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Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:26; Gal. 2:20; Matt. 5:44; Luke 23:34
I. To be like God — through divinity.
II. To be like man — through humanity.
III. To have the highest virtues:
А. Extraordinary love.
B. Boundless forbearance.
C. Unparalleled faithfulness.
D. Absolute humility.
E. Utmost purity.
F. Supreme holiness and righteousness.
G. Brightness and uprightness.
This time as I was preparing to come back to Taiwan, I had a deep and strong feeling within me. Based on my experience over the past sixty years in the Lord’s recovery, I have put a question mark on the matter of a Christian’s humanity.
From the day I was saved, I have not known any worldly friend. Even my relatives are not that frequently in touch with me. For the past sixty years I have been in contact with only one kind of people, Christians. Furthermore, most of those with whom I have had contact are Christians who love the Lord. But during the course of my contact with them during the past sixty years, what I have seen and experienced has put a question mark in me concerning a Christian’s humanity.
In 1922 I was saved in a little city in northern China. I was also raised up by the Lord there to practice the church life. At that time I began to learn to speak for the Lord. Later, the Lord led me step by step to move to Shanghai. I was brought into contact with people of all nationalities. All these experiences opened my eyes more and more.
In 1949 I came to Taiwan. In 1956 I went to the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia. In 1960 I went further to the West, to the United States and Canada. In the end I chose the uttermost part of the earth, Los Angeles, as the base of my work. In the years subsequent to that, I passed through Pittsburgh, Detroit, New York, London, Denmark, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, India, Thailand, Japan, Guam, Hong Kong, Hawaii, and many other lands and countries. There are now over one thousand churches with about a hundred and fifty thousand saints all over the world. All kinds of peoples are here. I have contacted all types of people, and I have encountered all kinds of situations.
Because of this, by the Lord’s mercy and according to the history of His leading in the past, I feel that I can say something to you concerning the humanity of those who serve the Lord. All the people with whom I have contact are Christians. Many of them are even seeking, loving, and world-forsaking Christians. But among all these people with whom I have contact, many are wrong in their humanity. There is a problem, and this bothers me very much. I was therefore brought to further consider two great items of truth: regeneration and transformation.
Although there are many Christian groups, I have not heard of any that emphasize regeneration and transformation more than we do. In 1962 when the Lord led me to begin working in America, prayer and the spirit were the first items to which we paid attention. This was how we began. After that we released many truths concerning transformation and also put out some publications. All this happened twenty years ago. However, in my observation and contact during all these years, a question has been raised within me. How is it that some can be regenerated and transformed and yet still have a problem with their humanity? How is it possible that such a thing could ever happen in the Lord’s recovery?
Up to now the publication work in the Lord’s recovery can be divided into two stages. The first stage was during the time of Brother Nee, which was from 1922 to 1952. The second stage began from the publication of the magazine The Ministry of the Word in 1952 until now. During this time, publications of my writings began to appear more and more. Prior to 1952 all the literature work was done by Brother Nee.
In 1928 Brother Nee discontinued the publication of his first magazine, The Christian. By 1934 it was resumed. At its resumption I was entrusted with the editorial work. He took up editorship of another magazine of a deeper nature, The Present Testimony. The first few years that I edited The Christian, I spent all the time working on Brother Nee’s messages. After I was done with most of them, I also put out some of my messages concerning the kingdom.
We have to know that the literature work among us was absolutely a personal ministry of Brother Nee. It could not even be considered a work of us co-workers. At that time I only took a part in the service of it by editing the resumed The Christian magazine. The scope was not wide. Besides me there was another brother, Brother Yu, who had a part. He paid much attention to the inner life, promoted the writings of the mystics, and did some translations. But on the whole the Gospel Bookroom then was the literature ministry of Brother Nee.
By 1948 there was a great revival among us. The ministry of Brother Nee was recovered. He made fresh arrangements with the literature work of the Gospel Bookroom. Four magazines were simultaneously put out. The deepest of them was The Present Testimony; it was taken up by Brother Nee himself. A simpler one was The Way, in nature quite similar to The Christian, which Brother Nee asked me to take charge of. Other than these two, there were the magazines The Gospel and another one called The Ministers. This latter one was equivalent to Collection of Newsletters. I was one of the editors of this magazine also. By then the scope of the literature work was expanded a little. But within a year’s time the Communists took over mainland China, and the literature work was interrupted. I then left the mainland to come to Taiwan.
Hence, 1952 was a watershed. The first thirty years were mainly Brother Nee’s writings. Since 1952 I continued in this ministry with the publication of The Ministry of the Word. By 1963 when I went to the United States, I put out The Stream magazine in America and established the Living Stream Ministry. By 1974 I began to put out the Life-study messages. Both the number of messages as well as the number of copies printed were big. This is a short history of the literature work.
