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Scripture Reading: Gal. 3:2-3, 5a, 14; 4:6; 5:5, 16, 24-25; 6:1a, 8, 15, 18
We have seen from the last chapter that Galatians is a book on the indwelling Christ. In the first part of the book, Paul speaks much about Christ. But from the middle of the book, he begins to speak about the Spirit. By reading this book carefully, we see that whatever has been accomplished on the cross, and all that the Lord has obtained and attained, is mentioned as the work of Christ. But when Christ is experienced by us, Paul changes from Christ to the Spirit. When Paul speaks about the objective work of the Lord, he speaks of the work of Christ. But when he speaks of experiencing the subjective Christ, he speaks of the Spirit. This shows that we should not consider Christ and the Spirit as two separate beings. Christ and the Spirit are one all-inclusive Divine Being. When we speak of His work on the cross, His accomplishment of redemption, His resurrection, and our being baptized into Him, we speak of Christ. But when we go on to speak of the practical experiences of Christ, we change from Christ to the Spirit. Christ is the One who has accomplished everything for us, and the Spirit is the One we are now experiencing. This is why in the book of Galatians Paul first mentions Christ but then speaks of the Spirit.
The blessing of God promised to Abraham was the Spirit. “In order that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (3:14). The Jewish people thought and still think that God’s promise to Abraham was something material. But actually, God’s promise to Abraham was simply to give Himself to His chosen ones. God has no intention of giving us anything but Himself. Paul said in Philippians 3:8 that everything besides Christ is refuse. This means a kind of garbage. If God gave us anything but Christ, we would be cheated. This is why God, in the process of giving Himself, becomes Christ. And when this Christ is realized by us in an experiential way, He is the Spirit.
What is a real blessing? To go to heaven is not the real blessing. Even heaven, were it empty of God, would be vain. Some consider a good wife or a good husband as a blessing. It may be a temporary blessing, but consider how much trouble your husband or wife has brought you. It is altogether a mixture. Trouble always mingles with blessing. Others expect their children to be a blessing. In a sense there is some blessing, but with much trouble.
What I mean is this. Our marriage, our family, our degree, our wealth, our fame, our health, and many other things could never be a real blessing to us. The real blessing is just God Himself. And how could God be given to us? How could He be realized and experienced by us as our daily enjoyment? There is no other way but by His being the Spirit.
We have mentioned before that God had to be processed in order to dispense Himself into us as our enjoyment and experience. The Spirit we are experiencing today is just the processed God. Christ is the very God within the process, and the Spirit is the very God who has been processed to become our experience. In eternity past He was merely God, but when He came into the process, He became flesh (John 1:1, 14), who is Christ in the flesh. Christ is God in the process. After the process He becomes our experience as the processed God, who is the very Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Today we not only have God and Christ but also the all-inclusive Spirit, who is the processed God as our experience and realization.
So in the book of Galatians, Paul first mentions Christ and then the Spirit. The Spirit was first of all promised. God promised the blessing of the Spirit to Abraham. This promised Spirit is now being ministered as a fulfillment of God’s promise. “He therefore who bountifully supplies to you the Spirit...” (3:5). Paul said that he ministered the Spirit to the Galatian believers. All ministry must be a ministry that ministers the Spirit to others. Regardless of how much is said in meetings, if nothing of the Spirit is ministered into people, the meetings are altogether vain. We have all had the experience, after attending many church meetings and conferences, of coming home and finding it difficult to remember what has been said. Yet regardless of how little we remember what was spoken, still something is within us. We can forget about the teachings, but we cannot forget the Spirit that has been ministered into us. On the other hand, we have also gone to a kind of service where a good speaker gave an eloquent sermon, yet when we came home, there was nothing left within us. When we come to a meeting that ministers the Spirit to us, we may forget what we have heard doctrinally, yet we still have something within us because the processed God as the Spirit has been ministered into us.
The Spirit was promised, the Spirit is now being ministered, and the Spirit must be received. “This only I wish to learn from you, Did you receive the Spirit out of the works of law or out of the hearing of faith?” (v. 2). The Spirit is ministered to us, and we must learn to receive. How can we receive? First of all we must open ourselves. We should not keep ourselves closed. When we are in a meeting listening to some kind of ministry, we must say, “Lord, keep me open to You. I want to receive the ministry of the Spirit.” Forty years ago I used to sit and listen to Brother Watchman Nee quite often. If I did not look to the Lord to keep me open, I might hear the message, yet I would not get much of the Lord inside me. So we must all keep ourselves open to receive the Spirit.
