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Scripture Reading: Phil. 1:19-21a; 2:5, 13; 3:3, 7-14; 4:12-13
Philippians 1:19 through 21a says, “I know that for me this will turn out to salvation through your petition and the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death. For to me, to live is Christ.” Verse 19 refers to the supply. In Greek this is a particular word, indicating a bountiful, all-inclusive supply. This supply is not of the Spirit of God, strictly speaking, but of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
In chapter 2, verse 5 says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” and verse 13 says, “It is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.”
Verse 3 of chapter 3 says, “We are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh.” Verses 7 through 14 continue, “What things were gains to me, these I have counted as loss on account of Christ. But moreover I also count all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is out of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is out of God and based on faith, to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if perhaps I may attain to the out-resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained or am already perfected, but I pursue, if even I may lay hold of that for which I also have been laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not account of myself to have laid hold; but one thing I do: Forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, I pursue toward the goal for the prize to which God in Christ Jesus has called me upward.”
In chapter 4, verses 12 and 13 say, “I know also how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to hunger, both to abound and to lack. I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me.”
In the previous two chapters we saw that Christ is everything. Colossians shows us that He is God, and He is man; He is the Creator, and He is also the first item of creation. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. Moreover, He is the reality of all positive things. All physical, material things are simply shadows; the reality of all these things is Christ Himself. Now Christ is life to us. According to 1 Corinthians 15:45b, Christ is the life-giving Spirit; He is in our spirit as our life today and also as our hope, aim, and goal for the future.
Now such a Christ, whom we have seen, must be wrought into us. This is the message of the book of Galatians. According to this book, Christ must be the indwelling One. He is subjective to us because He is revealed in us, He lives in us as our life, we have been put into Him, and He is being formed in us; that is, He is being mingled with us, wrought into us, and woven into every inward part of our being. Christ has come into our spirit, and now He is in our spirit in order to saturate us, to permeate all our inward parts by coming into our mind, emotion, and will. In this way He will saturate our entire being and mingle with us to be the indwelling Christ as our life. These are the main points from Colossians and Galatians.
Philippians gives us the secret to experiencing Christ. The first chapter speaks of Christ as our life and expression. For Christ to be magnified in our body (v. 20) is for Christ to be expressed in us in a glorious way. In order for Christ to be magnified, to be expressed, through us and from within us, He must be life in us. That is why Paul says, “To me, to live is Christ” (v. 21a). This means that Christ lives in us and lives Himself out of us. He is our life; He is living within us. Now He wants to live Himself out of us so that He can be magnified in us. Therefore, Philippians 1 speaks of Christ as our life and our expression.
In Philippians 2 the apostle sets up Christ as our pattern, our example. Here, the most important factor is our mind. Verse 5 says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” In Greek the first phrase literally means “think this in you.” We have to think things as Christ did. The real human life is bound to the mind. Whatever we think, we will do. The kind of life we live depends on what we have in our mind. According to the New Testament, the mind has an important position in our being. It is the leading part of the soul. After we are regenerated in our spirit, the next step is that we are transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2). This means that our mind has to be changed. Even to repent means to turn, to change, the mind. We need to repent by turning our mind to the Lord, but that is only the beginning. After we have repented and been regenerated, from that time onward we need to have our mind constantly renewed. How is our mind renewed? On the one hand, it is to take Christ as the pattern, the example, and on the other hand, it is to have Christ spread Himself within us, permeating and saturating all our inward parts. Then we will truly have the mind which was in Christ Jesus.
The example of Christ set up in Philippians 2 actually refers to the record of the four Gospels. This is why we have to read the Gospels many times. We have to take Christ as our example. However, this is not merely to follow Him by imitating Him. Just as a donkey or a monkey cannot truly imitate a man, we cannot imitate Christ. In such an effort we would be as stupid as a donkey and as naughty as a monkey. If we could get into a monkey, however, the monkey could live our life. In the same way, how can we imitate Christ unless we have Him living within us? Christ has to live in us; then we can follow Him. Among the Catholic writings there is the book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. It may be a good book, but strictly speaking, I do not like the title. Without Christ living in us, we can never imitate Him. In Philippians, however, we have Christ set up as a pattern based on the fact that Christ is now living within us.
In Philippians 3 we have Christ as the goal, the mark, the aim, and even the prize. We should not be frustrated by all the other things. As we said before, God gave us many material items in order for us to exist and live. Without food, drink, and other things, we could not exist. How then could we live for Christ? In order to keep us alive, God created the material things and gave them all to us. However, there is too much of a possibility that we will be distracted by these material things, and attracted to the material things, away from Christ as the mark of God’s economy. God created these things for Christ, and God provides for us so that we can live for Christ. God’s purpose in giving us so many material things that we may exist is that we may live with Christ and for Christ. The worldly people, the unbelievers, however, have been and still are distracted from Christ by these material things.
