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Scripture Reading: 1 Tim. 1:14; John 1:17; Eph. 3:8; Rom. 5:17, 21; Eph. 3:17a; 2 Pet. 1:5-8; 1 Thes. 1:3, 5, 7-8; Rom. 1:8; Luke 18:8; 1 Pet. 1:8-9; Rev. 20:4, 6; Matt. 25:21, 23
III. The faith of the believers:
X. Faith is the first issue of the Lord’s superabounding grace — 1 Tim. 1:14:
1. The superabounding grace of the Lord is the processed and consummated Triune God to be within us our enjoyment of the divine unsearchable riches in Christ — John 1:17; Eph. 3:8.
2. The enjoyment of the Lord’s superabounding grace issues in all the matters related to the divine life — Rom. 5:17, 21.
3. The first issue is faith that links us to the unsearchable riches of the Divine Trinity and that is the source of all the virtues of a believer — Eph. 3:17a; 2 Pet. 1:5-8.
Y. Faith is the indicator of the believers’ life in the enjoyment of the Divine Trinity — 1 Thes. 1:3, 5, 7-8; Rom. 1:8:
1. The faith of the Thessalonians was highly appraised by the apostle — 1 Thes. 1:3.
2. Their faith in its much assurance became an indicator of their abundant enjoyment of life in Christ — v. 5.
3. Their faith made them a pattern to the believing ones in Christ and became a part of the preaching of the believing ones in Christ — vv. 7-8.
Z. The linking faith qualifies the overcomers to meet Christ in His triumphant return — Luke 18:8:
1. Christ expects to find, at His coming back, the ones who live by the linking faith.
2. The believers who live an overcoming and exulting life by the linking faith will be found by Christ at His return as the treasures ready to receive the salvation of their souls as the end (result) of their faith — 1 Pet. 1:8-9.
3. They will be rewarded by Christ with the co-kingship and the top enjoyment of the divine life with Him in the millennium — Rev. 20:4, 6; Matt. 25:21, 23.
Prayer: Lord, how we praise You that You are the faithful One. Lord, You make us believe in You and trust in You. Again, Lord, we are here with You. Thank You that all the days You have been with us moment by moment. So we trust in You for the speaking and for the listening. Be our speaking and be our listening. We are not, but You are. Grant us the utterance, the up-to-date utterance, the new utterance, the instant and the constant utterance. Amen.
In this chapter we would like to fellowship three more points in our crystallization-study of the essence of the faith of the believers. This makes twenty-six points that we will have covered concerning faith.
First Timothy 1:14 says, “The grace of our Lord superabounded with faith and love in Christ Jesus.” Faith is the first issue of the Lord’s superabounding grace. Now we need to see what this grace is.
We need to use a number of adjectives to describe grace. Grace is not only super but also abounding. Grace is superabounding. Romans 5:17 speaks of receiving the abundance of grace, and verse 21 speaks of grace reigning. John 1:14 says that the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace. Then verses 16 and 17 say, “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace...came through Jesus Christ.” This superabounding grace is not some thing or matter but the Triune God Himself, the processed and consummated Triune God.
The Triune God’s being processed and consummated is in the divine revelation of the Scriptures, but it is not in the theology of today’s Christianity. God today is no more “raw.” God has been processed and consummated. To be processed means that He has gone through, step by step, one process after another. His being consummated implies His attainment. After all the processes, He has been consummated, that is, He has attained to His completion. Before the Triune God was incarnated, He was only God, without humanity. But just about two thousand years ago, God became a man. Two thousand years in God’s eyes is like two days (2 Pet. 3:8). Just about two days ago, the Triune God suddenly came into the womb of a virgin, and eventually God was born of her to be a man. This indicates strongly that our Triune God has been processed to become a man.
Furthermore, He passed through a long process of human living for thirty-three and a half years on the earth. What a wonder that God lived on the earth! He lived most of His life in the small town of Nazareth. I went there twice purposely to see where God lived, to see the streets where God walked. When I walked through Nazareth, I said, “Lord, You are a Nazarene; I am too. I follow You.” This was part of the process through which the Lord passed. He also passed through an all-inclusive death and an all-surpassing resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). This processed Triune God is now within us to be the enjoyment in us of the divine unsearchable riches in Christ. Paul says that he was a minister to minister the unsearchable riches of Christ to people (Eph. 3:8). These unsearchable riches today are the riches of the processed, consummated Triune God.
