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Scripture Reading: Rom. 8:2, 9-11; Phil. 1:19b; 2 Cor. 3:6b
What kind of relationship does God want us to have with Him? Some people reject the idea of God or at least choose to ignore Him; they want nothing to do with Him. Others, perhaps out of fear, want to know what they should do to please Him and how they should worship Him. Our human concept tells us that we must do good if we want to please Him. In a superficial way the Bible seems to lend support to such concepts. It tells us that we should worship and fear God, that we should do His will, and that we should do our best to please Him.
Such a relationship to God fits our natural concept. For the most part, the religious instruction we have received, even in Christianity, reinforces this innate desire we have to fear, love, and serve the Supreme Being.
The true intent of God as revealed in the Bible, however, far exceeds what man has conceived. It is so profound that without light from God we cannot grasp it. God wants to be in man, to work Himself into man, and to be man’s life to such an extent that He becomes man and man becomes one with Him.
Although at times we may see a little glimmer of light regarding God’s desire, our daily living remains unaffected. We go on trying to love God, to fear Him, and to please Him. We give little consideration as to how we can let God be our life and how we can be one with Him.
When God partook of human form (Phil. 2:7), that is, when “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), His name was called Jesus. He lived as a simple carpenter in a humble home. There was no majesty about Him. He had “no attracting form” (Isa. 53:2). Think of it! The infinite God became a finite being, living and working on this earth for thirty years. Jesus of Nazareth was the one man who was in union with God. Within was God; without was man. God lived in man, and man lived out God.
When the Bible describes the life of this One, there is little mention of His keeping outward forms of worship. Rather, His life is described as being intertwined with the Father’s: “As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father...Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works” (John 6:57; 14:10). The Father and the Son were one. The Father was in the Son as the Son’s life, and the Son lived out the Father. They were two persons with one life, that of the Father, and one living, that of the Son.
Such a relationship with God is not in man’s concept. But this union of God and man is not only for Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus there was God. God wants you also to have Him within. God was the life of Jesus Christ. God wants to be your life also. Jesus lived out God. You are also to live Him out.
Can you say that when you live, God lives? that God is your life? that you are God’s living? that God lives in you? that for you to live is God? Paul had the boldness to say, “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Surely it is true to say that Christ lives in you and that He is your life. This is the plain word of the Bible.
When we study the Bible, however, instead of seeing this plain word, we see only verses like this: “You shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5). We see that God is to be worshipped and feared. We see that we must labor for Him and that we must pay the price to live for Him. Words like these stand out to us when we find them in the Scripture, because we already have such concepts within us naturally. We take from the Bible what is already in our thought, rather than open to take the Word itself into us.
When a wife reads Ephesians, for example, she does not learn much about the church or Christ or the Spirit or life. The only verse she takes note of is Ephesians 5:25. Because she is already preoccupied with the thought that her husband has to love her, she thinks the Bible is a wonderful book because of this one verse it contains. The husband, on his part, finds Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.” This is the only verse that stands out to him.
The important things in the Bible pass us by, because they are not in our natural thought. “To me, to live is Christ” does not attract much attention. Matters concerning the spirit, though we may have heard many messages on the topic, simply go in one ear and out the other. They mean very little to us. We go on in our natural way, trying to behave properly and please God, figuring that this was what the message was about anyway.
I beg you to notice how important the human spirit is. The eternal God one day created man. Zechariah 12:1 says of Him that He “stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.” The spirit within man is small, but the Bible ranks it with the heavens and the earth. The three most significant things in God’s creation are the heavens, the earth, and the human spirit. The heavens are for the earth, and the earth is for man. This man has a spirit in order that he may receive God. Without the spirit, the heavens and the earth are meaningless. Have you ever praised God that you have a spirit, a spirit that is as significant as the heavens and the earth?
At the time of the creation, however, God could not enter into man’s spirit. God first had to become flesh, live as a man on this earth, and then go to the cross. In His death He redeemed us from our sins and terminated the old creation. He died, was buried, and arose from the dead. In incarnation He had become flesh; now in resurrection He, the last Adam, became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). As such, He can be joined with our spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). When we turned to Him in repentance, sought His forgiveness, and opened to receive Him, He came into our spirit. We were regenerated. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). We have a spirit that has been born of this Spirit, who is also called “the Spirit of life” (Rom. 8:2).
