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Scripture Reading: John 12:24-26
The Gospel of John shows us that God in Christ as the Spirit becomes our enjoyment and everything to us. God is expressed and embodied in His Son, who is the Word. When a thought is expressed by a word, that thought is embodied. Our word expresses our concept and is the concrete embodiment of our abstract thought. The very God who intends to be our enjoyment as everything to us is expressed and embodied in His Son. The Son, as the Word become flesh, was God’s manifestation on earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He was crucified and resurrected. By means of His death and resurrection, He was transformed from the flesh into the Spirit. He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and this Spirit who gives life is the breath of life breathed into us.
We can realize, enjoy, and experience all the riches of Christ by contacting the life-giving Spirit within us. The Word is the definition and revelation of Christ’s riches. By the Word we can know and understand them, but we still cannot realize them. We can realize the riches of Christ in the Word through the Spirit. The Word reveals these riches to us, and by the Word we can know them. In the Spirit we can realize and experience them. Thus, we first have to learn how to read and understand the Word. Then we have to learn how to realize the riches of Christ by contacting the Spirit. If we have merely the Word, we can have only the knowledge of the riches of Christ in our mind. We need to have the realization and experience of them in the Spirit.
Today Christ is not only the Word but also the Spirit. He is the Word for us to understand and the Spirit for us to realize, enjoy, and experience. Thus, whatever is in the Word must be realized in the Spirit. We have to learn how to read the Word and contact the Spirit. By the Word we can know all the riches of Christ. By the Spirit we can realize and experience all the riches of Christ which are revealed in the Word.
The Gospel of John shows us that God is expressed and embodied in Christ and that Christ becomes the reality as the Spirit for us to partake of and enjoy. Now we need to consider the way to enjoy Christ revealed in John. John 3:6 speaks of our regenerated spirit: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” If we are going to partake of and enjoy this wonderful One, our spirit has to be regenerated. This is the initiation. John not only shows us how God in Christ as the Spirit becomes our enjoyment but also tells us the organ we need to enjoy this One. This organ is our regenerated spirit.
John 4:23-24 says clearly that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in our spirit. Whatever He is, is in the Spirit because He is Spirit. Although God is many items, He is one substance. God is light, but the substance of this light is Spirit. God is life, but the substance of this life is Spirit. If we are going to contact Him, worship Him, enjoy Him, and experience Him, we must do this in our spirit. First, our spirit must be regenerated; then we must have our spirit exercised that we may contact God.
John 4:14 goes on to tell us that when we drink of Christ as the living water, He becomes within us a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. In us, that is, in our spirit, there is Christ as the fountain of living water. John 7:38 says that out of the innermost being of the one who drinks of Christ shall flow rivers of living water. Our innermost being is our spirit. Thus, in the Gospel of John the human spirit is revealed as the very organ by which we can enjoy this rich Christ.
Now we need to consider how the soul is mentioned in John’s Gospel in relation to our enjoyment of Christ. John 12:25 says, “He who loves his soul-life loses it; and he who hates his soul-life in this world shall keep it unto eternal life.” We have to hate our soul, to lose our soul. This shows us the big difference between the spirit and the soul. The spirit has to be regenerated and exercised to contact the Lord, but the soul has to be lost, that is, to be denied. This shows us the way to enjoy the Triune God. We have to use our spirit and deny our soul.
To lose our soul, to deny our soul, is to experience the cross. We can see the work of the cross in 12:24, where the Lord said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” A grain of wheat put into the earth to die is a picture of the work of the cross to put us into death. Verse 25, which tells us to lose and hate our soul, shows the experience of the cross. Verse 26 says, “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there also My servant will be.” This means that we have to follow the Lord to the cross. The Lord was crucified on the cross, and we have to be crucified there also. As the many grains, we also must lose our soul-life through death so that we may enjoy eternal life in resurrection. This is to follow the Lord so that we may serve Him and walk with Him on the way of losing our soul-life and living in His resurrection. The way to experience Christ is to experience the cross by exercising the spirit and denying the soul.