When we enjoy the processed and consummated Triune God, this enjoyment issues in something. Even today, when you enjoy food, this enjoyment issues in something. Every day we eat three meals. After eating, we are full of strength, and this is the issue of our eating. The enjoyment of the Lord’s superabounding grace issues in all the matters related to the divine life (Rom. 5:17, 21). It even issues in the kingship so that we can be made kings. The overcomers will be in the thousand-year kingdom to be co-kings with Christ (Rev. 20:4, 6). Today we also are kings. The brothers are the real kings, and the sisters are the real queens. We can say this based upon Romans 5:17 and 21. These verses tell us that those who receive the abundance of grace will reign in life and that grace can reign. Our being kings and queens is the superabounding, top issue of the enjoyment of the superabounding grace.
The first issue of the Lord’s superabounding grace is faith that links us to the unsearchable riches of the Divine Trinity and that is the source of all the virtues of a believer (Eph. 3:17a). This is revealed in 2 Peter 1:5-8. Faith is the initial virtue. Then following faith come other virtues, until the issue reaches love. Faith is the first issue, and love is the last one.
At one time, we were sinners having no faith at all. But one day we heard the gospel. The sanctifying Spirit, the seeking Spirit, worked within us to show us Christ. He showed us how good and how gracious Christ is. That stirred up something within us to appreciate Christ. When we appreciated Christ a little bit, He entered into us as the superabounding grace. Then right away this Christ, the superabounding grace, issued first in faith. We wanted to believe in Him, making Him everything and putting ourselves away as nothing.
Soon after Christ came into me, I said, “Lord, from today You are everything to me. I am nothing.” This was our experience when we received Christ. From that day faith as the first issue of the superabounding grace became something so living in us in order to link us with the rich Triune God. The more we are linked, the more faith we have, and the more faith we have, the more enjoyment we have. This is the way for us to enjoy the processed and consummated Triune God’s unsearchable riches.
We may say that we enjoy Christ and enjoy the Divine Trinity, but what kind of indication can people see in us of this enjoyment? Faith is the indicator of the believers’ life in the enjoyment of the Divine Trinity (1 Thes. 1:3, 5, 7-8; Rom. 1:8). Paul wrote a letter to the saints in Thessalonica, and he said that he remembered their work of faith. Their work of faith became such a strong factor in their lives that people everywhere were talking about their faith. This means that faith became a strong indicator of the Thessalonians’ enjoyment of the Divine Trinity. Paul said that they became a pattern to all the ones who believe in Christ. Their faith became such an indicator of their life in the enjoyment of Christ that they became a pattern to all the believing ones.
“Those who believe” are the believing ones. We should try our best not to use the nickname Christian (see 1 Pet. 4:16, footnote 1, Recovery Version). Instead, we should use the name believer. I am a believer. There is a big difference between being a believer and being a mere Christian. There are millions of Christians today, but how many of these are believing ones? Quite often we may ask someone, “Are you a Christian?” The person may say that he is a Christian from a Christian family but that he is not like a Christian because he does not have faith. In his daily life he is everything and he does everything. This is not faith. Faith is to believe that God is and I am not.
If you came to me to ask me if I am a Christian, I would say instead that I am a believer in Christ. There is a big difference between saying that you are a Christian and saying that you are a believer. There are many Christians who do not believe. But by God’s mercy today, I believe. When we believe, this means we believe that God is everything and we are nothing. Today God does everything. I am doing nothing. Today my God, my Christ, is everything to me, and I become nothing. I work, but it is not I but Christ who works in me. Faith is the indicator of the believing ones who have God in Christ and nothing else.
In Christianity faith is for performing big careers. This is not only absolutely wrong but also absolutely devilish. Faith is not for performing any career. Faith is to live God and to annul yourself. You have to be annulled. How could you carry out some career for yourself? Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says, “If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (v. 2). Strictly speaking, with us, the believing ones, faith is not for us to accomplish careers, to accomplish a big work.
In the early days of my ministry, I heard quite often, “You have so many people, but you don’t do anything. You don’t have a school, a hospital, or a university. What are you doing here?” Actually, in a sense, we are doing nothing. Recently, someone asked me, “Do you have some kind of plan?” I said, “Brother, we never have any plan.” Dear saints, especially the young ones, do not think that faith is for us to accomplish big things. Faith is for us to live God, to express God, and to minister God to people.
