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“Narrow is the gate and constricted is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it” (Matt. 7:14). Before we consider various aspects of the way that leads to life, we will answer a few questions.
Question: Could you clarify the distinction you made between living by Christ and living Christ?
Answer: I realize that to say “live Christ” is grammatically odd, but we had to invent this new term to express what is on our heart. If we are living by Christ, we are still doing the living. To live Christ means that Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). When we live, He lives. When He lives, we live.
Question: Of the four legalities, what does sleeping represent?
Answer: Usually spiritual sleep has a negative sense, but we need to be aware of its positive value also. To sleep means to rest from all activities. It is most healthful to have a time every day of doing nothing. Do not think that I mean meditation. Just rest; be free from your thoughts and anxieties. Most of us are too busy, and our minds are too active, worrying about ourselves or the problems in the church. It is hard to make a time to have a spiritual sleep, but if we do, it will make us spiritually healthy. This time is not for praying, not for reading the Word, and not for answering the phone. It is a time set aside just for rest.
With all these legalities — eating, breathing, drinking, and sleeping — there is a need for us to exercise a strong will. The will is the only part of our natural being that is useful to the Lord. If we are to keep these legalities and the commandments in the New Testament, we need to ask the Lord to strengthen our will. Gossiping does not take will power, but bringing ourselves to pray and read the Word surely does.
Question: Sometimes when I am reading the Word or trying to pray, I get bored and fall asleep.
Answer: It is hard for us fallen human beings to stop even for a short while. If we fall asleep, that will stop us. It is good for our health.
Question: How can we help those who have left the church?
Answer: If the Lord wants us to help some of these dear ones, He will give us a burden, prepare the situation, and afford us the opportunity. There is no need to be distressed. Psalm 127:1 reminds us, “Unless Jehovah builds the house, / Those who build it labor in vain. / Unless Jehovah keeps the city, / The guard watches in vain.” The Lord is the Head. If this is His recovery, His church, nothing can damage it. The Lord told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), meaning that when they destroyed His body, He would raise up an even greater one in resurrection.
Question: Is it all right to submit myself to someone?
Answer: This is a good question. Many great men throughout history submitted themselves to someone or to some idea when they were young. Even if you submit yourself to a wrong person, your submission is still healthy. One who has never submitted himself is raw and of little use. Even materials like iron, copper, and cotton have to be processed before they can be put to use. This is God’s ordination for us as human beings too. Regrettably, the modern trend is to throw off this principle.
As a child, submit to your parents. As a student, submit to your teachers and the other school authorities. If you are working, submit to your employer. To be successful, be successful in your submission. In the church, even if the elders are not so adequate, your position is to submit. This will help your growth. There is more need in the church for submission on the part of the young people.
Question: What if the submission offends our conscience?
Answer: Submission is surely against your conscience if it leads you to worship an idol or to do something against the truth. Daniel and his three friends are an example of submission at the highest level, yet they did not defile themselves (Dan. 1:8-20).
In 1938 there was a sister in Beijing whose unsaved husband greatly troubled her. He would go to the theater and then not get home till after midnight. Her way of handling the situation was to lock the door and not let him in till he had been knocking for an hour or so. When she recounted this story to us, we told her she must change her way in order to save her marriage. She asked us for advice, and this is what we suggested: “You have to submit yourself to your husband. When he wants to go to the theater, offer to accompany him. Ride in the carriage with him right to the theater entrance. Then tell him to go on in and that you will return home and wait for him. When you get back home, cook his favorite snack and have it all ready. As soon as you hear him knock at the door, open it right away and give him a warm welcome. Offer him the snack you have prepared and sit down with him while he eats it. Sister, if you will practice this, before too long your husband will be a brother in the church.” This is what subsequently happened. That theater-going husband became a brother because of his wife’s submission.
I believe this story illustrates submission according to the Bible. Submit as much as you can without defiling your conscience.
Matters pertaining to life may not be easy to explain, but they are easy to experience. Medical doctors spend years studying the physical body, but they do not know what life is. Even a baby, however, experiences life just by breathing, without any instruction or study. Without understanding it, I enjoy my physical life; it enables me to speak and move. The experience of life is just to breathe. A hundred books cannot explain breathing, but the act of breathing is simple. So is life in our experience.
