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Scripture Reading: Gal. 2:20b; 2 Cor. 5:7; Luke 18:8; Heb. 12:2; 1 Tim. 1:4b; Eph. 3:17a; Rom. 1:17a; Gen. 15:6; Heb. 11:6c; 2 Cor. 4:12-13; Heb. 4:16; Rom. 10:12; 2 Tim. 2:22; Eph. 6:17-18
III. The faith of the believers:
J. The believers live Christ by this faith (as defined in the preceding items), the faith of Christ, the Son of God — Gal. 2:20b.
K. The believers walk and suffer persecution by this faith — 2 Cor. 5:7; Luke 18:8.
L. The believers need to look away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of their faith — Heb. 12:2.
M. The eternal economy of God is in such a faith — 1 Tim. 1:4b; Eph. 3:17a.
N. The righteousness of God is revealed out of such a faith and to such a faith in the gospel of God — Rom. 1:17a.
O. Such a faith is the initial righteousness of the believers before God (Gen. 15:6), and God rewards those who seek Him in such a faith (Heb. 11:6c).
P. The believers speak for the Lord, speak the Lord forth, and speak the Lord into people by such a faith — 2 Cor. 4:12-13.
Q. The way to receive such a faith is to contact its source, the Lord, the processed and consummated God, by calling on Him, praying to Him, and pray-reading His Word — Heb. 4:16; Rom. 10:12; 2 Tim. 2:22; Eph. 6:17-18.
Prayer: Dear Lord, we are happy to give You thanks for bringing us into such a high level. Lord, here we can see something marvelous, something excellent, something that will surprise us to the uttermost. Lord, release Yourself. This is all that we need. We need only You as the great I Am. Amen.
In the previous chapter we pointed out Hymns, #535 by Charles Wesley. I like his hymns very much, but I had never paid much attention to this hymn until recently. There is a wonderful line in stanza 5 that says, “Let me no longer live, but Thee.” It is marvelous that such a line is in this hymn on faith. Faith is to believe that God is and I am not. I do believe that Charles Wesley must have noticed this point. Otherwise, how could he have said in his hymn, “Let me no longer live, but Thee”? This is faith. Faith always annuls us and reveals Christ to us.
In this chapter we are still on the structure of the gospel of God. We all have seen clearly that this divine structure is of three parts: the righteousness of God, the life of Christ, and the faith of the believers. The structure of God’s gospel is first the judicial part. The righteousness of God is a matter of judicial standing related to the law. Then the life of Christ, which is organic, is a matter of life. The third part, the faith of the believers, is practical. This is a matter of practice. Regardless of how much the righteousness of God and the life of Christ are in this universe, without the faith of the believers, nothing can happen.
The righteousness of God is wonderful. It is judicial, fulfilling all the requirements of God’s law. The righteousness of God as a part of God’s salvation makes God happy. He is satisfied and joyful because His righteousness has judicially fulfilled all the legal requirements of the divine law. Then the life of Christ organically is the completion of God’s salvation for the producing and building up of the organic Body of Christ expressed as the local churches. But if there is no faith of the believers, nothing will happen. So it is the faith of the believers that links God’s righteousness and Christ’s life with us. At one time we were unbelieving sinners. When we heard the gospel and repented, we spontaneously called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord Jesus.” By calling on the Lord, the “linking” faith got into us and linked us, the great sinners, with the righteousness of God and with the life of Christ. Then we became altogether another person.
I still remember my conversion when I was at the end of my nineteenth year of age. I was born into, raised up, and educated in Christianity. I had heard much preaching and teaching about the Bible, though I was not saved. But one afternoon I heard the gospel, and within a few hours I was a changed person. Actually, it was the linking faith that changed me. At that time from my sincere heart, from the depths of my being, I cried to God. That was the faith, imparted into me as my believing element, that linked me with the marvelous God. Faith is the linking of our salvation; it links God with us and links us to God. This linking makes us the God-men. I was a sinner, an enemy of God, but I became a God-man. This is because something linked into me, linked with me, and linked me to God. That was faith.
The believers live Christ by this faith (as defined in the preceding items), the faith of Christ, the Son of God (Gal. 2:20b). We cannot live Christ by and in ourselves. We live Christ by a linking organ. This linking organ is faith. So Paul says in Galatians 2:20 that the life that he lived, he lived by faith, the faith of Jesus the Son of God. It is as if Paul is saying, “I live Christ not by my faith but by the faith of Jesus the Son of God; that is not my faith but His faith.” This implies a lot. Here we need another kind of crystallization.
