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Scripture Reading: Rev. 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; Eph. 2:15-16, 19; Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:22
The point which we are going to cover in this chapter is more important than all the other points covered in the previous chapters. I would ask you to exercise not only the understanding of your mind but also the apprehending ability of your spirit, so that the Holy Spirit may reveal to you something eternal.
Before I touch the main subject, I wish to say something about our human, religious concept. This concept may be described in the following way. God is our Creator. He is holy, righteous, good, and loving, so we have to worship Him. However, we realize that we are sinful and that we need to repent and confess our sins before Him. We also realize that He loved us and even sent His only begotten Son into this world to be a man. This man, Jesus, died on the cross for our sins. Then He resurrected and ascended to the heavens, and now He is sitting at the right hand of God to be our High Priest, our Advocate, interceding for us all the time. If we believe in Him, put our trust in Him, by His redemption our sins will be forgiven and we will be saved. We will be reconciled to God, justified by God, and accepted by God. Then God will be favorable toward us. From this time on, we will enjoy His favor, and He will always be good to us. If we are weak, He will help us. If we have some troubles, He will take care of them. We can pray to Him about all our needs. Furthermore, we have to try our best to please Him, to serve Him, and to glorify Him. This describes many people’s religious concept. All these things are right and are up to the standard of our human concept, but they are not up to the standard of the divine revelation, the standard of God’s purpose and desire.
Have you noticed that in our human concept there is nothing that pertains to the matter of life? In our concept there is nothing concerning Christ coming into us to be our life. This is a big shortage, a serious shortage. It is not enough just to have the sound, scriptural, fundamental Christian teachings. We must see that what the New Testament teaches is that Christ comes into us to mingle Himself with us. When we speak of Christ, we mean the all-inclusive One who includes many wonderful items, such as the Divine Trinity, divinity, humanity, human living, death, resurrection, glorification, ascension, enthronement, the kingdom, and the authority. All these things today are embodied in Christ as the wonderful Spirit.
Today this wonderful, all-inclusive Spirit is in our spirit (Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 6:17). We have everything in our spirit! This is something in the center of God’s thought, yet it is neglected by Christianity. Many Christians consider the Holy Spirit as merely a power, a force, or a sensation coming down upon us to give us some gifts, might, strength, and power and to help us to do good and serve God. They do not realize that the Spirit of God today is the all-inclusive and bountiful Spirit of Jesus Christ within us (Phil. 1:19b).
This wonderful Spirit who is Christ Himself is going to transform us absolutely into Christ with Christ. I would use a simple illustration. Suppose I have a white cotton ball, and I want to make it a red cotton ball. What should I do? I have to fill the very heart, the very center, of the ball with red ink. Then the red ink will gradually permeate and saturate the ball, and the ball will gradually absorb the red ink until it loses its white color and expresses something red. This means that the cotton ball, having been completely saturated and permeated by the red ink, is transformed into the red ink with the red ink.
You are the “ball,” and this wonderful Spirit of Christ, who is Christ Himself, is the “red ink.” At the time you received Christ, this wonderful Spirit came into you, into your spirit and heart, the center of your being. Now His intention is to permeate and saturate you with Himself so that you may absorb Him. By receiving Him and absorbing Him, your whole being, including all your inward parts, will be renewed, permeated, and saturated with Him and be transformed into Him. Eventually, your whole being will be full of Christ, mingled with Christ. Then you will lose your natural color and have the spiritual color, the “Christ” color. This is the central thought of God, and this is what God is seeking today.
We need a heavenly vision to see this matter in an adequate, concrete, and full way. We need to see and know that God’s purpose, God’s intention, is to have the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ come into us as everything that He may permeate us, saturate us, and transform us into Christ with Christ. This is not just a change of our behavior or living. This is a transformation of our nature.
Sanctification involves not only a change in position, that is, a separation from a worldly position to a position for God, as illustrated in Matthew 23:17 and 19 and in 1 Timothy 4:3-5; it involves also a transformation in disposition, that is, a transformation from the natural disposition to a spiritual one by Christ as the life-giving Spirit saturating all the inward parts of our being with God’s nature of holiness. This is what is mentioned in Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18. We have been sanctified in position, but we still need to be sanctified in our nature, in our disposition. This means that we need to be permeated and saturated by the Spirit so that we may be transformed into Christ with Christ. Then we will be absolutely and practically a part of Christ. As parts of Christ, we are members of Christ’s Body.
Suppose we have two brothers — one American and one Chinese. On the one hand, I would say that they are members of the Body of Christ because they are two genuine believers. They have been born again and are children of God. But on the other hand, it is hard to see that they are members of Christ because the Chinese brother is still very Chinese and the American brother is too American. Can something Chinese or American be in the Body of Christ? Colossians 3:11 tells us that in the Body “there cannot be Greek and Jew”; there cannot be any natural person. We should not bring anything Chinese or American into the Body of Christ.