When He enters into us, He imparts life. This life is God’s own life, eternal and uncreated, a life of death and resurrection. Let us focus all our attention on this life. We must turn away from the fringes and come back to the center, to this all-inclusive Spirit, who supplies life to us. We are off center when our concern is how to worship God, how to love or submit to our spouse, how to be an overcomer, or how to live a spiritual life.
How is this life supplied to us? To help our understanding, the Bible uses physical things to symbolize what is spiritual. Eating and drinking symbolize our receiving the Spirit. The Lord said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-38). The next verse explains that He was speaking about the Spirit, “whom those who believed into Him were about to receive.” To receive the Spirit is like drinking water.
To enjoy the Spirit is like eating food. When we eat properly, our body is nourished, and we have the energy to carry on. Even without understanding how it happens, we know that the food we eat somehow is digested and assimilated and supplies us with strength. The spiritual nourishment that we take in does the same thing for our spirit (6:57, 63).
How rich is this Spirit we have received! There is both the element of God and the element of man. When Jesus lived on this earth, His humanity was of the highest quality. His character was without flaw. This humanity, in passing through death and resurrection, became yet more uplifted. Now in the Spirit there is this uplifted human nature as well as the divine nature. There is also the power of endurance. All His earthly life the Lord suffered persecution, yet He endured. Now this endurance is in the Spirit. Here also is the power of crucifixion. The death of Jesus Christ terminated sin and Satan. It bruised the devil’s head. It overcame the gates of Hades. It meant the end of the world and the end of Satan’s kingdom. Everything of the old creation was terminated in that death, which is now in the Spirit. Resurrection is also included in the Spirit, along with the power of resurrection, its life, its fragrance, and its riches. Here also are ascension, glorification, enthronement, dominion, lordship, and headship.
What we think of as life is poor. Consider how rich is this life spoken of in the Bible. The Spirit of life gives us life (2 Cor. 3:6b), a life which includes all we have mentioned and more. As we fellowship with the Lord, the Spirit operates in us spontaneously and causes us to experience all these elements. We can sense the element of God within us. When we are at prayer and in fellowship with the Lord, we feel that there is something within us that exceeds man’s measure. We sense that somehow we surpass others, including the angels.
Every saved one has experienced this sense at one time or other. If you think back, you will remember some occasion when you prayed and prayed until you reached holy ground. You felt you were greater than the president, higher than any earthly king. You were experiencing the divine nature, God in you. Such prayer affects your thinking. It clarifies your mind. Beforehand, you were foolish and confused, unable to differentiate between up and down. You could not figure out where you were headed. But that time when you prayed through, your thinking became clear. Your will and your emotions also came into line. Your stubborn insistence gave way, yet you did not become a jellyfish with no backbone. Your will was firm, but the willfulness was gone. Your emotions, usually so varying and unreliable, became steady. There was no more the irrational love toward what should not be loved, nor the groundless dislike of what should be appealing. Your whole character was uplifted with your mind clear, your will firm, and your emotions proper. Can you not recall having had such an experience?
Teenage girls spend much of their time daydreaming. They often have a hard time concentrating. Sometimes they are stubborn, but other times they are easily swayed. They can cry with little or no provocation. When they spend time to pray adequately, however, they are filled with the Spirit. Then the humanity they exhibit is of the highest caliber. They are able to give their attention to what needs to be done, their will becomes resolute, and their emotions are stable. If they have not had such an experience, their praying has not been thorough enough. When they succeed in praying through, they will find that in them there is not only God but also the proper humanity.
Consider the kind of person you were before you were saved. You lived in your imaginations, letting your thoughts wander at will. When something favorable happened to you, you were so happy you could not sleep. When a hardship came your way, you were so miserable you wanted to die. When you got mad, your rage knew no bounds. You were like someone playing the piano, but playing only the high notes.
Now that you are saved, you are not the same. When you pray earnestly and thoroughly until you touch God, you find an uplifted humanity within you. Your thoughts no longer zoom from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the seas. When you are happy, there is moderation in your joy. Even when you weep, there is a limit that you do not exceed. You may still lose your temper, but there is a restraint that keeps you from going too far. As you remain in fellowship with the Lord, your “piano playing” produces lovely music. When the notes should be high, they are high. When they should be low and soft, you play accordingly. The wildness and the imbalance are no longer heard.
The humanity of Jesus has stabilized you. Jesus of Nazareth had the highest humanity. After He passed through death and resurrection, the element of His humanity entered into the Spirit. This is the very Spirit that came into you when you received the Lord. His character is now your character. In the indwelling Spirit there is humanity as well as divinity. By Him you become a proper man.
