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First Corinthians 2:2 says, “I did not determine to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified.” Verse 18 of chapter 1 says, “The word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Also, verse 23 says, “We preach Christ crucified.” From these few verses we can see that Christ and the cross are inseparable.
God’s purpose is that Christ would mingle Himself with us to be our life and nature, that the two — Christ and we — would become one. Christ and we being one is the issue of the mingling of the two — Christ and His believers. We may say that everyone who is truly saved is two yet one — having two lives, two natures, and two personalities. This is why many times in our experience we live a life of contradictions. We experience having two persons — one within and one without. The person within is Christ, and the person without is our self. Sometimes the inward One will not approve of what the outward one wants. Other times the outward one will not go along with what the inward One intends to do. Thus, there is often a conflict within us. The person without clearly resists the will of the person within, and the person within obviously condemns the intentions of the person without. This shows us that every saved one has a dual life and dual personality; moreover, it proves that God is truly in us.
The crux of the matter is this: do we want God or ourselves to gain the victory? Do we want God or ourselves to be defeated? Do we want the inward person or the outward person to have a free way? This is a crucial question. If we allow our outward person to have a free way, that is, if we allow our self to gain the victory, ten years from now we will still be the same; we will still be what we were originally. However, if we allow our inward person to have a free way in us, that is, if we allow God to gain the victory, then God will be expressed through us. Consequently, people will be able to meet God in us. Thus, the crucial question is whether it is God who has the ground to rule and direct in us or we who rule and direct ourselves. Herein lie our victory, our holiness, our experience of all spiritual realities, and even our growth in life in the Lord.
If we allow our inward person to be frustrated and our outward person to prosper, we as Christians will definitely be defeated, and it will be impossible for us to be holy, to grow in life, and to be spiritual. If we do not live in and by the Lord, we surely will not live for the Lord. Even though we will still have the Lord’s life, we will live in, by, and for ourselves.
This kind of living prevents the Lord from having a way in us. Furthermore, it causes Him to be frustrated, just as He was frustrated and restricted in the flesh in His incarnation. Hence, He said, “How I am pressed” (Luke 12:50). Today, however, He is pressed not in His flesh but in you and me. Previously, He was pressed, constrained, and bound in His flesh, which He put upon Himself in His incarnation. Therefore, He had to pass through death that the life within Him could be released. Now, however, we cause Him to be constrained; we give Him such a problem. Our conduct, our disposition, our naturalness, our oldness, and all that comes from our old life and our old nature cause Him to be bound, pressed, and restricted. Therefore, we need to be broken and to pass through death.
If we preach the gospel merely with words, our preaching will not be effective. Christ cannot be readily released by our preaching the gospel merely with our mouth. We need to be broken; we need the mark of death on us. Since we are saved, Christ lives in us, yet this Christ who is within us cannot be released because He has been bound, concealed, and covered within us. The problem lies in our natural self, which needs to be broken, to pass through death, and to be dealt with by death.
The Lord Jesus said, “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). This word applies not only to the Lord Jesus but also to us. Today we have the Lord’s life in us, so we are the many grains of wheat. Yet we are unable to multiply, unable to bear much fruit, and unable to produce many grains because we have not been broken through death.
Many of us are very stable, steady, and whole. Many times, however, our stability, steadiness, and wholeness are our problem. For example, although we may have been saved for years, we may not have any scars or any evidence of the work of the cross on us, and our being may still be intact, whole, steady, and unchanged. The only difference may be that before we were saved, we were wild, careless, and misbehaving. After being saved, however, we are no longer wild and careless but rather well behaved. This is merely a change in behavior.
There are two kinds of change that can occur in a Christian. One is a change in outward conduct, and the other is a change in the inward life. A change in outward behavior means that in the past you did whatever you liked, acting loosely and without any restraint. But now, since you have been saved, you feel that your former conduct would not befit a Christian, and therefore you need to be more cautious. However, this is merely an outward change; your inner being is still the same. You are still secure and firm, stable and steady, whole and intact. You are still your original person. Our problem is not in our outward behavior but in our disposition, our natural life, and our old self.
