Search
Prayer: O Lord, our hearts are full of thanks and praise that You chose us before the foundation of the world and You set us apart in this age. How great this grace is and what a miracle this is! While millions of people are busy for the world, You have separated us so that, like Mary, we may sit at Your feet to receive Your word, seek Your heart, and follow Your lovely self. Dear Lord, we do not follow the letter; we follow You. We pray that You would remember us.
O Lord, You were once in the flesh with Your disciples, and then You became the Spirit to enter into them. You were with them not only outwardly but also inwardly; You were with them not only in one place but also everywhere. Furthermore, You not only were with them all the time and everywhere, but You were in them as the Spirit and life whereby they could live. Lord, we have heard all these things, but we are still short of revelation, vision, and light. We pray that once again You would give us the revelation, the heavenly vision, and the clear light.
O Lord, cleanse us and forgive us. We really confess that up to now we are still living in our natural being and in the old creation; we still have a great measure of our fleshly element. Outwardly, it seems that we have no mistakes or trespasses, but we definitely live in our natural self, our old creation, and even in our flesh, always offending You and opposing You. We are like today’s Amalekites resisting Your economy. O Lord, we pray that You would deal with us again and renew us. Grant us Your visitation and Your grace in every way. Amen!
There are seven great matters in God’s economy. The first five matters are the five steps of God’s economy, which are incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension. These five steps bring in the sixth great matter, which is a great issue — the church, which is the Body of Christ, the house of God, the kingdom of God, and the counterpart of Christ. Hence, this great issue is of five aspects: the church, the Body, the house of God, the kingdom of God, and the counterpart. This issue with five aspects has a consummation — the New Jerusalem; this is the seventh great matter. We must clearly see these seven great matters in God’s economy: five major steps bringing forth an issue with five aspects that consummate in the New Jerusalem.
The five major steps of God’s economy were accomplished by God in His becoming a man. First, He became flesh to be a man in the flesh. Then He lived the human life altogether in the flesh; when He was on the earth, people saw not a spirit but Jesus in the flesh, a carpenter of Nazareth. Furthermore, most of the people whom He contacted were fishermen from Galilee and, other than Nicodemus, very few were high-class people. This was His living of the human life in the flesh.
It was in His flesh that He accomplished redemption through death. The New Testament strongly says that on the cross Christ offered Himself in His human body to God (Heb. 10:5, 10) to accomplish an eternal redemption for us (9:12). Once redemption was accomplished, He rested. It was on the sixth day that He suffered crucifixion. On the next day after the accomplishment of redemption, that is, the seventh day, the Sabbath, He rested. His disciples did not dare to do anything, so they also rested (Luke 23:56). Then on the eighth day, the first day of the week, Mary the Magdalene came early to the tomb and discovered that the Lord had resurrected (John 20:1). Once the Lord entered into resurrection, redemption was successfully accomplished (Rom. 4:25).
Redemption was accomplished in death and concluded in resurrection, because once He entered into resurrection, the Lord was set free from His flesh and entered into another stage. Actually, the Lord was not set free from His flesh; rather, He was transfigured in His body to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) so that He may move as the Spirit. The first step that He took in His move as the Spirit was to contact Mary the Magdalene in the morning of His resurrection (John 20:14-16). Mary received an exceedingly great blessing because she loved the Lord to the uttermost. She was not only the first one who discovered the Lord’s resurrection but also the first one whom the Lord contacted after His resurrection. Mary was very excited and wanted to touch the Lord, but the Lord said to her, “Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (v. 17a). This means that the freshness of the Lord’s resurrection as the firstfruits of the harvest must be manifested first for the Father’s enjoyment.
Then the Lord said to Mary, “Go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (v. 17b). Previously, the most intimate term the Lord had used in reference to His disciples was friends (15:14-15). But in the morning of His resurrection, the Lord regenerated all His disciples, including you and me, in His resurrection. Peter was so deeply impressed with this matter that in 1 Peter 1:3 he says that God the Father has regenerated us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. From then on, the Lord began to call His disciples “brothers,” because they all were regenerated with the divine life through His resurrection.
