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Scripture Reading: Col. 2:19; 1 Cor. 3:6-7, 9; 1 Pet. 2:2
In this series of messages we will consider the growth in life. Colossians 2:19, 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 and 9, and 1 Peter 2:2 are the best verses in the New Testament related to the growth in life. Ephesians 4:13-16 speaks of the growth of the Body rather than the growth in life of the members individually.
First Corinthians 3:6-7 says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. So then neither is he who plants anything nor he who waters, but God who causes the growth.” Verse 9 says, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s cultivated land, God’s building.” Growth in these verses is not the growth in knowledge, because here Paul speaks of cultivated land. Planting and watering are not related to knowledge. To plant is not to instruct but to nourish by supplying the plant with fertile soil. Likewise, to water is not to teach but to supply the plant with nutrients in the water. This is related to life.
Colossians 2:19 says, “Holding the Head, out from whom all the Body, being richly supplied and knit together by means of the joints and sinews, grows with the growth of God.” These verses show us that to grow is to grow with something. If a young boy does not eat or drink, he will have nothing with which to grow. One cannot grow with nothing. Rather, without something with which to grow, one will die. Dietitians tell us that we are what we eat. If we eat beef, we will be constituted with the meat of the cow. If we eat fish, we will be constituted with fish.
God created man in His own image, according to His own likeness (Gen. 1:26). Then He breathed His breath into man, and after getting into man, that breath became man’s spirit (2:7; Zech. 12:1). These are the two particular characteristics of the created man. Outwardly man has God’s image, and inwardly man has God’s breath as his own spirit. Strictly speaking, however, God’s breath alone is not His life. God’s life is God Himself, the divine person. At the time of his creation man did not have God’s life, God Himself, within him. He had only God’s image as His expression. This image may be compared to a photograph. My photograph may bear my image, but it does not have me in it. The life within the created man was only man’s life, and after the fall this life became death itself.
This created man was made as a vessel (Rom. 9:21-23) with the ability to eat. To eat is to receive, digest, assimilate, and retain something organic. Anything that is not organic is not good for food. Something must be organic for us to eat it, and as we have seen, whatever we eat eventually becomes us. Therefore, we must be careful about our eating. To be careful about eating is the first charge that God gave to man (Gen. 2:16-17). In Genesis 2 God did not give Adam commandments concerning his conduct. The commandments concerning faithfulness, lying, stealing, and obedience to parents were given after the fall. Before the fall, right after God’s creation of man, God gave only one charge. Genesis 2:16-17a says, “Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat.” The tree of life was good for food, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also good for food. Even today there are two trees among us. One tree is God as life. If we eat this tree, we become life. The other tree is the source of death, Satan. If we eat him, we receive the source of death; that is, we receive him as death. Romans 8:6 says, “The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.” If we eat life, we will receive life and will become life, but if we eat death, we will not only die but will become death.
According to our natural concept, we cannot understand the growth in life. Today there are not many Christians who know what the growth in life is. Someone who is accustomed to losing his temper may one day be able to control his temper. This may or may not be the growth in life. The Bible has life, and it also has some amount of teaching. Without the teachings of Christianity for the past twenty centuries, the Western world might be barbaric. The Western world, from Europe to America, has received its proper teachings from Christianity. However, Christianity today has become a religion of teaching. When I was young, I heard an American pastor say that Christianity is the same as Confucianism. According to him, Confucius taught that we should honor our parents, and the Bible says the same thing. Ethically speaking, the Bible does appear to be the same as the teachings of Confucius, and to some extent it may not even appear to be as high. The Bible teaches submission, but Confucius taught threefold submission. He taught that a girl in her father’s house should submit herself to her father; when she marries, she should submit herself to her husband; and when her husband dies, she must submit herself to her son.
The Bible does not annul the teaching of submission. Rather, it supports it very much. Without the father, husband, or son as God’s deputy authority, the human race would become as the beasts. There could be no proper marriage life, family, or nation — only anarchy. However, the growth in life is not by teaching but by supply. As we have seen, to plant is not to teach, and to water is not to instruct. Planting and watering have nothing to do with knowledge but rather are a matter of supply.