To experience the life of God, we must have the Son (1 John 5:12). Life is a person, Christ Himself. Do not think that jumping or shouting are indications of this life. Life is not a condition but a person. Whether I sleep or jump, whether I shout or am quiet, I have life. Sorry to say, it has often seemed to me that the ones who shout in the meetings are the ones who are short of life.
Those who are rich in life have no need to shout. When they come into the meeting and sit down, life radiates from them. I remember the meetings in Shanghai in the early 1930s. Brother Nee was twenty-nine, two years older than I. He would be in the meetings, perhaps not speaking, not praying, not even singing well, but full of life. If there was a meeting and he was away, how much we missed him! We would try hard to exercise in prayer, but we sensed a lack of life. The life in just one person makes a difference.
Why did God create the heavens and the earth? To accomplish His purpose, He needed the earth, the air, the sunshine, and the rain. All these things He made as the environment for the vine He wanted to grow (John 15). To our Father God, the earth is a vineyard in which He nurtures and tends the vine, His Son. Yet a vine amounts to very little without its branches. Is it not marvelous that we are those branches (v. 5)? Why does God have the church? Why has He gathered us together? He intends to cultivate us, but not our natural life, as the outgrowth of this vine. When the branches grow, the vine grows. It is our profession, our calling, our responsibility, to grow and produce this vine. When we live Christ (“To me, to live is Christ,” Phil. 1:21), we grow Him. When we grow Him, we produce Him.
Our meetings must be a show window of our Christian life. God’s economy ordains that we should live, grow, and produce Christ. We live this way, so we meet this way. There is no need to discuss what kind of meeting to have. This matter is resolved in our daily life — in our married life, in our business life, and in our school life. If we do not live Christ in our personal, private life, how can we release Him in the meetings? Even if the attempt to release our spirit is sincere, the meeting still is only a performance.
The fruit-bearing of the branches is not a labor but the outflow of the inner life. Our preaching of the gospel must be our living. Living this way will attract the best people. We have put forth much effort, yet our fruit-bearing has been meager; this indicates that there has not been much living of Christ.
These past few months I have been deeply concerned about the course of the recovery. The Lord has troubled and burdened me that its nature has been changed from life to activities, concepts, and arrangements.
For the sake of the Lord’s recovery, we must drop our opinions. Do not be distracted by any concept. Do you not realize that you sacrifice the oneness by supporting your concept?
You say that the meetings are boring. You say that to attend all the meetings is religious. You say that you can enjoy the Lord at the beach. I ask you, is the family not your family whether it is good or bad? Which do you think you will regret in the age to come — attending boring meetings or not attending the meetings? Have you ever received grace by staying away from the meetings, by going to the beach, by watching television, or by engaging in sports?
Do drop all such damaging concepts. A number of times when the meetings were low and I had no heart to go, I went anyway because I make it a point to attend the meetings. (In my whole church life there are very few meetings that I have missed.) In those low meetings especially, I have often received the Lord’s grace.
Nothing honors our Father more than when we take His Word and keep it. The Bible is the word of our Father. Suppose you receive a letter from your mother. When you come to read it, you have the sense that you are coming to her. In a similar way, when you come to the Bible, you have the sweet consciousness that you are coming to your God, your Father, your Lord. Furthermore, if you take in the word, you get the reality of the Triune God. Even the Spirit who dwells in you is embodied in the word.
Within us there is an inner consciousness. If we take care of this when we are praying over the Word, we are touching the Spirit. For example, if the sense comes that we are wrong or mistaken in a certain matter, we must confess and be cleansed by the blood. Then there may be a consciousness of something else; take care of that. Do not argue; just take care of the inner consciousness. To take the Word and to touch the Spirit in this way is to abide in the vine and to enjoy all the riches of the Triune God as your portion.
The real growth in life is to have Christ added to us. He is the Spirit, mysterious yet real. What is the gate through which He can enter? He is added into our being through the narrow gate of our conscience. The gate of our heart is wider, but He cannot enter there without passing through the conscience. First Timothy 1:19 describes what happens to those who fail to deal with their conscience: “Holding faith and a good conscience, concerning which some, thrusting these away, have become shipwrecked regarding the faith.”