How could you live Christ? You need to call upon Him by saying, “O Lord Jesus, I love You.” Call on Him and say just this much to Him. Then right away He “jumps” within you, and this “jumping” Jesus becomes your faith. This “jumping” Jesus as the faith imparted into you links you with Him. Then you cannot help but live Him during the day. When you call on Him in this way, He becomes the faith imparted into you so that you spontaneously live Him by this faith.
You should call on Him in such a way when you arise in the morning. Then at nine o’clock, at your work, you can look at the ceiling and say, “Lord Jesus, You are so good.” There is no need to say much. To speak to the Lord a little bit is good enough. When you say this to the Lord, you receive another infilling. Christ right away is imparted into you as your faith. Actually, He Himself as the faith becomes your faith, and this is the linking organ that links you to the unlimited, infinite Christ.
Later, at noontime at the lunch table, you can say, “Lord Jesus, I don’t know what to say to You. I am so happy.” This brief word is good enough for you to receive another refilling. In the afternoon you may go to the restroom. Before you go in, you may say another brief word to Him by calling on His name: “Lord Jesus, I don’t know where I am or where I am going. Lord, You have made me beside myself toward You.” Just talk this much to Him, and you will have another refilling.
When I tell people to call on the name of the Lord, they think that they need to call on Him loudly and repeatedly. There is nothing wrong with this. Whatever way we call upon the Lord is right. But it is not necessary for us to call in that way in order to be filled. We can just say a simple word: “Lord Jesus, You know I am too busy. I have to rush to go to the office. Thank You, Lord.” With just this little bit of calling, you are infused. The infusing of Christ in you causes you to have Him in you as your faith, which is the linking organ that links you with Him. This is the way to live Christ.
Second Corinthians 5:7 says that we believers do not walk by sight, by appearance, but by faith. Sight brings you a lot of things, but faith annuls all things. When sight is here, you see all the material things. When faith comes in, all these physical things disappear. We walk by faith; we walk not by what we see but by what we do not see.
Second Corinthians 5:7 is a clear word concerning walking by faith and not by that which is seen. But for many years I did not understand this word. Now that I have been following the Lord by faith for nearly seventy years, I can tell you what it is to walk by faith. Because it is hard to find the utterance to tell you, I feel that it would be best to share a brief testimony of my experience.
At the same time that I was saved, I was called by God. So I told Him, “God, from today, I do not want anything that people would give me. Even the world I don’t want. I just want You, and I will bring the Bible to the villages to preach You.” I did not realize much of what I was saying, but spontaneously, I talked to God by faith. Eventually, He brought me out of my job to serve Him with my full time. But the Lord did not send me to the villages. Instead, He started His ministry with me from the city of Chefoo to the greatest city in China, Shanghai. I was there serving Him with joy.
Later, I returned to Chefoo. Once I returned, I did not have the liberty to move anymore, because war between Japan and China broke out. During that time I had a thought to develop northwest China, close to Mongolia, for the Lord’s interests. I thought we had both the people and the finances from the churches in north and northeast China to carry this out. Close to the end of the war, I was arrested by the Japanese invading army’s political police, and they kept me in prison for one month. I suffered a lot. After being released, I became seriously ill with tuberculosis of the lungs. The doctor told me that I needed to have total rest in bed for six months. Eventually, it took two and a half years for me to come out of that illness. After I came out of my illness, the war was over. My plan to develop northwest China never materialized, because the political situation had changed, and in 1946 I was invited to Shanghai again.
At that time the church in Shanghai became revived and was flourishing. As a result, there was the need to build a big hall. In 1948 we were able to purchase about one-fourth of an acre of land in Shanghai. When we were going to sign the agreement, I asked the elders, “Do you feel that we should buy it?” They said, “We don’t know. We just look to you. If you say buy, we will buy. If not, we will not buy.” Shanghai was the central commercial port in China, and the land was very expensive. This quarter of an acre of land cost one hundred five thousand dollars. That was forty-six years ago in China. The terms of the agreement were that we had to pay one-third of this amount immediately. Then we had to make another payment the next month, and another payment the third month. What the church had, however, was sufficient only to make the first payment. Furthermore, the seller of the land would accept payment only in gold bars.
When the day was approaching for us to pay for the land, a brother came to me and said, “Brother Lee, you know that I am here representing my family from Manchuria [northeast China]. We have purchased many gold bars. I would like to advance the money for the church. Then whatever the church will receive as giving from the saints can go to our account.” I was very happy with this arrangement. That was the way the Lord took care of this need in Shanghai.
