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Scripture Reading: John 6:57, 63; 2 Cor. 3:6b
God’s intention is to mingle Himself with us and work Himself into us. The first picture in the Bible after the creation of man is that of God presenting Himself to man as the tree of life in the form of food for man to take and eat (Gen. 2:8-9). To eat is to enjoy, and whatever we enjoy by eating becomes mingled with us. God intends to offer Himself to us so that we may enjoy Him all the time. In this way He can be life and everything to us and even become the very constituent of our being.
God as enjoyment to us is in Christ. Christ is the very embodiment of God; all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily (Col. 2:9); that is, all that God is, is embodied in Christ. Christ comes as the embodiment of God for us to take, eat, drink, and enjoy. Christ Himself told us that He came as the heavenly bread of life for us to eat and the living water for us to drink (John 6:51; 7:37-38). To eat and drink of Christ is to take Him as our enjoyment. Christ is the very embodiment of God so that we may partake of and enjoy Him.
Christ came as the embodiment of God to be enjoyed by us firstly as the Word and eventually as the Spirit. We can see this clearly in the Gospel of John. In the beginning there was Christ as the Word (1:1). The Word is the expression, definition, and revelation of God. In the Gospel of John God is expressed and revealed through the life and walk of the Lord Jesus while He was on this earth. It is through Him that we know the fullness of God, what kind of God He is, and how He is our enjoyment. While Christ was with His disciples, the disciples heard Him, beheld Him, and handled Him (1 John 1:1). Every day they “read” the living Word. If someone were to remain with us morning to evening, day and night, we eventually would “read” him in a thorough way. For three and a half years Peter and the other disciples constantly read something of Christ, not in black and white letters but as a living person. By the disciples’ reading of Christ for three and a half years, they came to know who He was.
However, Christ was able only to be among them. At that time He was not in them. Therefore, they were able only to know Him, not to fully enjoy Him. In order to eat something, it must be slain, cut into pieces, and cooked. Then the thing we previously only beheld will become a delicious meal to take, taste, and enjoy. This is what the Lord Jesus told the disciples after He had stayed with them for three and a half years. He told them that He would be crucified. To be crucified is to be slain, to be “put on the fire and cooked.” To be cooked is to be transformed, to change into another form that can be eaten. By His crucifixion and resurrection Christ was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit. After the four Gospels this Word became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17).
In the Epistles we do not see Christ mainly as the Word. Only 1 John 1:1 mentions Him as the Word. However, the Acts and the Epistles tell us a number of times that Christ is the Spirit. In the four Gospels Christ is the Word as the expression and revelation of God, but in the Acts and the Epistles Christ is the Spirit as our enjoyment. It is when Christ became the Spirit that He could be our enjoyment. As the Word, Christ was the revelation, but as the Spirit, He is our enjoyment, realization, and experience. When Christ was with the early disciples in the four Gospels for those three and a half years, He was a revelation to them, but He was not a realization to them since they could not experience Him. After the day of resurrection and the day of Pentecost, however, Christ was no longer only a revelation. Christ became experience to the disciples because He had become the life-giving Spirit dwelling in their spirit (Rom. 8:16; 2 Tim. 4:22), not merely for them to understand, see, and know but for them to enjoy, partake of, and experience. In order to know Christ, we have to know Him as the Word, and in order to experience Christ, we have to experience Him as the life-giving Spirit. Christ being the Word is for our knowing Him; Christ being the Spirit is for our enjoying and experiencing Him.
Although we may have been Christians for many years, we have mostly known Christ only as the Word. We have not enjoyed Him sufficiently as the life-giving Spirit. One kind of seeking believer studies to know Christ as the Word, making notes in his Bible, highlighting his Bible with different colors, and exercising his mind in concordances, lexicons, dictionaries, and expositions. Many times in dealing with Christ, we have exercised only our mind to study in this way.
Another kind of Christian says that this practice of the Fundamentalists is too dead. This second kind of Christian seeks the Pentecostal experiences, possibly even manufacturing something in a man-made way. All of a sudden something seems to come upon him from the heavens, and he jumps, laughs, rolls, and changes his voice to speak in tongues.