After His resurrection the Lord ascended to the Father with His resurrected body (John 20:17). That was a secret ascension; it occurred forty days prior to His public ascension, which took place before the eyes of the disciples (Acts 1:9-11). These are the five major steps of God’s becoming a man.
The secret of having the five major steps of God’s economy as our experience lies with the life-giving Spirit. After He accomplished redemption in the flesh, Christ was resurrected. After His resurrection He was qualified to ascend to heaven. For the sake of His disciples, however, He did not ascend to heaven publicly on the day of His resurrection. Rather, in the evening of His resurrection He came back to be with His disciples, and He appeared to them through a period of forty days and spoke the things concerning the kingdom of God (John 20:19; Acts 1:3) to give them some “private tutoring.” Then after forty days He ascended to heaven openly before their eyes.
Christ was the Spirit when He ascended to heaven; He had a body, but that body was a spiritual body. This is something our limited mind cannot comprehend. In the evening of His resurrection, while the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, the Lord entered with His resurrected body and stood in their midst, and He even showed them His hands and His side (John 20:19-20). This cannot be explained scientifically or physically, but it is indeed the divine revelation! He came in resurrection with a spiritual body. The primary thing that He did in His coming was that He breathed into His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22). This was the Spirit referred to in John 7:39 and the Spirit of reality (14:17) promised in chapters 14 through 16. The Lord imparted Himself into His disciples as life and everything by breathing the Holy Spirit into them.
From that day on, Peter changed. Formerly, Peter always spoke nonsensically and wrongly, and every time he spoke, he was rebuked. The best speaking he had was in Matthew 16, where the Lord asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Right away the Lord praised him, saying, “Blessed are you...because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in the heavens” (vv. 15-17). Peter spoke a word with revelation, yet after that, he spoke nonsense again. As a result, the Lord rebuked him as “Satan” (v. 23).
Peter spoke a wrong word again at the Lord’s transfiguration in Matthew 17. He said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You are willing, I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (v. 4). Moses represents the law, and Elijah, the prophets; the two equal the Old Testament. Immediately after Peter spoke that word, a voice out of the cloud said, “This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight. Hear Him!” (v. 5). God finds His delight only in His Son, not Moses or Elijah. After hearing this word, Peter arose and looked around, but neither Moses nor Elijah was there. He lifted up his eyes and saw Jesus Himself alone (v. 8). That was a great correction to him.
On the night of His betrayal the Lord Jesus told His disciples, “You will all be stumbled because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” Peter answered and said to Him, “If all will be stumbled because of You, I will never be stumbled.” The Lord said to him, “This night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said, “Even if I must die with You, I will by no means deny You” (26:31-35). Peter was such a person who spoke foolishly, but in Acts 2 when he stood up, he spoke rightly from the moment that he opened his mouth. He could expound the Holy Scriptures and explain the Old Testament (vv. 14-21) because the Lord had entered into him as the Spirit.
Therefore, from then on, the Lord worked among the disciples but not in the flesh; He was altogether a Spirit. In 2 Timothy 4:22 Paul says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” This Lord is the One who became flesh, died, and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit, and therefore He can be with our spirit. This shows that after His resurrection all the works that the Lord carried out among and in the disciples were a matter of the divine Spirit with the human spirit.
Today our Lord is God who became flesh and was transfigured into the Spirit. In His resurrection He was transfigured to become the Spirit. Now we would like to go on and have a further look at the crystallized significance of Christ’s resurrection. This is another item of the result of our study of the Word for more than seventy years.
John 1 says clearly that the Lord Jesus was the only Begotten of God (v. 14). Then, in the Epistles, Romans says that Christ is the firstborn Son of God among many brothers (8:29). Hebrews says that when Christ comes again into the world, He will be sent by God as the Firstborn (1:6). The process of the only begotten Son becoming the firstborn Son is not so simple; this process began with incarnation. John 1 says that the Word, who was God, became flesh, and this Word was the only Begotten who came from the Father (vv. 1, 14). The Father denotes the source, and the Son denotes the expression. Before His incarnation the Son was the only begotten Son; once He became flesh, entering into the flesh, He was the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), who was Jesus. Jesus as the last Adam was God who became man. Although this is a common word, it is not easy to explain its intrinsic significance.