As men, we were the wild olive tree (Rom. 11:17). How could we become the cultivated olive tree (v. 24)? To be cultivated does not merely mean to be educated or regulated. It mainly means to be nourished and fed. The wild olive tree can become cultivated only by being grafted. To carry out the grafting, the first thing needed is cutting. Grafting depends upon cutting both trees, the wild tree and the cultivated tree. The branch of the wild tree must be cut off, and an opening must be cut in the cultivated tree. Then the wild branch is put into the cultivated tree. They touch each other, and the wild branch receives the rich life-juice of the cultivated tree; that is, it eats, absorbs, and receives the riches of the cultivated tree. All the riches of the cultivated tree are digested and assimilated by the grafted branch. The wild branch retains the rich juice, and the rich juice eventually becomes the very grafted branch.
This is a good picture showing us how to grow. First, we must be cut off from the old, wild, uncultivated tree of Adam. This is the meaning of baptism. To be baptized is to be cut off from the Adamic race and to be put into death. This was what John the Baptist did. When some repented, he did not teach them. Rather, he cut them off and put them into death by putting them into the water.
Second, we must believe. To believe is to put the branch, which has been cut off, into Christ as the cultivated tree full of rich life-juice. After we are put into Him, we then remain in Him (John 15:4). As those who are no longer merely the uncultivated branches but the branches grafted into the cultivated tree, Christ, we should remain there to receive, absorb, assimilate, and retain the rich life-juice of Christ in our being. In this way we will surely grow in life. We will grow with the growth of the tree, which is Christ, the embodiment of God.
According to Colossians 2:19, we, holding the Head, grow with the growth of God. The King James Version translates the last part of this verse as “increaseth with the increase of God.” To grow is to increase. At first a tree may have only ten branches. The tree is real, yet it is not increasing. When the other branches from the wild tree are grafted into this cultivated tree, it increases from ten branches to one hundred branches. These one hundred branches are the increase of the tree. In this way all the grafted branches grow with the growth of the cultivated tree. This is the way we grow with the growth of God.
When I first saw the last phrase of Colossians 2:19 translated as grows with the growth of God, I asked myself whether God grows. God is eternal. How could the eternal God grow or increase? In God Himself there is no need of increase. He is complete, perfect, and eternal. However, God needs to grow in us. When God grows in us, we grow in His growth. If God does not have a way to grow in us, we can never grow.
The divine life is God, and God is a Spirit. If He were like a piece of gold and not a Spirit, how could He get into us? He must be a Spirit to get into us. Furthermore, God can get into man only because man has something that has come out of God, the breath of God, which became man’s spirit. To grow in the growth of life is altogether a matter of the divine Spirit and the human spirit. We, who have the breath of God as our spirit, must grow by this spirit. In order to grow in life, we should not merely exercise our mind. We all need bodily exercise, but this does not help us to grow in life either. To grow in God as life we must exercise our spirit. When we exercise our spirit, we make the way for God to grow.
The unbelievers do not have God growing in them because they do not know how to exercise their spirit. For this reason we have to go to them to tell them that they need God. They need to speak something out of the depths of their being, their spirit. If they do this, they will exercise their spirit, and when they exercise their spirit, God will have a way to enter into them. The real salvation is the grafting of an uncultivated, wild branch into Christ as the cultivated tree.
We all have to learn to preach the gospel in this way rather than in the old way. The old way is to say, “Dear friend, you are a sinner. Today you are living a poor life, always sinning and fighting with others. You don’t have happiness, and moreover, you will go to hell. Therefore, you have to repent. Jesus died for you, and you can be forgiven. Then you will have a happy life, and you will go to a happy place, heaven.” This is not the deeper gospel. This is the shallow gospel. When the Lord raised up new light among us, the new way, and brought us into it, a certain number of arguments were aroused. Some said that to preach the gospel was not something new; they had done it before and were still doing it. However, in what way are we preaching the gospel? It may be in the shallow way. Many Christians do not know how to preach the gospel in a deeper way. The deeper gospel is something new yet something ancient. It is in the Bible but not in man’s natural understanding. Therefore, I have the burden to conduct a training. I would like to train the saints to know things, not in a superficial way but in a deep way. When we preach the gospel in this deeper way, we do not touch the “flesh and bone” of man; we touch the spirit of man. Go to preach such a gospel and touch the spirit of man. When man touches his own spirit, God has a way to enter into him. Then this man is grafted into Christ; he is saved.
We must remember the principle of our growth in the divine life. To grow in life is to grow with the growth of life. It is to increase with the increase of God who is life.