Many of the missions and denominations that came to China set up universities and hospitals. They did many works, but not many ministered Christ to others. Those in the Pentecostal movement say that if you have the faith, you can do great works. The Pentecostal movement began from the middle of the last century. But you cannot find a group of Pentecostal people who minister Christ as life to people. They promote the performance of miracles, but the apostle Paul did not do this. Paul says that he was sent to minister Christ in His unsearchable riches to people.
Right after I was saved, I was seeking to know the Bible. I met a Brethren group who knew the Bible, and I heard many of their teachings. Later, I met Brother Watchman Nee. I realized that Brother Nee’s teaching was to minister Christ as life. He was not like the Brethren who ministered teachings, types, and prophecies. I learned a lot from them because they were good Bible teachers. But I never heard them give one message on Christ as life. Then when I met Brother Nee, I found out the difference. I am sharing this to impress us that faith is not for us to perform something. That is wrong.
After we moved to Anaheim, we began to be opposed, and I met with one of the leading opposers. He asked me how many people we had among us with doctor’s degrees. I told him that we did not have many. He said that he had one hundred people with doctor’s degrees working with him. His boast meant nothing. If it took a doctor’s degree to serve the Lord in His ministry of life, then Peter, Paul, and even Jesus Himself would have been disqualified. None of them had any formal degree. Watchman Nee and I finished only the second year of a university. He studied at a school established by the British, and I studied at a school established by the American Presbyterians from Southern California. Neither of us had a degree.
Faith is not for us to perform something. Of course, in the Lord’s ministry, there is an amount of work. But we should not pay more attention to the work and less attention to life. If we do this, we are through. At Stanford all the professors have a doctor’s degree, but that is not the church. The church is composed of groups of “fishermen.” In 1 Corinthians 1:26-28 Paul says that in the church at Corinth there were “not many wise according to flesh, not many powerful, not many wellborn. But God has chosen the foolish things [men — the same in the following] of the world that He might shame those who are wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world that He might shame the things that are strong, and the lowborn things of the world and the despised things God has chosen, things which are not, that He might bring to nought the things which are.” In 1943 we had a migration of seventy saints with their families from Chefoo to Inner Mongolia. Not one had even finished high school. Some of them were shoemakers. Eventually, within one winter, they turned more than forty Swedish China Inland Mission churches to the recovery. This is the operation of life.
Do not think that you can do something, so you are somebody. You should say, “Lord, I don’t want to be anybody, to be anything; You be my everything. You are, but I am not.” This is faith. Within you there must be the indicator of this linking faith. When people contact you, they should see that there is a strong factor indicating that you are linked with God. Your faith must be an indicator to make you a pattern. Do not learn from anyone how to do things. That means nothing. But you have to learn from someone how to live God, how to live Christ, how to magnify Christ, and how to minister Christ to others. Dear saints, this is what we should have. Wherever we go and wherever we are, we should bear an indication that we are nothing, but God in Christ is everything to us. We should live such a life.
Faith is the indicator of the believers’ life in the enjoyment of the Divine Trinity. The faith of the Thessalonians was highly appraised by the apostle (1 Thes. 1:3). Their faith in its much assurance became an indicator of their abundant enjoyment of life in Christ (v. 5). You may perform big miracles, yet people cannot see in you any indication that you are an enjoyer of God. Both the Thessalonians’ and the Romans’ faith made them a pattern to the believing ones in Christ and became a part of the preaching of the believing ones in Christ (vv. 7-8; Rom. 1:8). In ancient times they not only preached Christ but also preached the faith of the believing ones.
The linking faith is the divine requirement for the overcomers to meet Christ in His triumphant return. This is based upon Luke 18:8, where the Lord said, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Today the entire world is unbelieving. Where is faith today among not only the Gentiles, the pagans, but also among the Jews, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Pentecostal people? If the Lord came today, where could He find faith? Nearly no one on this earth is believing. But by His mercy, in the past years, through Brother Nee’s leadership, we have been brought into a situation of learning not to trust in ourselves for anything, but to believe that our God is everything.
I hope that when the Lord comes back, He can find you and me as the believing ones, who always trust in Him, not in ourselves, and who always have no assurance in ourselves. Our full assurance is in Him. This is the linking faith. This faith qualifies the overcomers. It is the divine requirement for you and me as the overcomers to meet Christ in His triumphant return.