In 1949 I was sent by Brother Nee in the work out of mainland China to Taiwan. I had ten family members under my care at that time, but all I had when I arrived in Taiwan was three hundred U.S. dollars. That money was sufficient to feed my family for only three months. I also wondered how I was going to start the Lord’s work there.
Eventually, the Lord sent me to the Philippines, where I stayed for five and a half months. A brother who was a businessman came to me and said, “Brother Lee, tell me how much you need for the work of the Lord in Taiwan, including purchasing and building the halls and support for the co-workers and their families.” I said, “Brother, we do not let people know what we need.” Then he said, “Brother Lee, this is not you telling me what you need. This is me coming to you to ask you because I have a heart for the Lord. You tell me.” Then I told him about our need.
From 1951 to 1961 this brother passed on a large sum of money each year to cover all the needs of the work in Taiwan. When I first went to Taiwan, I was the unique one who served full time. No others dared to go this way because of the question of who would support them. When I got such a promise from the brother in the Philippines, I started the work in Taiwan by training. Through this training in one year, over eighty saints became full-timers to serve the Lord.
After ten years in Taiwan, I had a small thought within me that the Lord’s work may need to turn to the United States from Taiwan. The work in Taiwan had been greatly blessed by the Lord. Within five years we increased from five hundred saints to fifty thousand. But there was the need for the Lord’s recovery to turn to the Western world. When I came to the United States, I was warmly welcomed and received by many saints who were prepared by God to receive this ministry. I came to the United States with only a few hundred dollars and no promise of support. I just spoke the word by faith.
Within ten years’ time in the United States, our work became flourishing. Then the Lord led us to come to Anaheim, and He supplied us with a big meeting hall for the work. The land for this hall was bought at a very cheap price. It was two and a half acres, but the seller wanted only about $220,000. He wanted us to put in $20,000, and the rest he would bear as a kind of loan. Each year we paid only $20,000. This was just like a gift. When the churches in the United States heard about this, they sent eighty young students to Anaheim for half a year to help in the building of the meeting hall. So today we have this very useful facility. These are examples of walking by faith.
To walk by faith is to walk by something you do not know. Some of the young people may be burdened to serve the Lord full time, but they may wonder how they can be supported. If you think in this way, you are walking by sight, not by faith. Throughout the years I have walked by faith, but eventually all things came to me. I was saved by the Lord from the Japanese army’s hand. Otherwise, they would have killed me. The Lord also saved me from death due to tuberculosis of the lungs. This is to walk by faith. The worldly people do not have God. They have only the things they can see. But because we have God, we do not walk by anything we see. We walk by our unseen God. Eventually, all the things we need come to us. This faith links us all the time to God.
In the spring of 1991 President Bush made the decision to bomb Iraq. This took place for one hundred hours. One day, after that bombing, a thought arose within me concerning the Lord’s recovery being brought to Russia. When I talked to the co-workers about this, they all agreed. In May 1991 during a Memorial Day conference, we made the announcement that we would go to Russia. At that time over eighty saints, most of them young people, consecrated themselves to go to Russia. Also, within a short time, millions of dollars of offerings came in from different churches for the support of the Lord’s move to Russia.
Today, three years later, we have about one hundred twenty co-workers there, with about thirty family members. One-fourth of them are Chinese from Taiwan; three-fourths are Americans from the United States. They are being supported by faith. We did not have any kind of fundraising, nor did we put out an advertisement. We simply let the churches know that the Lord is leading us this way. Then the manpower and the money came in. Also, in the past few years, we have distributed more than six million copies of our publications, which have reached over three thousand cities in Russia and the Ukraine. We have baptized over thirteen thousand Russians and have big churches in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Today there are over one thousand saints in each of these churches. The Lord did this by our walking by faith.
At that time I did not consider where we could get the money. Recently, a friend asked me, “Brother Lee, what is your plan, your schedule?” I said, “We have no plan, no schedule.” After the thought came to us to go to Russia, we simply walked by faith, and the Lord met all the needs. To walk by faith means that our walking is linked with God, and He is altogether rich. We walk by faith, and faith links us to Him.
In Luke 18 the Lord indicated that we also suffer persecution by this faith. We have to learn to pray for our suffering. In verse 8 the Lord said, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” This means that we have to suffer all the persecutions by faith. I have been in the United States for thirty-four years. In the first twelve years I was very warmly welcomed and received. Then the opposers paid their attention to this ministry. They raised up resistance, opposition, and defamation to damage us. Thus, in the last twenty-two years I have been bitterly defamed. The opposers surely have tried to devastate our work and damage our reputation. I am under persecution every day by faith. If you are going to follow the Lord, you have to walk by faith, not being threatened by any kind of opposition.