Christianity today exhorts people to improve their outward behavior, but what God pays attention to is far higher than this. God is not after a mere change in man’s outward behavior; rather, He desires man to have an inward transformation in life. He does not want us to merely change our outward living. He wants us to be broken in our inward disposition. The outward change of behavior gains the praises of man, but it cannot please God. What God desires and what pleases Him is not the improvement of our outward behavior but the transformation in life and the breaking of our inward disposition. Mere behavioral improvement makes us good persons but not spiritual persons. In order to be spiritual, we need to be broken inwardly. Without being broken, without suffering any blows, and without passing through death, we can be persons who are whole but not persons who are full of life.
What others see in your outward behavioral improvement is your morality but not your spirituality. Many times, just as your immorality can become your covering, so your morality can also become your covering. The unbelievers require us to have a high morality, which is reasonable and right. Yet God’s requirement in us is much higher than this. God requires that we be broken and crushed so that the Christ within us — the glorious Christ, the Christ of holiness — may be lived out through us.
There are a few kinds of Christians. One kind is the degraded Christian. From the human perspective, Christians of this kind do not look like Christians at all because they live and walk just like the unbelievers. Such Christians are degraded Christians. Another kind are the well-behaved Christians. Formerly, such ones were loose, but now they behave properly; formerly they did evil, but now they do good. In man’s eyes these Christians are above the standard. In God’s eyes, however, they are still below the standard, because what God is after is neither degraded Christians nor Christians who are above the standard.
What God desires is not just that we would be delivered from sins but that Christ would be lived out from within us. This is not a matter of being good or evil, proper or improper, or moral or immoral. Rather, it is a matter of Christ being lived out from within us. We all know that after we are saved, we have God in us as our life. However, is it we who live, or is it God who lives? Is it we who are lived out, or is it God who is lived out? The crux of the matter is whether or not we are willing to be broken and to pass through death. If we are not willing to be broken or to pass through death, God will have no way to live out from within us. However, if we are willing to be broken and to die, God will be able to live out from within us. According to the Bible, to deny the self is to pass through death and the breaking.
We should not merely take care of our human needs; we should also take care of God’s need. When the Lord Jesus was incarnated, He was restricted, constrained, and unable to be released from His human body. However, through His death He was released. The shell of His human body was broken through death so that the divinity within Him, the Christ within Him, could be released. The issue of this release was that God’s life could enter into many people and into us as well. However, immediately after His life came into us, He was confined and constrained in us.
Many people observe Christmas in order to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but they have never experienced the birth of Jesus. What is the experience of the birth of Jesus? When a person is saved, God comes into him. This is the Lord Jesus’ being born in him, the experience of the birth of Jesus. However, whenever Jesus Christ is born in a person, He encounters a problem. He is confined in the saved one. He was born as a Nazarene, and this Nazarene was His problem, His constraint. This constraint needed the breaking, the splitting, of the cross. When the Lord suffered the blow of the cross, His being was broken and split apart, and the life was released from within Him. However, when this life entered into Peter, John, and you and me, it encountered the same problem, the same constraint. We all can testify that Christ has been born in us. However, we do not have the assurance that Christ is being lived out or released from us.
Christ does not need whole vessels; instead, He needs broken vessels. This is because only broken vessels can be channels of living water. Whole vessels can only be cisterns of dead water. The biggest problem today is that it is hard to find any wounds or scars in most Christians. Most of us do not have any wounds, scars, marks of death, or experiences of the cross. Even though we have been saved and truly have Christ’s life in us, this life has no way to come out. The reason is not that our behavior is too poor or too good but that we are too whole and too impregnable. Because we have no wounds, Christ has no way to be released from within us.