Not only so, but the religious things are also distracting, as mentioned in Philippians 3. In Galatians 1 the apostle Paul tells us that when he was religious, he was distracted from Christ. He was not distracted by the worldly things but by fundamental religion, not the heathen religion but Judaism. Judaism was something given and ordained by God. Even something ordained by God can be a factor utilized by the enemy to distract people from Christ. God ordained the Jewish religion for the purpose of keeping people for Christ and bringing people to Christ, but the enemy of God utilized this God-ordained religion to distract the religious people from Christ. Paul indicates this in Galatians 1 and again in Philippians 3. In Philippians 3:5 and 6 he says that he was “circumcised the eighth day; of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to the righteousness which is in the law, become blameless.” How much he was distracted from Christ by the religious things and to the religious things!
Today even Christianity distracts people from Christ. Christianity should be something for Christ, but today’s Christianity distracts people from Christ to itself. Not only can the worldly things distract us; even the religious things can distract us from the goal, the mark, the prize of God, which is Christ Himself.
We should not think that we know Christ. Yes, on the one hand, we all have known Christ, but on the other hand, we still do not know Him in an adequate way. That Paul aspired to know Christ (vv. 8, 10) seems to pose a problem. However, this does not mean that Paul did not know Christ. He knew Christ very well, but he still needed to know Him more. He aspired to know not only Christ but also the power of His resurrection. This relates to the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). If Christ were not the life-giving Spirit within us, we could not know and experience the power of His resurrection. The power of His resurrection is not in our body; it is in our spirit.
At the time Paul wrote this Epistle, he was in prison. Throughout all the years, Christians have extolled the experience of Peter when he was in prison. The prison doors were opened, and Peter was released (Acts 5:18-19). The power that opened the prison and physically released Peter from the material prison was the power of God, but it was not the power of Christ’s resurrection. When Paul was put in prison at the time he wrote Philippians, the prison was not opened, and his chains did not fall off. He was kept there month after month and year after year. Within him, however, was the power to suffer gloriously. This is the power of Christ’s resurrection. I have heard many people praising Peter’s experience of being released from the outward prison, but I have not heard many people praising the experience of Paul, who was imprisoned outwardly but released inwardly. Even today we still enjoy the issue of his release. Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians were all written in prison. Outwardly he was imprisoned, but inwardly he was resurrected.
When we are childish, even babyish, and we become ill, we may pray about the illness. The Lord may say, “All right, let the illness be gone,” and it is gone. When we gain more growth and maturity, we may still pray about our illness. However, many people can testify that the more they pray, the more serious the illness becomes. The Lord will not take away the illness. Rather, He will say, “My grace is sufficient. You have to experience My resurrection power.” The illness will remain, but praise Him, it simply paves the way and lays the ground for us to experience the resurrection power. If we do not have the illness, we can never experience the resurrection power of Christ. In the past and even until today, I know some brothers and sisters with problems. They prayed much, but their problems remained. Recently, a sister whom I have known for more than thirty years came to me. She spoke of her husband, whom I also had known even as a schoolmate, saying that there had been no change with him before the Lord for year after year. Day by day he still complains to her that she should not be a Christian. Every day this sister has suffered, and she is still suffering. She asked me why it is so. I did not say a word, but I looked to the Lord that He would speak to her. I realized that she has truly learned something within, not of the power of God’s creation but of the power of resurrection.
For almost forty years the people of Israel saw the miracle of manna every morning. If we were to open the door tomorrow and see that manna had come down, we would all be excited, and it would be in the major newspapers. The people of Israel experienced this more than ten thousand times. Day by day they saw a miracle as something that came down from heaven in the morning, regardless of where they went or where they stayed. However, that was too outward to be the power of resurrection. Regardless of how many years God performed that miracle, nothing was wrought into the people of Israel. Today in the New Testament time God will generally not do that kind of work. In the New Testament dispensation God’s intention is to work Christ into us. The manna sent down was of the power of creation, not of the power of resurrection. God’s intention, however, is not an outward miracle but an inward miracle. The inward marvel is that Christ as the Spirit is wrought into us. This is the power, not of creation, but of resurrection.
Even the prison being opened to release the apostle Peter was not of the power of resurrection. In Philippians, however, there is another apostle who was kept in prison. God did nothing for him outwardly, but he suffered by the power of resurrection within him. When Peter was released from prison, I do not believe that he experienced the resurrection power very much. When he was old, though, he was martyred by crucifixion. At that time God would not release him; God would not deliver him from the persecutors. When Peter suffered persecution and was martyred, he experienced the resurrection power.