However, not many Christians know the way of the inner life. Christ first was the Word, but after His crucifixion and resurrection, He became and still is the life-giving Spirit who is dwelling in our spirit. Now we have to exercise our human spirit as the organ with which to contact Him, experience Him, and enjoy Him in a living and inward way. The New Testament does not correspond to the way of the Fundamentalists, those who only study the Word, nor to the Pentecostals, those who only seek the Pentecostal experiences. Rather, the New Testament corresponds to those who realize and enjoy that Christ today is the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit. We must know Him in the way revealed by 2 Timothy 4:22: “The Lord be with your spirit.” We must know how to exercise our spirit to realize, enjoy, and experience Him. I do not say that we do not need the fundamental knowledge or the proper gifts. We need these. However, the fundamental knowledge and the proper gifts are for Christians to know Christ as the life-giving Spirit and experience Him by exercising their spirit to contact Him.
In the four Gospels Christ was the Word to reveal God to us, and in the Acts and the Epistles Christ is the life-giving Spirit for us to enjoy, contact, and experience. Therefore, we all have to know how to deal with the Word and with the Spirit. Some may know how to deal with the Word but not in an adequate way. However, I am more concerned that many do not know how to deal with the Spirit.
We have the Bible as the Word of God, and we also have the Holy Spirit within us. These two items are the wealth, the property, that we inherit from God. If you ask me, “Brother Lee, what do you have?” I would say that I have only these two items — the Bible in my hand and the Holy Spirit in my spirit. A good Christian is one who knows how to deal with the Word and with the Spirit. In these days we have realized that we need a proper way to meet. In order to have a proper meeting, however, we need to have a proper Christian life. A proper meeting is the corporate expression and testimony of our Christian life. Moreover, in order to have a proper Christian life, we need to know how to deal with Christ as the Word and as the life-giving Spirit day by day. Until we know how to deal with Christ as the Word and the living, indwelling Spirit in an adequate way, we are not able to have a proper Christian life and a proper meeting life.
John 6:63 says, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The word has to be spirit in order to be life to us. Therefore, we must know how to transfer the word that we have understood into the Spirit. If we come to the Bible only by exercising our eyes and mind to understand it, the word is still only the word. The way to transfer the word into the Spirit is by exercising our spirit to pray.
A believer may read Matthew 1:1, which says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” If he reads this verse only to try to understand it, he will receive the word only in an outward way. However, the word merely as letters brings death (2 Cor. 3:6b). Most Christians take the word only as knowledge to store in their mentality. The more we do this, though, the more death we have. This death in the mentality causes us to criticize others, and when we criticize others, we have the stench of death. However, if we transfer Matthew 1:1 into the Spirit, it becomes life. Then instead of the stench of death, this word will bear a fragrance, an incense offered to God.
When a new believer prays with Matthew 1:1, he may not know who David and Abraham are. He may simply pray, “O Lord Jesus, I do not know who David is or who Abraham is. But I do know that You, Lord, are the Son of God who became the Son of David. O Lord, You are the Son of God, but You became the Son of Man. Lord, I praise You, I adore You, and I worship You. You are God, but You became a man.” If this believer reads the word in this way, he will receive not knowledge but the living Christ Himself. The more he prays in this way, the more the living Christ will be prayed into him. After reading and praying in this way for several minutes, he will be filled, satisfied, and refreshed.
There are two ways to deal with the word. One way is to ask, “Who is David? He is the father of Solomon, but who is Solomon?” This is the wrong way. This way will bring us into the forest. It may cause us to study for two weeks. Then we will be proud, knowing who David is and knowing all the things about David. We will come to the meeting to listen to the ministry of the word, carefully watching for what the speaker says about David. We may think his speaking is not accurate, so we will begin to criticize him. We may say, “This speaker has never used a good concordance. He does not have adequate knowledge. How can he come here to teach us?” This is exactly what has happened to us. Once a person who listened to me said, “This poor Brother Lee probably has never read The Normal Christian Life.” In actuality, I heard the messages in The Normal Christian Life before that person was born. This illustrates how taking the word merely as letters creates knowledge, knowledge brings death, and death has its stench. May the Lord save us and deliver us from this wrong way.
The right way to receive the word is to take it as the breath of life from God (2 Tim. 3:16). This is the life food by which man lives, not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). This is food for the spirit, so we have to exercise our spirit to take it. To receive food for our physical body, we have to exercise our mouth, but to receive spiritual food for our spirit, we have to exercise our spirit. Whenever we come to the word, we need to realize that it is spiritual food. We must exercise our spirit to eat it, not merely to know it. We should forget about knowing and simply eat Christ. This word is the written word of the living Word. It is the expression, the revelation, of the living Word, who is Christ. He is our food, our bread of life, so whenever we come to the Bible, we come to food, not for the body but for the spirit, so we must use our spirit to take it. This is clear to us, but we have to practice to receive the word in this way, not merely to read the Bible for knowledge but to read it for feeding on it.