In the Body there is no Greek, no Jew, no Chinese, no Japanese, no American, no Frenchman, no Englishman, no German, no Mexican, and no Puerto Rican. In the Body there is room only for Christ. If the Chinese brother remains Chinese and the American brother remains American, they are not members of Christ in actuality. They may have a little “red ink,” a small measure of Christ, in their heart, but they have not yet been saturated by Christ. If you are saturated by Christ, you are in Christ and have been swallowed up by Christ to express Christ.
Some have asked me, “By what way do you run your church?” I said, “By the way of Christ.” In Ephesians 4 we are told to put off the old man and to put on the new man (vv. 22, 24). What is the new man? The new man is the Body, and the Body is Christ (1 Cor. 12:12). We have to put on Christ, but first we have to put off the old man. We have to put off being Chinese or American. We have to realize that we were buried at the time of our baptism (Rom. 6:3-4). We have been terminated, we are finished, and we are through! The Americans are through, and the Chinese are through. In the Body of Christ there is no American, Chinese, British, and German; there is no old man. There is only the new man, who is Christ Himself.
The subject of this book is the life and way for the practice of the church life. Christ Himself is the life, and He is the Spirit in us. Today the Body life, the church life, is Christ Himself realized as the Spirit and dwelling in us. The only thing you need is to realize that you have this wonderful Spirit within you as the reality of Christ, as the fullness of the Godhead, and as everything to you. Furthermore, you have to renounce yourself. Renounce both your evil things and good things, both your failures and successes. Renounce your whole being. Forget about yourself.
You have Christ as the Spirit in you. He is moving, acting, living, working, shining, regulating, and anointing within you. You need to follow this wonderful Spirit and cooperate with Him, go along with Him, and take Him as everything for yourself. Moreover, you need to learn the lesson of renouncing yourself. You can never practice the church life by the human life. If you do not learn the lesson of remaining on the cross all the time, there will be much trouble in your practice of the church life. Every brother and sister is a problem. Human nature is troublesome. All of us have to go to the cross. If there are “you and I,” there is no Body, no church. This is why Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I... but...Christ” (Gal. 2:20a).
We all have to see that the practice of the church life is not by bringing everyone into agreement with one another through discussions, talks, and negotiations with certain terms or conditions. Rather, the way to practice the church life is to put everyone and everything on the cross and to have everyone take Christ as life. Then we will be permeated and saturated by Christ and with Christ. Then we will be wholly, thoroughly, and absolutely a member of Christ from within to without.
The Body of Christ is the new man created in Christ (Eph. 2:15). Do you think that the creation of the new man has been accomplished? On the one hand, it has been accomplished, but on the other hand, it is in the process of being accomplished. Day by day we are under the process of transformation, permeation, and saturation. We have to see that God desires to transform our whole being, that is, to permeate our whole person with Christ. It is not merely a religious change, improvement, correction, or adjustment. It is absolutely a transformation with Christ, by Christ, and into Christ.
We need to be transformed by Christ and saturated with the wonderful Spirit. This is why the one law in Jeremiah 31:33 has become many laws in Hebrews 8:10. There are many laws because we have many parts, our inward parts. Jeremiah 31:33 says, “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law in their inward parts.” One law is put into many parts.
The term inward parts is also mentioned in Psalm 51:6, which says, “Behold, You delight in truth in the inward parts.” Our inward parts are the parts of our soul — the mind, emotion, and will. We have the mind to think, the emotion to love, and the will to make decisions; all these parts need to be saturated with Christ. God put His one law into us. This one law is the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). The law is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the life. God put Himself into us as the all-inclusive Spirit, who is a law. This law saturates our emotion, subdues our will, and renews our mind. This one law regulates us, rules us, controls us. We do not need outward teachings. We have an inner regulating, which is illuminating, energizing, and strengthening. Thus, the one law put into us becomes the many laws in our inward parts. Actually, there are not many laws but one law with many functions. It is the same with the one Spirit of God who is referred to as the seven Spirits in the book of Revelation (1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6). The one Spirit is the all-inclusive Spirit, the sevenfold Spirit, with many functions for many purposes. Seven is the number that represents completion and perfection. The Spirit of God is complete, perfect, and all-inclusive. It is one Spirit with many all-inclusive functions.
If we remain on the cross and go along with the wonderful, indwelling, all-inclusive Spirit with His many functions, we will become a real part of Christ and will automatically, spontaneously, happily, gladly, and enjoyably have the church life. We will have the reality of the church, the Body of Christ. There is no need for any kind of organization, because we are a living organism of Christ.
I hope that we all can see the central thought of God as revealed in the Scriptures. I do believe that this is what the Lord is going to recover in these last days, that is, the knowledge, the realization, and the apprehension of the wonderful Spirit transforming, working, subduing, illuminating, anointing, and regulating within us all the time. The Lord is working in this country to recover the genuine church life, not the church organization, forms, formalities, rituals, charters, regulations, and rules. The time is ripe now, and people everywhere in this country are really seeking. They are seeking Christ as life and the church as the living expression of Christ.
I do have the assurance in these days that the Lord is going to recover the experience of Christ as life and the way to practice the church life so that Christ may have a living expression through His Body in many localities. This is the unique burden with which the Lord has burdened us.