I mention the history because for all these years I have contacted mostly co-workers and elders. What bothers me within and gives me difficulty is the humanity of some of them. During the past years and especially during the first thirty years, I saw this bothering happen to Brother Nee.
In 1922 the first church in the Lord’s recovery was raised up in Brother Nee’s hometown of Foochow. It was the actual beginning of the Lord’s recovery. During the subsequent twenty or more years, Brother Nee encountered many sufferings. There were hard times, criticisms, judgments, and attacks. I have seen them coming wave after wave. The few of us co-workers who were close to Brother Nee always felt that he did not seem to have a single day of peace. The storms came one after another. Most of the difficulties came from the Christians and not a few from co-workers and elders.
From 1950 on, I began to work overseas. In the beginning I was in Taiwan. Later, I moved from Taiwan, passing through East and Southeast Asia and eventually reaching the West. During the past thirty years, I also have encountered many difficulties, and most of them have been from Christians.
Brother Nee was not welcomed at that time in mainland China by Christianity. This is because the light that he saw, the way that he took, and the ground that he stood on were not welcomed by Christianity. Hence, some difficulties in the mainland came from Christianity. We are not too concerned about these oppositions. What concerns us is the oppositions that have arisen from among the elders and co-workers in the Lord’s recovery during the past sixty years.
One time fifty years ago Brother Nee came to me and said, “Brother Witness, look how even Christians can lie!” At that time I was quite surprised also. It was hard for me to believe. That was the first alarm I received. Furthermore, the Christian who Brother Nee referred to was not an ordinary Christian. He was a seeking, pursuing Christian. Yet he lied. Since then the difficulties I encountered were one upon another. They caused great turmoil within me.
During the past sixty years, I have been observing the Christian humanity. The humanity I am talking about today is not that of an ordinary person but that of a servant of the Lord. It is the humanity of those who are very seeking among us, who have forsaken the world and who love the Lord dearly.
The question of humanity touches a deep and wide area. According to my knowledge, the book that speaks about humanity the most is the New Testament. In the New Testament the person who speaks about humanity the most is Paul. In Paul’s Epistles there are many places that speak concerning humanity.
Other than this, many countries in the world have philosophies that study humanity. The Chinese Confucianists are considered the best and highest in the study of humanity. The Confucian teaching is so high because of the fact that it takes human ethics as its center. Human ethics can be considered the central thought of humanity. It deals with human relationships, such as those between parents and children, brothers, sisters, and friends. Chinese Confucianism is very close to the Bible when it comes to matters of ethics. The only difference is that when the Bible talks about ethics, it has to do with the life of God, and the ethics that the Confucianists talk about have nothing to do with God; there is only a development of humanity. There is no divinity involved. The difference here is very great.
Man was created by God. Moreover, when man was created, he was created according to God’s own image (Gen. 1:26), that is, according to what God is. According to the Bible, the Ten Commandments are a description of God. All laws are descriptions of the lawmakers. The Ten Commandments are the laws made by God. The Ten Commandments can be represented by four words — light, love, holiness, and righteousness. These are the essence and nature of the Ten Commandments. They are also what the image of God is.
The law in the Old Testament is a testimony and a description. When man was created, he was created according to what God is in all these aspects. God is light. Hence, the man whom He created is also light. Although we have been degraded and corrupted, we still desire light. Even a robber aspires to things that are forthright and upright. If he has robbed a bank, he would not like others to know about it. This proves that there is still the element of light in his nature. Furthermore, in our nature there is also love. No one teaches us from youth how we ought to love our brothers and sisters. But we can all love, and we all aspire to love. This love is created by God. This is not all. What God is also includes holiness and righteousness. The Chinese use expressions such as brightness and uprightness and supreme holiness and righteousness to describe humanity. All these are revealed in the man whom God created according to what He is.
The Chinese Confucianists say that “the way of the Great Learning is in the development of the bright virtue.” This bright virtue refers to the source of our goodness. It is the function of our conscience. Wang Yang-ming, a philosopher of the Li-shue school in the Ming Dynasty, expanded the teaching of the “bright virtue” to that of the “function of the conscience.” To develop and cultivate the function of the conscience is to develop the bright virtue. Although these philosophies are good, they are good only in the human sense; no outside power is added into them. For example, one can push a tram with his own hands. But if electricity is applied to it, the tram will move differently; it will instead be powered by electricity.