What kind of power do we expect to have? We all may childishly expect to have the power of creation. We may think that it would be wonderful for the Lord to send manna throughout the city we live in; then all the millions of people would be saved. I do not believe this. How many of the people of Israel were truly gained by Lord through the daily miracles for almost forty years? Not many were. The Lord Jesus fed five thousand people, not including the women and children, with five small loaves. That was a marvelous miracle, but how many people were saved through that miracle? Only a handful of people continued to follow the Lord and seek the inner life. According to John 6 the crowds left Him, saying, “This word is hard; who can hear it?” (vv. 60, 66). The power we expect to experience must be the resurrection power. We must have the goal of the resurrected Christ as the very resurrection power within us. We must seek Him, pursue Him, and follow Him, taking Him as our goal, aim, mark, and prize.
Philippians 4 speaks of Christ as the secret. In verse 12 Paul says, “I know also how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to hunger, both to abound and to lack.” Paul knew the secret not only of the good things but also of suffering, of being abased. Today we often hear testimonies about abounding. In the church meetings the brothers and sisters stand to testify of how they abound. We almost never hear a testimony of how someone was abased. The apostle Paul was very much abased. He may also have been challenged: “If the Jesus you preach is the living One, if He is God, why are you suffering here? If He is the almighty One, why are you still hungry? We have plenty to eat, but you do not.” In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul tells us that he was in hunger and nakedness (v. 27). That was a real testimony. If I testify that for the past thirty years I have been very rich, and now I am a millionaire, then I must be wrong in some way.
Christ is the secret for us to live, suffer, and sometimes enjoy. Sometimes we are truly rich. We know how to be abased, and we know how to abound. To know how to be abased may be easy, but to know how to abound may not be easy. If God puts a million dollars into our hand, we may be changed; we may feel that we are now glorious. If we receive some money, that money may spoil us. Christ must be the secret by which we know how to use riches and not be spoiled by them. To have millions of dollars in our hand yet not misuse them or be spoiled by them is a true grace. This means that we know the secret. Christ is the secret for us to be abased and to abound.
The foregoing points are the concept of the four chapters of Philippians. Christ is life, so He is our expression. He is the example, the pattern, and He is also the goal, the aim. Moreover, Christ is the secret. Still, there is a secret to the secret. The secret of the secret is in 1:19 — the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. This is not the Spirit of God, as such, but the Spirit of Jesus Christ. We all know that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is the Spirit of God, but the apostle Paul spoke here not of the Spirit of God but of the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the key and the secret.
The phrase bountiful supply was a special term to the Greeks of ancient times. It relates to a chorus, a band or group of people that performed by singing. The leader of the chorus was the choragus, who was responsible to supply all the needs of the chorus. The choragus supplied what they ate and drank, what they wore, their dwelling place, and their music and instruments. This is the word used in verse 19. Today the Spirit of Jesus Christ is our Choragus, supplying whatever we need. We are the chorus, demonstrating Christ by our “singing.” We need many things, and whatever we need, the Choragus, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, will supply. This is the bountiful supply, the all-inclusive supply.
The Spirit here is called the Spirit of Jesus Christ. This is because Jesus Christ today is the Spirit. Christ said that He is the truth, the reality, and the Spirit today is the Spirit of reality (John 14:6, 17). Jesus Christ is the reality, and the Spirit of God today is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, so the Spirit is the Spirit of reality. All that Jesus is and all that He has attained and obtained are in the Spirit. Moreover, this Spirit is within us. An electrical current is a good illustration of the Spirit. If you go to the meter, you can see that the electricity is flowing in a house. If a house has the current of electricity, it has the reality of the electricity; without the current, there is no reality of electricity. What then is the current of the electricity? It is the electricity itself. When we speak of the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we mean that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the current, the flow, of God and Christ. Christ as the “electricity” is flowing in the current. The electricity is in the generator in the power plant, but now by the current it is also in this building. In the same way, the Spirit is the current of Christ, and this current is now flowing in us. The current of electricity is a wonderful illustration of the Spirit. Perhaps because people a few hundred years ago did not have electricity, they could not understand the Spirit of Jesus Christ as we do today.
Christ today is so real to us as the Spirit. If Christ were not such a current to us, how could we experience Him as our life? Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” and, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (6:48, 57). Christ is food to us, and we have to eat Him. If He were not the Spirit, though, how could we eat Him? I believe that in these days Christ as the indwelling Spirit is the main item of the Lord’s recovery. This will be more and more recovered among us. In the past six years, beginning from 1959, whenever I have had a time with the Lord, one thing has been within me: the matter of the Spirit and our spirit.