Eventually, the Lord will find some, a small number of overcomers, who are living by the linking faith when He returns. In the ancient times Elijah pleaded with God against Israel by saying, “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars; and I am left alone, and they are seeking my life” (Rom. 11:3). Then the Lord told Elijah, “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (v. 4). Look at today’s world. It is hard to see any believing ones. But here and there some believing ones are hidden.
I believe that in comparison, there are more believing ones hidden in the recovery than in other places. People may say concerning us, “They can do nothing. They only say, ‘O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah.’ When they come together they say, ‘Lord Jesus, I love You. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Amen.’ This is all that they can do.” This is because we are only for Christ Himself. We are not for big miracles, big works, or big careers. When the Lord comes back, He is expecting to find such people. Christ expects to find, at His coming back, the ones who live by the linking faith. Christ expects to find us as His hidden overcomers.
The believers who live an overcoming and exulting life by the linking faith will be found by Christ at His return as the treasures ready to receive the salvation of their souls as the end (result) of their faith (1 Pet. 1:8-9). In a sense, we do not know anything or do anything. We only know how to overcome and how to exult by the linking faith. Those who live by faith today will eventually receive the end of their faith, that is, the salvation of their souls. We have received a salvation, but this is just the initial salvation. The progressing stage of salvation is the stage of transformation. The completing stage of salvation is the stage of glorification. If we live by the linking faith in the progressing stage to be transformed, we will be kings with Christ in the millennial kingdom.
We are now making ourselves ready for that day. To make ourselves ready is to become an overcomer, who is always linked by the living faith with the Triune God. Every day, morning and evening, you have to say, “Lord, I praise You that from morning to evening, I am linked to You. There is a living faith that links me with You so that I live You, walk with You, and live with You. I am one with You, just as You are one with me.” This is the qualification for you to be an overcomer, to meet Christ at His coming back.
The overcomers will be rewarded by Christ with the co-kingship and the top enjoyment of the divine life with Him in the millennium (Rev. 20:4, 6). The Lord will then say to His overcomers, “Well done, good and faithful slave...Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21, 23). This is just like what J. N. Darby once said: “O the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing nothing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.”
The three points covered in this chapter are essentially crucial to a believer who lives the life of a Christ-pursuing God-man that he may be one of the overcomers whom the Lord desires to have for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy in the last days as the consummation of this age. Right after we have received Christ into us as our Savior and life by being attracted by Him, the divine grace, which is the consummated Triune God, begins to abound in us. The first issue of the abounding of the divine grace is the linking faith, which is the living God moving in us to link us to all His unsearchable riches. This linking faith is the measure according to which God dispenses into us His superabounding grace to meet our need (Rom. 12:3). Such a faith is the indicator of the living of the Christ-pursuing God-man, which is the real expression of the consummated God in Christ as His embodiment for the building up of the organic Body of Christ to be the organism of the consummated Triune God. So, such a faith constitutes the overcomers for the satisfaction of Christ’s desire. Thus, this overcoming faith qualifies the Lord’s overcomers, who are waiting for and eagerly expecting the coming back of the Lord, who will find them at His coming as men of His linking faith (Luke 18:8), as treasures for His kingdom in the thousand years of His reign.
This is the ultimate fulfillment of Romans 1:17, that “the righteous shall have life and live by faith.” The righteous shall have life and live by faith! This word should be the banner of God’s eternal economy, which is altogether a matter in faith (1 Tim. 1:4).
The righteous, those who are absolutely right before God and before man, shall have life, the divine life. Then, how can we, the vile sinners, have the divine life of the righteous God according to His righteousness? By faith! It is by faith, which is the moving and working God in Christ who puts us into Christ as our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), that we, the sinners, have the divine life according to God’s righteousness judicially. By this linking faith we are linked to God in Christ to participate in all that the all-inclusive Christ is, has, and has attained to, for the producing of the organic members of Christ to constitute and build up His organic Body, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the enlargement and expression of the eternal Triune God in His unlimited glory in the mysterious mingling of divinity with humanity for eternity (Rev. 21:2—22:5). This is the eternal fulfillment of the gospel in Romans 1:17, that “the righteous shall have life and live by faith.”