Besides legally getting into the Word and legally spending time in prayer, we also need to legally take care of our conscience. If you do not want to be bothered by your conscience, stay away from the Bible! Many times when you are reading the Word, you will be enlightened, and your conscience will condemn you. You may be reading Romans 12, for example, and come to verse 5, where it says that we are “members one of another.” Your conscience may then accuse you that you have not been a proper member to your brothers. You will have to confess and get forgiveness. Had you not been in the Word, you would not have experienced such an accusation.
When you confess, you open the gate for Christ to come in. The more you confess, the more Christ you will gain. This is the way to enrich your abiding in Christ.
If you think that you are enjoying the Lord but you are not dealing with your conscience, you are deceiving yourself. The enjoyment of the Lord comes from abiding; abiding in the Lord is based on dealing with your conscience.
For seeds to grow they must be planted. They will not sprout if they are kept on the table. Against their will we must force them into the earth. This is what I am trying to do with you — force you into the earth so that you will grow! For your growth you need the environment of the church meetings and of the Word. To stay away from them is of Satan.
When I was vacationing recently on a mountain, I noticed that above a certain level grew tall pine trees. I asked why there were no trees below that level. For the tall pines to grow, I was told, they need cold weather. Below the tree line the weather was too mild. What is true of the pine trees is also true of us. Do we want to be tropical Christians? Children need a wintertime from their parents to help them grow tall. The saints also need to experience a winter in the church to help them grow.
If you will get into the Word regularly as I have exhorted you, even if you consider such legality like a cold blast of winter, in two months you will see what a difference it makes in your life and in the church life.
I have encouraged you to get into the Word and to pray every day in a legal way. Do not be afraid of following legalities. I have far more legalities than the four I passed on to you. I am legal about putting my shoes in the same place every night; keeping all the books on my library shelf in a certain sequence; and taking a shower regularly. Such legalities keep me healthy and help me find things when I need them.
Most aspects of our life are governed by legalities. Does a mother cook breakfast for her family only when she feels like it? In writing, do you form your letters however you please? In speaking, do you make up your own grammar rules? Little would be accomplished without our being legal.
Do you think there are only ten commandments and that they are all in the Old Testament? The pages of the New Testament contain more commandments than the Old. Here are a few:
(1) “Unceasingly pray” (1 Thes. 5:17). It does not say, “Please pray if you have time.”
(2) “Be filled in spirit” (Eph. 5:18). Do not say that you are tired or bored, but God is merciful. God is stricter than I am.
(3) “Be transformed” (Rom. 12:2). You need to spend time praying to be transformed.
(4) “Grow in...grace” (2 Pet. 3:18).
(5) “Be empowered in the Lord” (Eph. 6:10).
(6) “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). We are not told to work out our salvation with joy or with shouting but with fear and trembling. How can we do this without being legal?
(7) “Do all things without murmurings and reasonings” (v. 14). When you are about to murmur, you must remember this commandment and restrain yourself. When you want to reason about church matters or why the elders behave as they do, remember that you are forbidden to do so by this commandment.
(8) “Flee youthful lusts” (2 Tim. 2:22). Here is a commandment the young people especially need to heed.
(9) “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thes. 5:22, KJV). The appearance of evil leads to evil.
These days I have heard some strange talk. It surely does not sound like the New Testament to me. Some are saying that they do not want any standard. To me this is ridiculous. Everything has a standard. I have also heard that we should be what we are. If you think Christians should stay as they are, why does the Bible say, “Be transformed”? Do you want to remain as you are? I want to grow and be transformed. Some have even said that we should not control ourselves but just let some flesh come forth and do whatever it pleases. I would remind you that as fallen human beings we are capable of doing any lustful thing. God came in right after the fall to ordain restrictions. It is only because of such restraints that we are kept from indulgence in lust. Can you trust your flesh? Whatever your age, however long you have been in Christ, if you do not exercise restrictions over your flesh, you are capable of any evil. If you say, “Do not be legal,” I say, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
The standard in the Bible is the highest. “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of the heavens” (Matt. 5:20). We Christians must be strict. We enter through a narrow gate and walk along a constricted way (7:14). “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter through it” (v. 13). To take a pathway of looseness is to choose the wide gate whose end is destruction. May we be those who are led to life by taking the narrow gate and the constricted way.