The Gospel of John shows us how God was processed so that He could enter into man. The Father is the very source. One day He was expressed in the Son, who was incarnated as a man living on earth. The Son is the embodiment and expression of the Father. He spent three and a half years to reveal Himself to His disciples, but at that time they could not inwardly experience and realize Him. Through His death and resurrection, Christ was transfigured into a life-giving Spirit. He breathed Himself as the life-giving Spirit into the disciples, that is, into their spirit. They had this wonderful, rich One in their spirit, so they needed to exercise their spirit to contact Him. In order to do this, they had to deny their soul.
We have to learn the lesson to always deny our soul, our self, and pay attention to our spirit as the innermost part of our being by exercising our spirit to contact the Lord. We need to deny ourselves, on the one hand, and exercise our spirit, on the other hand. Suppose I am somewhat in darkness and not clear about certain things. The Word tells us that Christ is the light (John 8:12), but how can we experience Him as the light? First, we need to deny our soul by denying our thinking, our likes and dislikes, and our decisions. This is the losing of our soul. Then we need to exercise our spirit to contact Him. If we do this, we will experience an inner enlightening from Christ as our light.
We also need to experience Christ as our door (John 10:9). Christ is the door through which we can come out of the fold of religion into Himself as the rich pasture. Under God’s sovereignty, in our past the Lord used something to hold us for God’s purpose. Before the foundation of the world in eternity past, God chose and predestinated us (Eph. 1:4-5). Even the time and place we were born were predetermined by God. Acts 17:26 says, “He made from one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, determining beforehand their appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwelling.” A number of years ago I was inspired when I read this verse, and I wrote a note in the margin of my Bible which says, “Lord, I praise and thank You that I was born in an age in which the gospel was brought to the place where I was born.” I realized that the Lord had chosen and predestinated me. If I had been born in China many years ago or even in a different part of China, there would have been no possibility for me to contact the gospel. I praise and thank the Lord that I was born in the twentieth century in a particular province on the seashore of China.
I was in the fold of a denomination, and in that fold I was kept for God’s purpose and eventually brought into God’s pasture. In the wintertime or at night the sheep must be kept in the fold until the pasture is available. The early disciples were kept in the fold of Judaism until Christ as the pasture became available to them. Then He became their door for them to come out of this fold. God uses different kinds of things to keep, to protect, and to hold His chosen people until they get to know Christ. Then Christ becomes the door for these chosen people to come out of the fold and into Him as the pasture.
A number of us have had this experience. In principle, we denied ourselves and exercised our spirit to contact the Lord as our door. We may have said, “Lord, I love You. I give myself to You and will give up everything to follow You.” This means that we contacted the Lord and denied our self. We wanted to follow the Lord at any cost, so we put ourselves to death and took care of our innermost part. Then we came out of the fold and into the flock to enjoy the Lord as our pasture. The unique way for us to enjoy the Lord is to deny our soul and take care of the inner sense within our spirit, our innermost part. Then we experience the Lord as what we need. In order to enjoy the Lord as the pasture, we have to daily deny the soul and take care of the inner sense of our spirit to follow the Lord in an inner way.
There is always something competing with Christ. In John 12 the Lord said that as a grain of wheat He was falling into the earth to die. When the Lord spoke this word, He was under a kind of temptation, because at that time all the people were extolling, welcoming, and praising Him, saying, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (v. 13). His disciples told Him that even the Greeks sought to contact Him, but the Lord said that He had to die. When people welcome us, that is the time for us to die. We should not be tempted by people’s welcome.
John 12 shows us the glory from all the people for the Lord and also the death awaiting Him. If we choose the glory, we do not lose our soul by denying our self. That means that we choose our own way and would not take care of the inner way. But the Lord Jesus chose the inner way. He said that He came to be a grain of wheat, not to be exalted but to be put to death. Then this grain could be multiplied into many grains by the impartation of life. The one grain became many grains. This shows us that the way to enjoy Christ is by resurrection through death. On the one hand, we have to deny ourselves to pass through death. On the other hand, we have to take care of the inner spirit, which is in resurrection. The way to experience and enjoy Christ is in the spirit by denying the soul.