Suppose a person is quick-tempered and appears arrogant. It would be relatively easy for such a one to become humble because he may often examine himself and condemn his irritability. Suppose another person is meek by nature and apparently humble. It would be harder for such a one to know himself. Instead, it would be easy for him to become proud before God. He may think that the other person is irritable and arrogant, while he is meek and humble. What is this? This is real pride. Sometimes when we go to visit people, the wife says, “My husband is too quick.” What she means is that her husband is quick but she is not and that she is meek but her husband is troublesome. However, she is actually more troublesome before God than her husband. It is hard for many of the saints who have a number of good points to make any spiritual progress. This is due to the fact that they have listened to many messages not for themselves but for others.
Some of the saints do not seem to have a bad temper; they are as gentle as lambs. However, they always listen to messages not for themselves but for others. When they hear a word concerning breaking, they think, “Brother Chang is quick-tempered, so he surely needs to be broken. Sister Wang is not good either, so she also needs to be broken.” It never occurs to them that those who are meek need to be broken even more than those who are quick-tempered.
It is often easier for God to deal with a stubborn person than with a pliable person. Someone may seem to be so pliable, like a rubber ball, that God has no way to break him. When a certain situation arises, he does not care. When he is dealt with by his supervisor, he does not care. When he is dealt with by some of his family members, he cares even less. Like a rubber ball, he bounces back whenever he is hit, and he bounces up whenever he is thrown down. This kind of person is indifferent toward everything; he is unbreakable. He cannot be broken by one person, nor by two, three, or even five persons. However, if he were a glass, he could be broken with a single stroke.
If a sister cannot be broken by her husband, her son, or her daughter-in-law, people will praise her, saying that she is really spiritual because she cannot be broken by anyone. However, we must realize that because she is not broken and cannot be broken, Christ has no way to live out from her. What she lives out is her whole self, her smooth and refined self, but not Christ. Christ has no way to live out of her.
Neither our kindness, our good deeds, nor our morality can represent Christ. Only Christ Himself can represent Christ. Nothing that we have, even if it is good, can represent Christ. The progress of a Christian’s spiritual life does not depend on how much he has changed; rather, it depends on how much he has been broken and to what stature Christ has grown in him. In other words, the growth of a Christian hinges on his being broken and Christ’s increasing in him.
No one who is a good vessel in God’s hand can be whole; rather, he must be full of scars and wounds. A certain sister may have believed in the Lord for over a decade, yet because her life has been easy and smooth, she has no wounds at all. She got married to a husband who is considerate, she gave birth to a son who is obedient, and she found a job that is easy and smooth. Everyone says that she is very fortunate; actually, it is not so. Many times the work that God carries out in someone who is truly in His hand is the work of breaking, smiting, and splitting. Jesus the Nazarene, the One who was the most acceptable to God, also experienced many sufferings while He was on the earth. He was called “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3), and He was full of bruises and wounds. Hence, a person who is in God’s hand, if he is highly regarded or esteemed by God, will have many wounds as the result of God’s work in him. What kind of work is this? This is the work of breaking. If God favors us, His hand will work in us in many ways, and we will thus have many scars and wounds. These scars and wounds will become outlets for the flow of living water.
In the eighteenth century John Wesley was a famous evangelist in England, who was a useful servant of God and was powerful in the preaching of the gospel. However, his wife was a suffering to him. One day when he was preaching, many in the audience were touched. Suddenly, his wife ran in and shouted, “What are you doing here? Can I not take care of your food?” History tells us that at the time of her death, she still had not been saved or changed. If you had asked John Wesley why God had not changed his wife, he might have told you, “If God had changed my wife, I would have lost my power.” The power of a Christian lies not in prosperity but in adversity, not in favorable circumstances but in unfavorable circumstances, in situations from which he cannot escape.