In eternity past God had neither the human nature nor a human body; it was when He became a man that He put on a body of flesh and blood and partook of the human nature. Hence, Hebrews 2 says, “Since therefore the children have shared in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same” (v. 14). Hence, Jesus was a God-man. There was a part within Him that was God; that part was the only begotten Son of God. But in His incarnation He put on the flesh, and that flesh was His human nature, which had nothing to do with divinity. In His living on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, the Lord Jesus was always with the flesh, where the human nature lies. Since He was with the human flesh, how could He become the Son of God? He was designated the Son of God in power through His resurrection (Rom. 1:4).
Paul tells us in the beginning of Romans that he was a called apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which concerns the Son of God, Jesus Christ (1:1, 3). Who was this Son of God? Paul points out clearly that this Son of God was One who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh and who was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead. This means that it was God who designated Christ in His human flesh the Son of God by the resurrection power. The Spirit of holiness here does not refer to the person of the Holy Spirit of God but to the divine essence of Christ, the divinity of Christ. The flesh was Christ’s humanity, whereas the Spirit of holiness was Christ’s divinity. Before His resurrection His human nature was not yet designated the Son of God. It was by resurrection that His human nature was sanctified, uplifted, and transformed. Hence, by resurrection He was begotten to be the Son of God with His humanity (Acts 13:33) and thereby was designated the Son of God.
Acts 13:33 says, “You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.” Is the Son here the only begotten Son or the firstborn Son? If He were the only begotten Son who was already there in eternity, there would have been no need of begetting again, but on the day of resurrection, the humanity of the Lord Jesus was born again. His humanity was born the first time in His mother’s womb; that was human and could not be considered the Son of God but only the Son of Man. Hence, He was called the Son of Man (Matt. 8:20; 9:6). By resurrection He was begotten again in His humanity and designated the Son of God.
The designation of the Lord Jesus in His humanity to be the Son of God was carried out by the Spirit of holiness. The origin of this Spirit of holiness was the Holy Spirit in Matthew 1. Matthew 1:20 says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife, for that which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” God was born into Mary through His Spirit; hence, the One who was born was a God-man with the Holy Spirit and the human flesh, possessing both divinity and humanity. Yet in His humanity He still needed to be designated the Son of God; this was accomplished on the day of resurrection. When the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He died in His humanity but was very active in His divinity. This is what 1 Peter 3:18b says: “On the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit.” The crucifixion put Christ to death only in His flesh — the flesh He received through His incarnation (John 1:14) — not in His Spirit as His divinity. This means that the crucifixion did not crucify His divinity but His humanity, His flesh. When His flesh died on the cross, His Spirit as His divinity did not die but rather was given the opportunity to be made alive, enlivened, with new power of life.
In John 12:24 the Lord Jesus said that He was a grain of wheat, which unless it “falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This is to die and live, that is, to live by dying; to die is to live. Apparently, a grain dies when it falls into the ground, but actually, that death is for the grain to live. It is through death that the grain of wheat is activated within so that the inner life power has the opportunity to operate and bring forth new sprouts. The death of the Lord Jesus opened the shell of His flesh, and the Spirit of holiness had the great opportunity to operate for the germination of the new creation.
Because a seed is living, the operation of life is activated simultaneously with the death of the seed. When a stone is buried in the ground, there is neither death nor life, but when a seed is sown into the soil, life begins to operate. It is through death that life operates. The Lord Jesus was both God and man. People thought that if they killed Him, He would be finished since He was merely a man. Little did they know that His being killed afforded Him a great opportunity for the divinity in Him to become operative. It was then that He was designated in His humanity to be the Son of God by the Spirit of holiness (the divinity of Christ) in resurrection.