While we are listening and opening ourselves to the Lord, we must continually say Amen in our spirit. This is the way to receive the Spirit. We must open ourselves and say Amen to His Word. When we open ourselves and say Amen to the Word, the Word which is outside of us gets into our spirit and becomes the Spirit. Then when we express something of the Spirit to others, it becomes the Word again. If they will Amen the Word, it will get into them and become the Spirit again. This is the way to receive the Spirit.
After receiving the Spirit, we must begin by the Spirit: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (v. 3). We all must begin by the Spirit and continue by the Spirit. When we begin by the Spirit, it means that we are starting to walk by the Spirit; we are beginning to live by the Spirit.
Therefore, after beginning by the Spirit, we must learn to walk by the Spirit: “I say, Walk by the Spirit and you shall by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh” (5:16). The word walk in Greek means to have our being in this way. Whatever we say, whatever we do, whatever we are, and wherever we are, are all included in this one word. So to walk by the Spirit means to have our being by the Spirit. This means that all the time we must live by Christ and take Him as our person.
In this short book there are so many items about the subjective Spirit. After walking by the Spirit, we must learn to sow unto the Spirit. Then we shall reap of the Spirit: “He who sows unto his own flesh will reap corruption of the flesh, but he who sows unto the Spirit will of the Spirit reap eternal life” (6:8). This simply means that whatever we intend to do must be one with the Spirit. To sow unto the Spirit means to have Christ as the seed. Then we will reap a harvest of Christ. Christ first of all is the seed to us, and eventually He becomes our very harvest. This is not the doctrinal Christ but the Christ in our experience. He is our seed, and He is our harvest. If we are daily sowing the Spirit as the seed, surely some day we will reap something of the Spirit as our harvest. But if we sow unto the flesh, we will reap a harvest of the flesh. Therefore, whatever we do must be the seed of the Spirit. Then, spontaneously, something will grow up out of what we have sown. This is the indwelling Christ experienced as the Spirit.
By reading the book of Galatians properly, we see clearly that the proper Christian life is nothing but a daily walk in Christ. And today this Christ is the very Spirit within us for our experience. So this book begins with a rescue out of the present evil age, and it ends with this: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen” (6:18).
Are we living in the present evil age, or are we living in our spirit? Are we living in religion, or are we walking by the Spirit? To walk by the Spirit means to walk in our spirit. It is in our spirit that we have the enjoyment of the Lord. This is why this verse says that the Lord’s grace is with our spirit. When we get into our spirit, we enjoy the Lord as grace. When we begin to quarrel with our wife or husband, we must run back to the spirit. The more we stay in our mind, the more we will exchange words. But when we get into our spirit, we touch the grace of the Lord. Grace is the Lord experienced by us. The experienced Christ becomes our grace. Here we could never exchange words, because we are in another country. The mind is a quarreling country, but the spirit is a country of grace. It is not a matter of trying to overcome; it is a matter of being in the right country. The right country is in our spirit.
Paul begins the book of Galatians by speaking about Christ. Then he changes to the Spirit. Eventually, he tells us that the Spirit, who is the reality of Christ, is in our spirit. Therefore, we must learn to stay in our spirit. In order to do this we need some exercise. By our natural birth and life, we live not in our spirit but in our mind. But now we must change countries. We must learn continually to return to the country of grace, which is our spirit.
Very few Christians today know that Christ is in their spirit. Hardly anyone has ever paid any attention to the last verse of Galatians: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers.” Satan is so subtle. Whenever anyone comes to this verse, he covers the last three words, with your spirit. The satanic hand hid these three words from me for many years. I expounded this book verse by verse to others, but I never expounded the last three words. But the whole book of Galatians is contained in these three words. We can have all the electrical wires installed into a building, yet if we do not have a switch, we cannot apply the electricity. This is the satanic deceit. These three words are the switch. Without them, how and where shall we touch Christ? Oh, how evil Satan is! He has hidden the switch from God’s children. But today we know where the switch is. Hallelujah! Christ is the very God in process, and eventually the processed God is Christ as the life-giving Spirit in our spirit. In our spirit we enjoy the indwelling Christ as our grace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is with our spirit!
