participate in Christ’s sufferings.
The reason for Christ’s death is twofold. First, Christ came to do the will of the Father (Heb. 10:7-9a). Whenever we do the will of God, the entire world, including Satan, men, and even the demons, will oppose us (John 15:18-19). Because we are people who are doing the will of God, every day we suffer. The Christian life is not a life of pleasures. On the contrary, the Christian life is a life of suffering because we are doing the will of God.
Today there is some division in the Lord’s recovery. Some of the dear ones who are with us are making divisions. Because of the contagious germs of division within these ones, it is not wise for us to contact them. According to Romans 16:17 and Titus 3:10-11, we must turn away from the divisive ones. This kind of turning away is like the quarantining of a contagiously sick person. Because some of the saints were closely related to the divisive ones, their carrying out of this kind of quarantining is a suffering to them. Second John 10 says that we should not even greet those who are heretical in the teaching concerning Christ’s divine person. Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 5:11 tells us that we should not even eat with a brother who is living in sin. Because of their close relationship with the divisive ones in the recovery, some of the saints have said that they cannot quarantine them. However, even though Miriam was Aaron’s sister, he still had to quarantine her during the period of her leprosy (Num. 12:10-15). Hence, even to exercise to practice the proper quarantining is a suffering. We suffer because we do not like to see these dissenting ones separated from us. Nevertheless, if we do not quarantine them, we will not be doing the will of God, for we will annul the testimony of the oneness of the Body.
The Christian life is a suffering life because we must do the will of God. On the one hand, to do the will of God concerning our relationship with God is food to us. In John 4:34 the Lord Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.” On the other hand, to do the will of God is a suffering.
The second reason for Christ’s death is that He had to deny His human life in order to live by the Father’s life. Like us, the Lord Jesus had a human life. When He was on the earth, He did not live by His human life; rather, He denied His human life to live by the Father’s divine life. First, we are people who do God’s will. Second, like the Lord Jesus, we are people who do not live by our own life but by God’s life. This too is a real suffering.
In every situation related to our daily living, we need to ask ourselves whether we are living by the divine life or by our natural life. If we do this, quite often we will realize that we are living by our natural life, our self. At such times we need to go to the cross (Luke 9:23). To go to the cross is to be conformed to the death of Christ. Even while eating our meals, we need to be conformed to the death of Christ. At times we may be tempted to complain about the kind or quantity of food that we are given to eat. However, to complain is to live by the self, not by God’s life. We are those who have been chosen, called, and sanctified by God to do His will. Doing the will of God is altogether a suffering to our natural life. Moreover, we are those who have been saved, regenerated, and separated to live not by our natural life but by the divine life. It is not a matter of whether we are doing something right or wrong; that is not the issue. The issue is this: by what life are we doing it, by our natural life or by the divine life? To deny our natural life is a suffering to us. Every day and in every matter we struggle and fight with others to get what we desire. We like to do things by ourselves. To do something not by our life but by the life of another is a suffering. This is the Christian life.