To designate means to uplift. When we designate, or mark out, a certain object, we uplift it. For example, out of many pieces of wood, you may pick one of them. As far as you are concerned, that piece is at the top; you have marked it out. Again, for example, when you go to the market to buy fish, you pick only one out of many fish. This means that you uplift that fish by designating it. Likewise, through resurrection the humanity of Christ was marked out, uplifted, by the Spirit of holiness, the divinity of Christ. In this way the humanity of Christ was uplifted into divinity; that is, Christ was begotten again in His humanity. Hence, Acts 13:33 says, “You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.” This begetting is the designation in Romans 1:4; both refer to resurrection.
After His resurrection Christ still possesses divinity and humanity, but His humanity has been uplifted and joined with His divinity through His resurrection. This means that He was begotten to be the Son of God in His humanity. So it is with our regeneration. We were human beings with the human nature, but we were without the divine life and had no share in the divine nature. At the time of our regeneration, when the life of God entered into us, we were born again. We were regenerated in the Lord’s resurrection. When Christ was designated in His humanity to be the Son of God by the Spirit of holiness (the divinity of Christ), we were also designated with Him as the many sons of God. We were born with Christ in the same delivery. In this delivery He was the first One, so He is the firstborn Son; we were those who came after Him, so we are the many sons. The many sons of God and the firstborn Son of God were born at the same time. What a revelation this is! This is the crystallization of our study, which is not seen in Christianity.
We are not only the brothers of Christ, but even more we are genuine brothers born with Him in the same delivery. Just as His flesh (His human nature) was begotten of the divine nature and the divine life, so also our human nature is begotten of the divine nature. As a result, we all have become the many sons of God, the many brothers of Christ, born with Him in the same delivery. Two thousand years ago, before we were born of our parents, we were regenerated. According to man’s natural understanding, this principle is illogical, but with God there is no time factor. Today we have not seen the New Jerusalem, but in Revelation the predicates used concerning the New Jerusalem are all in the past tense because in God’s eyes the New Jerusalem has long been in existence.
First Peter 1:3 explicitly says that God has regenerated us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Ephesians 2:5 says that even when we were dead in offenses, God made us alive together with Christ. This, however, was still not resurrection; we were simply made alive out of our offenses. Verse 6 goes on to say that God “raised us up together with Him and seated us together with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.” Christ was resurrected two thousand years ago, when we were not yet born, yet in God’s eyes we were resurrected together with Christ. We should believe this fact.
Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 15:45 says that in His resurrection Christ as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit. God became flesh and was born as Jesus, but in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul refers to the last Adam instead of Jesus. According to our natural understanding, there were millions of “Adams” after Him. Since neither you nor I are the last Adam, how can Christ be the last Adam? Such a question is in the human concept. In God’s eyes Christ as the last Adam was the conclusion because we were all included in Him. Therefore, we could be crucified with Him on the cross at His crucifixion (Gal. 2:20). Unless we were included in Him, we could not be crucified with Him. Christian theology teaches that His death is merely reckoned as our death. Actually, it is not so. It is not that His death is merely reckoned as our death; rather, His death is our death because we are in Him.
We can use an illustration here: Many Americans came to the United States in the loins of their forefathers, who boarded the Mayflower to come to the new continent and were thereby born as Americans. Hebrews 7:9-10 says that Levi was in Abraham’s loins when Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek. Levi, who was the fourth generation of Abraham’s descendants, was not yet born, but in God’s eyes he was already in Abraham. In the same principle, when did we first sin? We sinned in Adam when he sinned. When Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we also ate it in him. This is the biblical view. This is what it means to be “in Adam” (1 Cor. 15:22). In Adam means that Adam includes us. Likewise, in Christ means that Christ includes us.
Christ as the last Adam included us in Him when He was crucified on the cross. Then in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit referred to in John 7:39: “This He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” At the time the Lord spoke this word, the Spirit was not yet, because the Lord had not yet been glorified. Jesus was glorified in His resurrection (Luke 24:26). The resurrection of Jesus was His glorification (1 Cor. 15:43a; Acts 3:13a, 15a). Once Jesus was glorified, the Spirit, the consummated Spirit, was there.
Today the Spirit is the consummated, compound, all-inclusive, indwelling, and sevenfold intensified Spirit. The Spirit was consummated by passing through the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. The Spirit is also the compound Spirit, compounded with God and man plus the element of Christ’s death with its effectiveness and the element of Christ’s resurrection with its power (Exo. 30:23-25). Such a Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ with the bountiful supply (Phil. 1:19).