In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul tells us that he had a thorn in his flesh, and concerning this, he entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from him (v. 8). Yet, instead of answering his prayer, the Lord allowed the thorn to remain in his body. The Lord’s purpose was that Paul might experience His sufficient grace (v. 9) and realize that he needed to be broken. What the Lord meant was that if Paul did not have this thorn in him, which caused him to feel wounded and sorrowful, Christ would have no way to flow out of him. Perhaps we are afraid of suffering, but please bear in mind that the cross is the outlet for the Lord’s life. All those who have received the grace of the Lord can tell Him, “O Lord, if I am not broken, You will have no way to come out. For You to come out from me, I have to receive Your breaking.” The cross is the outlet for the Lord’s life. He who has the breaking of the cross has the outlet of life, and he who has wounds has the outflow of the Lord’s life.
In Malaysia all the rubber tree farmers know that the only way the latex can flow out from a rubber tree is if it is cut open. Not only so, they know that the bigger the cut, the more the outflow. This is a very appropriate portrait of us, describing how we Christians first must be broken and cut open, and then the element of Christ, the life of Christ, can flow out from the cut. Hence, many times the more we are in darkness, in affliction, in hardship, and in a place where there is no sunlight, the more Christ’s life will flow out through us.
Therefore, we see that the problem that God’s life in us faces is not the world, sins, or human relationships but our natural man. Of course, the world, sins, and human relationships are hindering factors, but they are very minor hindrances; they are like garments that can be taken off. Inside a Christian, however, is a more subjective problem — our self, our natural life. This problem needs breaking. Many times there is no need for us to be broken in order to get rid of sins, the world, and human ties, but to get rid of our self, our naturalness, and our disposition, we need the breaking of the cross.
In 1 Corinthians 2:2 Paul says, “I did not determine to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified.” What Paul knew was of two aspects: one was Jesus Christ, and the other was Jesus Christ crucified. To Paul, if there had been only Christ and no cross, he would have had nothing to preach. The degree to which the cross breaks us determines the extent to which Christ is released through us. The degree to which the cross works in us determines the extent to which Christ is expressed through us. Our very being is an enemy of Christ and a hindrance to God, and it needs to be dealt with by the cross. We have truly been saved, but Christ has no way to come out from within us. Christ cannot be released from within us because we have become a hindrance to Him. The problem today is not with others but with you and me. May God have mercy on us to show us this vision. This vision has two aspects, two emphases: one is Christ’s being in us, and the other is the breaking of the cross.
We often think that sins and the world are the most difficult things for Christians to deal with. Hence, we assume that as long as we have thoroughly dealt with sins and are absolutely delivered from the world, then we are good Christians. We must see, however, that although some people have already dealt with sins thoroughly and have been delivered from the world absolutely, there is still a problem in them. This problem is that they have not yet been broken. For example, a bottle may contain some water, yet the water cannot flow out. You may say that the water is stopped because the bottle is too dirty, but after you wash the bottle, the water still cannot flow out. Or you may say that it is because of the decorative patterns on the bottle, but even after you remove the patterns, the water still cannot flow out. However, if you break the bottle, the water will flow out. In the same way, even though you may have gotten rid of the filthiness and the worldly flavor in you, life still cannot flow out through you. The problem lies in the fact that you have not been broken.
Hence, we need to ask God to have mercy on us to show us that the cross must do a breaking work in us. When we were first saved, we thought that if we could deal with our sins and the world and do good deeds, we would be good Christians. However, this is not adequate. God’s goal is that we would be broken in order that Christ may come out through us. This is why Paul says that he did not determine to know anything except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified. The cross is seeking an outlet in us for Christ. Many Christians have truly been saved and are zealous for the Lord. They have been delivered not only from sins but also from the world. Yet they do not make any progress in their spiritual condition, and the Lord still does not have a way out through them. Therefore, it is not our zeal, our dealing with sins, or our getting rid of the world that gives the Lord a way out. Rather, the greatest frustration that Christ encounters in us is our self. Even though we may preach the gospel successfully and bring thousands upon thousands of people to be saved, Christ still may not have a way out through us. Christ will have a way out only when our being, our self, has passed through the breaking and the dealing of the cross. Only through this kind of breaking will Christ have a way out of us.