The apostle John saw all the visions of Revelation in spirit. In Revelation 4 there is the vision of the throne, and from chapter 6 to chapter 20 there are the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. Verses 1 and 2a of chapter 4 say, “After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you the things that must take place after these things. Immediately I was in spirit; and behold, there was a throne set in heaven.” From this throne come the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. Then in Revelation 21 and 22 there is the vision of the New Jerusalem. Verse 10 of chapter 21 says, “He carried me away in spirit onto a great and high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” The vision in chapter 4 is of the throne, the center of the entire universe. The vision in chapter 21 is of the city, the unique, universal expression of God. Both of these visions are a matter of spirit. Some versions capitalize spirit in these verses, and others render it in lower case. It is hard to know whether this is the Spirit or the human spirit of the apostle. Either way, this is a matter of spirit.
In these last days the matter of the Spirit and our spirit will be more and more recovered. We must come to know that Christ is the Spirit, and everything related to God is realized by us in this Spirit. Even five years ago I was not as clear as I am today. At that time I never gave a message telling people that Christ as the life-giving Spirit is like the air. Now I can tell this to people, and I have the assurance that it is right, because on the evening of the day of resurrection, the Lord came to His disciples, breathed into them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). The Spirit was the breath of Christ; when the Lord breathed into His disciples, the breath that came out of His mouth was the Holy Spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma, which means “spirit,” “breath,” and “wind.” Our car tires have pneumatic pressure; when they are out of pneuma, they are flat. Many Christians today are flat, out of pneuma, out of spiritual breath.
Christ is so available to us today, just like the air. We can live for seven days without eating and three to five days without drinking, but without air, we cannot live for three minutes. After three minutes of not breathing, we will die. This physical air is not the real air; it is merely a shadow. The real air is Christ, in whom we live, move, and have our being. Christ is so vital and so available to us. Is this miraculous? On the one hand, it is the biggest miracle, but on the other hand, it is just something normal. Day by day we are living in the air. Christ is the miracle of air. He is the breath, the wind. Even the mighty rushing wind on the day of Pentecost also brought in fresh air; the wind always brings the air.
Perhaps we would not be able to adequately understand these things without scientific discoveries. Today science has proven that even in small substances there is atomic power. If within these poor items there is such a power, consider what power there is in Christ. Today this Christ is the Spirit, and the Spirit is in us. We are not talking about a mere religion. I hate to have a religion. In this universe there is the reality of the Triune God — the Father as the source, the Son as the course, and the Spirit as the current, the flow. Oh, we have the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit within us! Such a reality of the Triune God is dispensed into us through the Spirit. Therefore, we are not dealing with a religion, with the gifts, or even with the Bible alone. We are dealing with the living God and the living Christ in the living Spirit, not in a miraculous way but in a very normal way, just like the air. I do not have the adequate words, even in my mother tongue, to express what is on my heart and what I have understood in my spirit. It is very hard to explain, but I truly have seen something in my spirit about this. I can never exhaust speaking about this. In a sense I am “crazy” about this.
The Father is in the Son, the Son is the Spirit, and the Spirit today is the very current of the Triune God. This current flows into us and flows within us. While He is flowing, all the essence, elements, and fullness of the Godhead are transmitted into us. This is wonderful! This is not a religion, a set of teachings or gifts, or even the Bible by itself. This is the living Triune God in the Son and through the Spirit flowing into us day by day, constantly, like electricity and like the air. The Christ in whom we believe is such a living, life-giving Spirit, real and available as the air. Do we realize Him to such an extent? We need to realize Him.
This is the Christ that is revealed in the four books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. The apostle Paul, the writer, gives us the vision of Christ and then shows us the secret to experience this Christ in the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. If we have this Spirit flowing within us, we have Christ living in us. Then Christ will be magnified through us, and He will become our pattern, example, goal, prize, mark, and aim, and He will be the One who empowers us within. In this way He becomes the secret. If we have Him, we can do all things. The secret of the secret, however, is the Spirit. Just as the “mark” of electricity is the switch, the mark of God’s economy is the Spirit with our spirit. If we exercise our spirit and give heed to it, we will realize how rich, how real, and how living the indwelling Christ is. Again I say, this is not in the miraculous way but in a very normal way. The more spiritual we are, the more we are normal and powerful in a normal way. The life, expression, example, pattern, goal, mark, empowering, and secret are in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who has the bountiful supply. Praise Him, He is in us! This is wonderful, and this is the secret of experiencing Christ. For this reason, I love the book of Philippians.