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Most people who read this verse are tempted to know who was there in the beginning and whether the beginning was thousands, millions, or billions of years ago. This is the way to read the Bible to seek knowledge, to know by exercising the mentality. This is the wrong way. The right way to read the Bible is to exercise our spirit. If we do this, right away we will pray, “O Lord, You are the One who created all things. Everything was created by You, so everything has been initiated by You. Lord, I want You to come into my life to initiate everything.” To take the word in this way is not mere knowledge. Rather, it is nourishment.
Matthew 8:1 through 3 says, “When He came down from the mountain, great crowds followed Him. And behold, a leper, coming near, worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if You are willing, You can cleanse me. And stretching out His hand, He touched him, saying, I am willing; be cleansed! And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” Someone may take this word as knowledge and even criticize, saying that this does not sound like a proper teaching in the Bible. Rather, we should take this word by praising and praying: “Lord, come down again today to the place where I am. I am in the place of failure, in the place of leprosy, and I cannot deliver myself. Lord, if You come to the place where I am, I will be delivered. O Lord, I have been cleansed by You, but I still need You more and more. Come down, Lord, to the place where I am.”
If we read the word in the morning in this way, these few verses will be a very adequate and rich breakfast. They will even be good enough for the whole week. Every day that week we can pray, “O Lord, You have come down from the mountain to the very place where I am. I have been cleansed by You. Lord, I believe, even today, that You are still coming to me. Meet me here.” While we are at work, we can pray, “Lord, there is leprosy here. Come down to the place where I am.” Throughout the entire day we will receive not the word only but the Lord Himself. The word will be transferred into the Spirit by our prayer. The word is black and white outside of us, but after we have prayed, it becomes the living Spirit within us, nourishing, refreshing, strengthening, and delivering us all the day.
We may further illustrate the way of life to read the word with 1 Timothy 1:1. This verse says, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” A brother may read this verse, praying with praises to the Lord for being our Savior and our hope. Later in the day something disappointing may happen to him, but the more he prays, “Lord, You are my hope,” the more the Spirit within him will strengthen him. In this way the word hope becomes the Spirit to him.
In order to pray to transfer the word into the Spirit, we must learn how to exercise, release, and uplift our spirit. Our prayer over the word also should have some understanding or inspiration in it. If we do not receive something when we start to read, then we should read further. We do not need to force ourselves to get something from every portion we read. The Bible is very rich. It is like a feast on the table. When we come to a feast, we need not force ourselves to enjoy a piece of bone that has no meat. If we were poor, we would have to break the bone to get to the marrow. However, we are not poor; the Bible is very rich. At first we may not get something from what we read, but later when we return to that same passage, we will receive something from it.
We all need to practice this way to receive the word, because we are accustomed to receiving something of knowledge. After a certain period of practice, however, we will be more accustomed to receiving something of life. Even if it is easy to get something merely of knowledge from a certain portion of the word, we would not do it. If we understand something from a portion of the word, we should not pay attention to the mere knowledge. Instead, we should receive something of life. Again I say, we need not force ourselves to get something from every portion we read. If we come to a “bone,” we can forget about it for now and go on to a tender, meaty portion to get something of life. To come to the word to feast on the Lord is like coming to the dining table. We must learn to find something that we can eat.
It is too easy to get something of knowledge, but it is not as easy to get something of life. We are familiar with the bones, but we do not know the meat as well. We all must learn this proper way to read the word. This will help us to enjoy the Lord, to experience Him, and to live by Him. The Lord Jesus told us, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:57). The proper reading of the word helps us to realize the Lord, enjoy Him, experience Him, and live by Him, and it also helps us to exercise our spirit, because in this way we pray much. Then our spirit is strengthened, uplifted, exercised, and made alive. When we come to the meetings, it will be easy to pray, because our spirit has been exercised, strengthened, and uplifted. In addition, we will have some content to pray. We will have something stored within our spirit, and our spirit will be living, because day by day we have been feeding on Christ. This is the proper, normal way for us to enjoy the Lord.