We have said many times that we have to follow the Lord to take the way of the cross. But what does this mean? This means that we must receive the breaking of the cross. What is the meaning of the cross? The Bible shows that when the Lord was hanged on the cross, He was crucified with the human body that He had put on. In God’s eyes, when He was crucified, all those who belong to Him were also crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:6). If you ask a Jew, “Who was crucified?” he would say, “A Nazarene, the son of a carpenter.” If you ask a Gentile, “Who was crucified?” he would say, “A man of universal love was sacrificed on the cross.” If you ask a Christian, “Who was crucified?” he would say, “My Savior.” This is the reply of a newly saved one. An advanced Christian, however, would say, “My Savior and I. I was crucified with my Savior.” Moreover, all things apart from God — the soulish things, the sinful things, all the created things, and everything of the old creation — were crucified with Christ.
Genesis 6 is the story of Noah building the ark. The ark’s passing through the flood signifies our passing through death. However, it was not that Noah simply passed through the flood but that Noah was in the ark, and when the ark passed through the flood, Noah and his whole household also passed through the flood. From God’s perspective we have already died on the cross. Everyone who belongs to the Lord has already been crucified with Christ. This is a fact, not a doctrine. In God’s eyes you and I are already dead, already finished. The cross has done the terminating work. For us to have such an experience, however, we need light and revelation. We need light, vision, and seeing in order to experience Christ as our life within; in like manner, we also need light, vision, and seeing in order to experience our co-crucifixion with Christ. May God have mercy on us to show us not only that Christ is our life but also that we have already been crucified with Him. To be terminated is an attitude, not a mere doctrine. This requires light and revelation.
The cross is first a fact, then a revelation, and finally an experience. We have already heard the word of the cross, but we still need the light to reveal to us its reality. After we see it, we will joyfully say, “O Lord, I praise You. That which I never saw, I now see. I have already died on the cross. What a rest! What a release! What a deliverance!” On the one hand, death is not a good thing, but on the other hand, death is very wonderful. Once we die, all the burdens of our lifetime are swept away; hence, one death solves all problems. Some people may exhort us to crucify ourselves. However, who can crucify himself? It is impossible to crucify yourself. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus was God’s work and was under God’s ruling. God gathered the Romans, the Jews, and the Greeks, and He crucified the Lord Jesus through those who were against God. Jesus the Nazarene did not crucify Himself; rather, He was crucified under the sovereign arrangement of God.
Due to the fact that it is impossible for a person to crucify himself, God gives man the light concerning the cross, showing him first the fact of the cross, then the revelation of the cross, and finally the experience of the cross. What is the experience of the cross? It is when our faithful God arranges our circumstances to prepare the cross for us in our daily living. Our family, our physical body, and all the people, events, and things around us coordinate together to become the cross that works in us in order to break us. Hence, after we have seen the fact of the cross, we have to be prepared, because God’s hand will come in to do the breaking and smiting work in us.
For those who love the Lord and are pursuing the Lord, herein lies the way to follow the Lord. According to God’s view, we are already on the cross. Today God is speaking such a word to us. The day will come — perhaps today, tomorrow, in a year, or in ten years — when we will be willing to receive the breaking of the cross. We will be willing to allow God’s hand to arrange our circumstances to carry out the breaking work in us so that we may have scars and wounds in us for Christ’s life to flow out through us. Therefore, one who is willing to receive the cross is graced and blessed. He is also a channel of living water through which Christ may flow. Such a one, just as Paul says, does not know anything among the saints except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified. Without Christ, there is no life; without the cross, there is no way. Christ and His cross issue in life and the way of life for God to flow out of us.