Now we will go on to see the experience of the different steps of God’s economy. Among the several steps of God’s economy, only two steps require our daily experience — not incarnation or human living but death and resurrection. The cross is a synonym for death, and the Spirit is a synonym for resurrection. Brother Nee said that the reality of resurrection is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the reality of resurrection; without the Holy Spirit there is no resurrection. In John 11:25 the Lord Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” This indicates that resurrection is a person. Hence, the reality of resurrection is Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit. Today, as God-men, we should live the God-man life, which is a life of the experience of death and resurrection, a life of the experience of the cross and the Spirit.
Our Christian life altogether depends on two things: the cross and the life-giving Spirit. The significance of the cross is of two aspects: the aspect of redemption and the aspect of life. Christianity knows only the shallow aspect of redemption. Stanza 1 and the chorus of Hymns, #1059 say,
Jesus, keep me near the cross,
There a precious fountain,
Free to all — a healing stream,
Flows from Calv’ry’s mountain.
In the cross, in the cross,
Be my glory ever;
From the cross my ransomed soul
Nothing then shall sever.
This concerns Christ’s redemption, that is, His dying on the cross on our behalf. However, Christ’s death on the cross has another aspect, that is, our dying with Him. His dying for us is the aspect of redemption, whereas our dying with Him is the aspect of life.
In our hymnal several hymns are concerned in particular with the aspect of the co-death of the cross. One of these hymns is #477. The hymn (without the chorus) was written in the third century; later, A. B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, added the chorus. This hymn is simple yet mysterious. It is a hymn on the inner life and was translated into Chinese by Brother Nee. The first stanza says,
Though Christ a thousand times
In Bethlehem be born,
If He’s not born in thee
Thy soul is still forlorn.
The Cross on Golgotha,
Will never save thy soul;
The Cross in thine own heart,
Alone can make thee whole.
This is a word of experience. If the cross remains only on Golgotha, without entering into you, it can only redeem you but it cannot save you. To be redeemed is one thing; to be saved is another thing. To “make thee whole” here refers to salvation, not redemption. The cross at Golgotha with the shedding of blood is more than able to redeem you, but this cross must enter into you as a tool of the Spirit before it can make you whole and save you.
The chorus appended by A. B. Simpson was fittingly and aptly done. It says,
O, Cross of Christ, I take thee
Into this heart of mine,
That I to my own self may die
And rise to thy life Divine.
This was written altogether from the subjective side, not from the objective side. The objective cross on Golgotha cannot enter into us. The cross that enters into our heart is the cross that has become our subjective experience for us to live by the Lord practically. We need to sing such a hymn again and again in our daily life.
Stanza 2 is the climax of this hymn, but regretfully most people who sing it do not pay attention to its deep meaning. This stanza says,
What e’er thou lovest, man,
That too become thou must;
God, if thou lovest God,
Dust, if thou lovest dust.
Go out, God will come in;
Die thou and let Him live;
Be not and He will be;
Wait and He’ll all things give.
Dust refers not only to the physical dust but also to the world. Be not and He will be means that if we do not exist, God exists. In other words, we should not think about becoming somebody; actually, we are nobody. Do not consider that you are something; only God is. Hebrews 11:6 says that faith is to believe that God is and we are not. When we come forward to God, we must believe that God is and we are not. This is equal to Paul’s statement: “No longer I...but it is Christ” (Gal. 2:20). No longer I means that I am not; it is Christ means that only Christ is.
“That I am nothing, Thou art all” in stanza 2 of Hymns, #395 conveys the same meaning. Recently, I read a biography of John Nelson Darby. On the first page it quotes him as saying, “O the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing nothing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.” This was a word spoken in his old age, in which he longed to be nothing, to have nothing, and to care for nothing but to have only Christ and care only for His interests on earth. What a joy this is! Hence, “Be not and He will be; / Wait and He’ll all things give.” Through the generations there have been saints who experienced this. Today we should have this experience even more.
