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It is difficult to explain our Christian life. For many years I have considered what the nature of the Christian life is and how it can be described. Is it a human or a divine life? In the previous chapter we likened it to marriage. However, in marriage the wife does not have her husband’s life; thus, this illustration is faulty. The Father and the Son had only one life. The same is true of Christ and the church. What Christ has as life is the life of the church.
The ethical relationships described in Ephesians 5 and 6 cannot be worked out in ourselves. We cannot carry out these relationships by our natural life. We may have thought before that we could, but actually it is beyond our ability. Does this mean that whatever the Bible tells us to do is in vain? No, but we cannot fulfill its exhortations in and of ourselves. The love in Ephesians 5, for example, does not come from us. It is from the Lord. Christ has to be our life.
Many Christians are still under the natural concept that now that they are Christians, they must improve their behavior. This concept of seeking to live the way God’s children should live must be dropped.
The basic revelation in the Bible is that you must take Christ as your life. You are to do this not because you are evil or weak or defeated. Christ took the Father’s life not because His own life was weak but in order to fulfill the Father’s desire. “I do not seek My own will but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 5:30). This was His commission. It may sound like Christian teaching to say that you need another life because your own life is inadequate, but actually such a teaching is religious. Even if you have the best life, God does not want it. Even if you can put Satan under your feet, God is not interested. God wants Christ to be lived out by you.
“As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (6:57). How many times we have read or recited this verse! Notice that there is no mention of weakness, sin, or better behavior. There is simply the desire of the living Father to live in the Son. Why did this living Father send the Son? It was not to establish an empire but to live Him. To live because of the Father was the Father’s commission. Jesus did not accomplish any impressive work. He merely lived a life to express the Father.
So he who eats Me tells us that the Lord wants to be eaten by us. I did not see this until 1958, some thirty-three years after I was saved. In the spring of 1958 I gave three consecutive conferences in Taipei on the eating of Jesus. The messages were new and fresh. After the first meeting, a brother who was a professor came to me, protesting that to use the words eat Jesus was too barbarous and uncultured. My reply was that this term was not initiated by me but by Jesus. It was He who said “he who eats Me.” I told the brother to drop his cultural mentality and come back to the pure Word. The Lord’s concern is for our eating of Him, not for the dictates of culture.
Your life must be Christ, and Christ must be your life. To try to improve your behavior is of no avail. Live Christ. The Son came not to live Himself but to live the Father. Jesus came, not primarily to save sinners but to fulfill the Father’s commission. It was for this purpose that He went to the cross. If the cross had not been the Father’s will, Christ would not have accepted it. You remember His prayer in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26:39). He came not to seek His own will but the will of Him who sent Him. That He went to the cross to save sinners was to do the Father’s will.
The Son did not live another life of His own. Though He and the Father were two persons, They had only one life and one living. The same should be true of us. Though we and the Lord are two, we should not have two lives, nor should we have two livings. The one life that we both have is His, but the living is ours. Our living must be by His life, expressing Him, not ourselves.
What, then, is the Christian life? It is a life involving two persons, but these two persons have only one life and one living. The life is His, and the living is ours. All day long we must be in the reality of this life. This means we must deny our own life. It is our life that must be put aside so that we might live His. The living must be ours, however, because He is concealed, not only in the heavens but also within us.
Go to the Lord to pray about this: “Thank You, Lord, that we two — You in me and I in You — have but one life. Show me this life. Grant me the grace to realize this life and to take this life by putting aside my own life. Thank You also, Lord, that You and I can have just one living, not Yours but mine.” Keep praying this way day after day till you become clear. Do not esteem human culture and ethics. Do not respect moral, natural concepts. Drop your religious ideas. Pick up the Bible with a purged mentality and read it by prayer and the exercise of your spirit. Then you will become clear about what the Christian life is. You will come to the deep realization that you and Christ do not have two lives but one and that your own life must be set aside.
You can put your life aside by putting aside your own will and your own glory. The One sent by the Father told us that He did not seek His own will (John 5:30) or His own glory (8:50). If you put your will and your glory aside, you will be denying yourself. Your will is within; your glory, without. Every human being is for these two things. Why do you like to live by yourself? It is that you may carry out your will for your glory. From my own experience I have learned that the difficulty in putting aside my life lies in my will. The “I” has its center in the will, which is within. Without is personal glory, which includes position, rank, display, and popularity. Not only in worldly society is everyone for his own glory; even in the church we all like to be somebody. I heard of a Christian group that claimed to make somebody out of everybody. In the church, however, you are made a nobody. The church annuls everyone. If you want to be somebody, do not come to the church. The aspiration to be somebody may be called self-exaltation. It is the glory of the natural life. When you put down the will of the natural life and lay aside its glory, the natural life is finished.
When the Lord Jesus said that He did not seek His own will or His own glory, He was declaring that He was simply taking the Father as His life, that He was fulfilling the Father’s commission by seeking only the Father’s will and the Father’s glory.
If you have this same attitude of laying aside your will and your glory, you will find that you have the best way of coming to the Word. Otherwise, the help you receive from the Word will be fragmentary. Thorough help from the Word will be yours only if you do not seek your own will and your own glory. Seek Christ as your life and live Him out.
As long as you are somebody, you are taking yourself as life. Only when you are willing to be nobody will you take the Lord Jesus as your life. On the first day that the Lord began His ministry, He went to John the Baptist to be buried. From that day the man Jesus lived a terminated life. All He had to do was to live the Father. His whole life from that first day was under the cross. He lived a crucified life. If you read the four Gospels again in this light, you will see how new they become.
We need to live a crucified life, one in which our will and glory are constantly annulled, making us nobodies. Then Jesus Christ becomes our life, and we live Him. This is the Christian life. It is for this life that we need to come to the Word. The Word does not nourish the natural life. But when you live Christ, the Word nourishes you in His life.
Some have expressed the opinion that those who are in the church are just “a bunch of dummies.” Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are nobodies. You may have a doctoral degree, but in the church you are nobody. In the secular world you may have status, but in the church you are nobody. If you want to be somebody, the church is the wrong door for you to enter. In the political circle or the educational world you may have rank, but once you step through the door of the church, be prepared to be nobody.
Are you willing? For myself, I can testify that I have no desire to be anybody. I am happy to be despised, belittled, criticized, and opposed. What a liberation to be content to be nobody! Here is life and peace.
The Son of God came with the divine commission to seek the Father’s will and glory. We Christians are to live the same way. “Lord, thank You. I have the highest commission, that of living You out. How good it is that You are my life! What a privilege that I can take You and live You out! How I thank You!” Is not this life higher than having even three Ph.D.’s?
Young people, are you satisfied to be nobody? Rather, are you satisfied with the highest commission, that of taking Christ as your life and living Him? What a commission!
This is the Christian life and also the church life. It is no more I but Christ who lives in me. “Thank You, Lord, that You and I have one life and one living. The life is Yours; the living, mine. Hallelujah that I can have one life and one living with You!”
Do not be concerned about worldliness. Do not be troubled about your weakness. Do not be preoccupied with sins. When Christ is lived out, all these negative things will flee away. The more you try to deal with your sin, overcome the world, or gain the victory over your weakness, the more you will be troubled by these very things. You are not commissioned to overcome sin, weakness, or the world. Your commission is to live Christ out. When you see this vision and you are such a person, the Bible is for you. It will nourish and supply this life.