One who is filled with the Spirit can be firm and strong, even to the point of martyrdom. The threat of death does not terrify him. His will can be more steadfast than the mountains. However much stress he encounters, his inner supply is not exhausted. This is the humanity of Jesus Christ, experienced and expressed when one is filled with the Spirit.
When I was a young Christian, I loved the Lord. I tried hard to overcome my shortcomings. From reading certain spiritual books, I learned that I had been crucified with Christ and that this was the key to my being victorious over my weaknesses. My little mind, however, could not figure out how I could have been crucified with Him, when He died in Israel and I was in China thousands of miles away. And how could I have died with Him when I was not born until two thousand years later? How could there be a relationship of any kind between His death and mine?
In my reading I eventually came across a book saying that we must reckon ourselves dead, as Romans 6 teaches. This seemed logical to me. Since two and two are four, I reckon on that fact when I do calculations. A message I heard also encouraged me to reckon. The Chinese are all supposedly the descendants of Huang Ti. If someone had killed him before he had any sons, the Chinese would all have died in him. By the same principle, the preacher said, we could reckon that when Christ died, we died.
Impressed with this logic, I began to reckon. I also taught others to reckon. What I discovered was that before I started reckoning, my evil self was dormant. Whenever I reckoned, it became active. The more I reckoned it dead, the more alive it was. No doubt many of you have also gone through this experience of trying to reckon yourself dead and finding that it does not work.
Before 1937 Brother Nee also preached this message of reckoning to us. He had A. B. Simpson’s hymn, “Let us reckon, reckon, reckon” (Hymns, #692), included in our Chinese hymnal. After 1937, however, Brother Nee saw something further regarding Romans 6. He told us that this chapter declares the fact, but that it cannot be the experience. Only when we go on to Romans 8, he said, could we experience what it is to die with Christ. Death with Christ can only be experienced in the Spirit. I surely said Amen when I heard that.
When we are filled with the Spirit, the effectiveness of the death of Christ is our experience. If we keep praying until we are in the Spirit, we will find the killing. There is no need to reckon. We have all experienced that when we are filled with the Spirit, our bad temper, our wrong attitude, our feeling of jealousy, and our opinions are all killed.
This effective praying is the way to take nourishment into us. Just as eating the proper food helps destroy the germs in our body that make us ill, so when we are filled with the Spirit, the effectiveness of the death of Christ kills all the negative things in us.
In the Spirit is also the power of resurrection. When you pray until you are filled by the Spirit, you will sense that you are free and in the ascendancy. Oppression will be gone. Life and the power of life will comfort and heal you, bringing you into peace and quietness. Sometimes you will even feel that you are soaring in the heavens, far above all. Others may quarrel and be dissenting, but you are in resurrection. As you further pray, you will find that Satan and all the demons are under your feet.
As you pray and are filled with the Spirit, you will sense that all authority is yours. You will be reigning in life. Then there will be the kingdom. Simultaneously, overcoming, sanctification, and spirituality are also yours.
To enjoy all these riches in the Spirit, spend time before the Lord. Pray with your spirit, opening your whole being to Him. Praise Him, behold Him, fellowship with Him, and let Him fill you. Pray whatever He leads you to pray; do not exert your mind. If He leads you to confess, confess. If He leads you to repent, repent. If He leads you to weep, weep. If He leads you to be joyful, be joyful. Simply pray according to His leading. Then you will be filled with the Spirit, and He will be your constant supply. Practice this all the time, every day.
Confucius taught that there is a bright virtue within us. He no doubt meant the conscience. His teaching was that through “great learning” we could develop this virtue and thus attain the ultimate goodness. In man’s concept this may be a noble idea. This is not, however, what we are doing. The conscience is only a third of our spirit. We want to have our entire spirit filled with the Spirit. Rather than developing the bright virtue, we are having the Spirit added into our spirit. How marvelous this is! Our spirit and the Spirit become one. How much higher it is to have this rich Spirit within our spirit! How much more this does for us than the great learning to develop the bright virtue! We are in graduate school! The great learning is only kindergarten!
How blessed we are! The bountiful supply of the all-inclusive Spirit is our portion. May we all keep turning to our spirit and let our natural concepts go. Then the Spirit will supply us day by day. As we taste His riches, we will enjoy Christ as our life, and we will be His living. Then we can say, “Christ lives in me. To me, to live is Christ.”