After much studying, we have to agree with the same words that Paul spoke, “To will is present with me, but to work out the good is not” (Rom. 7:18b). We all know that to know is one thing but to do is another. John 3 gives a record of a Pharisee named Nicodemus. He addressed the Lord Jesus as Rabbi and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher” (v. 2). Perhaps he thought that he needed better teachings to improve himself. But the Lord answered him, “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (v. 3). It seems as if the Lord was telling Nicodemus that after man was created, he had only the image of God. He did not have the life of God, nor did he have the power to do good. Hence, Nicodemus needed to be born anew; that is, he needed to be born of water and the Spirit before he could enter into the kingdom of God (v. 5b). However, Nicodemus still did not understand, and the Lord had to say to him again, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes into Him may have eternal life” (vv. 14-15). When the Son of Man was crucified on the cross to bear and take away our sins, we were regenerated and received the eternal life. It is the very God who entered into us and mingled with us who produced all the virtues of humanity.
True Christian humanity not only comprises the divine attributes that fill us within; it also comprises the attributes that we received at creation. At the time man was created, he had only the image of God’s attributes; he did not have the content and reality of these attributes. This is why we all have to receive this God of creation into us to be our content. When He fills us, we can truly love Him. This is not to live ourselves but to live Him. It comes out of divinity and is expressed through humanity. This is the humanity a Christian should have.
However, many times we do not see ourselves or others living the proper humanity. On the contrary, sometimes there appears to be a deep degradation. I have been bothered before by this. The answer I have is the illustration of the grafting of a tree. After a branch is grafted, what comes forth from the original tree is still the original fruits. Only those that come out of the grafted branch are the desired fruits. If there is no divinity in our humanity, what is lived out will only be our oldness. Hence, we have to know that as Christians we do not live a life of one attribute. Rather, we must live a “double” life of two attributes. There must be the divine attribute, and there must be the human attribute. Only this will guarantee us a proper kind of humanity.
In the New Testament Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). It is true that Christ is living today; but we have to know that He lives within us. He is living Himself out from within us. This is what the Gospel of Luke reveals to us. The divine attributes of God are expressed through the human virtues of man. The divine nature is mingled with the human nature. The divine nature is the source and the content, and the human nature is the expression and the form. This is what we mean by humanity. We can also call it morality or virtue. It is a kind of character of a Christian and is something that every servant of the Lord should have.
To be human is to take the proper way of a man. It is to have the proper moral ethic. The humanity of one who serves the Lord must be: (1) a coming forth of God, and (2) fully human; that is, it must have the proper human flavor. If there is no human flavor, at best it will be like an angel, and at worst it will be like a demon. For us to serve the Lord, we must not be like angels or demons. We have to be human; we must be like a man. If we go to the villages for the gospel outreach, and we give others the impression that we are like angels, I am afraid that no one would dare to come close to us. Hence, we need to be human. This also is a part of our humanity.
The highest morality is one in which divinity is added to our humanity. This is the divine attributes of God expressed in the created virtues of man. It is also the most excellent virtue. According to our understanding of the Bible and our personal experience, there are seven items of these excellent virtues.
Love is the first item of these excellent virtues. This love is extraordinary. We can love to an extent that we even love our enemies (Matt. 5:44).
To forbear is to forgive. When we forgive, our hearts have to be boundless. A narrow person cannot forgive. Hence, we need to have a boundless forbearance. We have to forbear to an extent that we can forgive our enemies and those who hate us.
According to our experience, it is easier to love our enemies than to forgive them. Sometimes we can love others but cannot forgive them. For example, I can love you, but I may not be able to forget that you have offended me. Because I love you, even though you are my enemy, I can give you a Bible. But it is very difficult for me to forget the offense that you have done to me. Hence, it is not easy to forgive. For this reason the Lord set a good example for us in the Gospels. Although men reviled Him unceasingly while He was on earth, His last act on earth before He died was a prayer for man, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34a). This is boundless forbearance.
We have to deal with others with consistency and in faithfulness. We should not betray others or the Lord. There must be unparalleled faithfulness.
Our humility has to be absolute. Not only do we have to be humble. We have to be in humiliation. To be humble is to be low, but to be humiliated is to be made small. To serve the Lord we need an absolute humility.
Not only do we have to be clean; we have to be pure as well, and this purity must be to the utmost.
Toward God we have to be supremely holy, and toward man we have to be supremely righteous. Toward God we have to be fully separated, and toward man we have to be fully proper, with no fault whatsoever. This is supreme holiness and righteousness.
The first item is love, and the last item is light. The brightness to which we refer here is different from the brightness that the world talks about. Here we mean light. We have to walk in light. Everything we do must be in the light and must not be in darkness. We must be thoroughly upright and forthright and must not be narrow-minded or suspicious in any way.
All the seven items combined give a proper humanity for a servant of the Lord.
In conclusion, the Christian humanity is a life lived out through the mingling of the divine attributes and the created human morality. May the Lord preserve us to serve Him all the days of our life without turning back or deviating. May we all live out the proper humanity of one who serves the Lord. The Lord be merciful to us all.