The cross that we experience today is not only the objective, vicarious death but even more the subjective co-death with the Lord. Such experience makes us nothing and makes God everything to us. As a result, we become God-men. Whatever you love, that is what you will become. If you love God, you will become God. Then where is your self? It is on the cross. Hymns, #631 is also a hymn on the subjective experience of the cross:
If I’d know Christ’s risen power,
I must ever love the Cross;
Life from death alone arises;
There’s no gain except by loss.
If no death, no life,
If no death, no life;
Life from death alone arises;
If no death, no life.
If I’d have Christ formed within me,
I must breathe my final breath,
Live within the Cross’s shadow,
Put my soul-life e’er to death.
If God thru th’ Eternal Spirit
Nail me ever with the Lord;
Only then as death is working
Will His life thru me be poured.
Hymns, #482, another hymn by A. B. Simpson, is also on the subjective experience of our co-death and co-resurrection with Christ:
I am crucified with Christ,
And the cross hath set me free;
I have ris’n again with Christ,
And He lives and reigns in me.
Oh! it is so sweet to die with Christ,
To the world, and self, and sin;
Oh! it is so sweet to live with Christ,
As He lives and reigns within.
Mystery hid from ancient ages!
But at length to faith made plain:
Christ in me the Hope of Glory,
Tell it o’er and o’er again.
This the secret nature hideth,
Harvest grows from buried grain;
A poor tree with better grafted,
Richer, sweeter life doth gain.
I appreciate stanza 3, which says that a buried grain does not die but lives and grows. Life arises from death alone. How wonderful this is! Where are we today? We are on the cross. When we are on the cross, we are in the Spirit of resurrection. Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” The Christ who lives in me is the consummated, compound, all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling, sevenfold intensified Spirit. This is what Hymns, #539 refers to:
O Lord, Thou art in me as life
And everything to me!
Subjective and available,
Thus I experience Thee.
O Lord, Thou art the Spirit!
How dear and near to me!
How I admire Thy marvelous
Availability!
To all my needs both great and small
Thou art the rich supply;
So ready and sufficient too
For me now to apply.
Thy sweet anointing with Thy might
In weakness doth sustain;
By Thy supply of energy
My strength Thou dost maintain.
Thy law of life in heart and mind
My conduct regulates;
The wealth of Thy reality
My being saturates.
O Thou art ever one with me,
Unrivaled unity!
One spirit with me all the time
For all eternity!
The aforementioned hymns speak forth the experience of the cross and the Spirit. Today on the one hand, we are on the cross, and on the other hand, we are living in the Spirit. This issues in the church, the Body of Christ, the house of God, the kingdom of God, and the bride of Christ. When we live the life of the cross and the Spirit, an issue with five aspects is brought forth.
Our living today must be the life of the cross and the Spirit. May the Lord cover me with His precious blood to say this: During the turmoil in recent years, I do not know how many slanderous and defaming words were aimed at me, but I did not say anything; I just let the Lord speak. This is the cross and the Spirit. I received great help from Brother Nee in this matter. When I was working with him throughout those eighteen years, I saw that all the opposers’ attacks were aimed at him; yet he just smiled and said nothing. He truly was one who experienced the cross and the Spirit.
Husbands and wives must also experience the cross and the Spirit continually in their living. Not to mention the big things, but even in small, ordinary things between husbands and wives, we should always say, “I am not; I am dying on the cross.” Before we speak to our spouse, we must ask, “Is this I speaking or the Lord speaking?” To practice this is to remain on the cross. All day long we should have this kind of experience. This is the normal Christian life. When we die on the cross, the Lord is brought forth in the Spirit, and the issue is the church.
Without the cross and the Spirit, there is no church. What we have is just a club; it is neither the church nor the Body of Christ. Neither is it the house of God, because it is we who act as lord. It is not the kingdom of God, because it is we who act as king. It cannot be the counterpart of Christ, because Christ is a God-man, so His counterpart must also be a God-man. Without the cross and the Spirit, there is only man without God, so there is no God-man. Hence, we must experience the cross and the Spirit daily so that there may be an issue with five aspects — the church, the Body of Christ, the house of God, the kingdom of God, and the counterpart of Christ.