What is the grace? Grace is simply Christ Himself as our enjoyment. When we come back to our spirit, there is just the sweet enjoyment of Christ. Christ is the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit. When we turn to our spirit, we simply enjoy Him as our grace. When we are living in our mind, we are living in a backward country. We should not stay there but turn to the wonderful country of our spirit. This country is not backward but full of grace. Here we have Christ as our full enjoyment.
The book of Galatians starts negatively with the evil age of religion, and it closes positively with the human spirit. We were formerly in the country of religion, but now we must remain in the new country of our spirit. We have been rescued out of religion, which was mostly in our mind, to the wonderful enjoyment of Christ in our spirit. Religion has the doctrines, the regulations, the traditions, and the ordinances. But in our spirit we have the living Spirit as the reality of Christ. This is why, when a person stays in his spirit enjoying Christ as grace, he is in another country. He was in the mind, but now he is in his spirit. He was in religion, but now he is enjoying Christ as his grace.
The book of Galatians clearly mentions these two countries of religion and our spirit. We may also call them two realms or two kinds of worlds. From the beginning of the Bible we can see these two sources in the garden. There were two trees: the tree of life, indicating God, and the tree of knowledge, signifying Satan. We all know that religion came out of knowledge. It is an invention of the fallen mind. Knowledge is in our mind. In Genesis 3 Satan got into the mind of man. This means that the tree of knowledge got into fallen man. Later in Genesis we can see that many inventions came out of the fallen mind with the tree of knowledge. The main invention that issued out of the fallen mind is religion.
Some may think that it is too much to say that the present evil age in Galatians 1:4 is religion. But if we understand this book according to the context, we see that the book itself defines the present evil age as religion. The world in this book is religion. Galatians 6:12-13 speaks clearly about circumcision, which is something religious. Then verse 14 says, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” Many Christians quote this verse, but they have never realized that this verse is a continuation of the previous two verses. Since the foregoing verses speak about religion, it is clear by the context that the world in verse 14 is religion. Then verse 15 continues, “For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters.”
By the context of these verses, it is clear that in the book of Galatians both the present evil age and the world mean religion. Religion to the apostle Paul and to the early Christians was a strong world. Therefore, they had to be rescued from that evil age. It is the same today. Consider the Roman Catholic Church. It is very religious, yet it is so evil. It is an evil, religious world. Many people need to be rescued from that evil religion, that evil world.
The most evil thing, according to Galatians, is to distract people from Christ. God’s will is to reveal Christ into us, to have Christ live in us, and to have Christ formed in us. This is God’s purpose. Yet religion is something that distracts people from this purpose. To human eyes it does not appear so evil, but to God’s eyes it is the most evil thing. God’s intention is to work Christ into us, but Satan’s subtlety is to use religion to keep us away from Christ. It appears good and cultured, yet religion separates more people from Christ than anything else does.
To visit the casinos in Las Vegas is undoubtedly to be separated from Christ. But to be religious is considered as approved and commendable behavior. Yet Paul says in Galatians 5 that to be religious is to be separated from Christ, to be fallen from grace. If we have God’s point of view, we will see that anything that separates people from Christ is evil. Even the most moral, ethical, and religious things are evil in the eyes of God, because they separate us from the indwelling Christ.
Paul even tells us in this book that a certain kind of preaching is evil: “If even we or an angel out of heaven should announce to you a gospel beyond that which we have announced to you, let him be accursed” (1:8). This is not gambling; this is preaching. Even the preaching of a certain kind of gospel is cursed in the eyes of God as a part of the present evil age. This is a part of the world to which Paul was crucified. Paul had nothing to do with this kind of preaching, because now he had Christ revealed in him, living in him, and being formed in him. He only cared for the indwelling Christ.
Praise the Lord that His grace is with our spirit! If we stay in our mind, surely we will be religious, but when we turn to our spirit there is the rich enjoyment of Christ as grace. The tree of life is in our spirit, and the tree of knowledge is in our mind. This is the indwelling Christ in Galatians. He is now dwelling in our spirit to be our enjoyable grace.