Hebrews 12:2 says that we need to look away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. We need to look away from everything other than Jesus. Many things are distracting us. When some of the young people came to the full-time training, they may have had their own thought about how wonderful the training was. Then after coming, they may have been disappointed. It is the same with the church life. You may look at the saints and the situation in your locality and be very disappointed. But I would ask, “Where is a church that can satisfy you?”
According to the record of the New Testament, no church is that good. All the churches established by the apostle Paul became degraded. When Paul wrote 2 Timothy, he told his young co-worker, Timothy, that all the churches in Asia had abandoned his ministry (1:15). In the same way, we are still suffering from a rebellion among us that began in September 1987. When Paul wrote 2 Timothy, he was ready to be martyred (4:6). At that time he declared, “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith” (v. 7). By reading 2 Timothy, we can see that nothing in Paul’s outward environment and situation was encouraging. Everything was disappointing. This shows that we need to learn how to walk and suffer by faith.
To learn to walk and suffer by faith, you have to look away from all things. Do not look at your roommate. Do not look at the elders. Do not look at the older sisters. Do not look at me. Look away unto Jesus. This is because only Jesus is. All the others are not. Anyone other than Jesus is nothing, so do not look to anyone except Him. We trust in the Lord. We do not trust in anyone else. Only He is. So look away from all things that are not, unto Jesus who is. This is faith. Jesus is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, so our faith is just Jesus. He is the origin and the completion of our faith.
First Timothy 1:4 speaks of “God’s economy, which is in faith.” Anyone who has a plan to do something would not tell you that his plan is in faith. But the Bible tells us that God’s economy is in faith. Faith is the substantiation of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). God’s economy is a kind of plan concerning things not seen by us. I have been in the center of the work in the Lord’s recovery for over sixty years. I saw many people come into the recovery with a big dream. After they came in, they looked around and saw nothing. There is nothing here but Jesus! We need to look away from everything that is nothing, unto Jesus.
Ephesians 3:17 tells us that Christ is making His home in our hearts “through faith.” Christ is making His home, His building, in our hearts with Himself as the material. If you were to tell an unbeliever this, he might say, “Who is Christ and where is Christ? How can He make His home in you?” Christ’s indwelling is mysterious and abstract. We apprehend it not by our physical senses but by the sense of faith.
God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel out of faith and to faith (Rom. 1:17a). The righteousness of God is a great thing, and the New Testament stresses it. In Matthew 5:20 the Lord said, “I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of the heavens.” In 2 Timothy 2:22 Paul charged Timothy to pursue righteousness first, with the ones who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Then 2 Peter 3:13 tells us that righteousness will dwell in the coming new heaven and new earth. Righteousness is very crucial, but it is revealed to us only out of faith and to faith. This means that if you are going to enjoy the righteousness of God in the gospel, you must be a person of faith. We can be such a person through contacting the Lord by calling on Him.
Genesis 15:6 says concerning Abraham, “He believed Jehovah, and He accounted it to him as righteousness.” Such a faith is the top righteousness. God is righteous, and He is for righteousness. He wants us to practice righteousness, and our initial righteousness is faith. You must have faith as a start of your righteousness before God.
Also, Hebrews 11:6 says that if you are seeking God in such a faith, God will give you a reward, a prize. This shows how important faith is. We must have this faith exercised within us. Then we have God’s righteousness revealed to us, and we have the initial righteousness before God. If we have this exercise of faith, God will reward us.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that he spoke by the spirit of faith. He says, “We...believe, therefore we also speak” (v. 13). If you do not believe that Christ is making His home in your heart, how can you go to tell others? You have to believe that Christ lives in you and that if you die with Him through the cross, He as the resurrection life will work Himself into you. This is all by faith. If you do not believe in these things, how can you speak to others? The reason that you do not prophesy, that you do not speak for the Lord, speak the Lord forth, and speak the Lord into others, is mainly because your exercise of faith is short.
The way to receive such a faith is to contact its source, the Lord, the processed and consummated God, by calling on Him, praying to Him, and pray-reading His Word (Heb. 4:16; Rom. 10:12; 2 Tim. 2:22; Eph. 6:17-18). We have to come forward to God’s throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace. This means that we have to contact God to receive faith. This is the only way. It is not necessary to have a separate time to contact God. At any time, anywhere, you can contact Him. Just call on Him and say a little word to Him. Then you will receive faith. This faith links you with God and imparts, transfuses, God into you. In this way you will have the living faith. Actually, that is God Himself moving within you. Then you will become a man of faith.
