Search
Scripture Reading: Col. 1:18b-19; 2:9; 1:15b; Acts 2:33a; Eph. 1:22b; Phil. 2:9b; Col. 1:18a, 12; 1 Cor. 1:2b; Col. 3:4a; Gal. 2:20a; Phil. 1:21a, 20b; Gal. 4:19; Eph. 4:15b; Col. 2:19b; 1:28b; Eph. 4:13b; Col. 1:27; Eph. 1:18b; 4:4b; John 8:12; 6:51, 57b; 1 Cor. 10:4; John 20:22; Gal. 3:27b; John 15:7a; Col. 2:16-17; Matt. 11:28; 1 Cor. 1:24, 30; 12:12; 3:11; Eph. 2:20; Col. 3:11; Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; John 21:15; Eph. 4:12; Heb. 10:24-25; 1 Cor. 14:3-5
In this chapter we will cover another crucial point in the practice of the Lord’s recovery. This point that we want to cover is the truth concerning Christ. Christ is more crucial than any item.
First, I hope we can see the preeminence of Christ. Colossians 1:18 says, “That He Himself might have the first place in all things.” Actually, the first place is the preeminence. The second thing we want to see is what Christ is to us, the believers. This is very subjective. Then we have to see what Christ is to the church. We also want to see the centrality and universality of Christ. Christ is the hub, the spokes, and the rim in the big universal wheel of God’s economy. Ezekiel 1 refers to this wheel (v. 15). God’s move in accomplishing His eternal economy is likened in the Bible to a great wheel. In order for man to move adequately, he cannot keep himself away from the wheel. Without the wheel, man would be limited to only walking or running. God uses the wheel to illustrate His move in His economy on the earth.
Our God is triune. He is one yet three, and He is three but still one. Triune means “three-one.” He is the three-one God. Among the three in the Godhead, the preeminence always goes to the second, the Son. The first, the Father, always exalts the Son (Phil. 2:9); and the third, the Spirit, always testifies concerning the Son (John 15:26).
Christ has the first place in all things; for in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell (Col. 1:18b-19). The fullness was pleased. This indicates that the fullness must be a person. He felt happy to dwell in Jesus the Nazarene. All the fullness refers to all the matters, all the things, and all the persons involved in and with the Godhead. The Godhead is not so simple. Acts 2:23, for example, indicates that before the foundation of the world there was a council held by the three of the Godhead concerning the Lord’s crucifixion (see footnote 1 on verse 23, Recovery Version). Our God is very wonderful. He is one God, yet His Godhead is in three. All the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in Christ (Col. 1:19; 2:9).
This fullness was involved with creation and with Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Genesis 1:1 says that in the beginning God created. Then verse 2 says that the Spirit of God was brooding over the death waters. Furthermore, in verse 26 God used the pronouns Us and Our — “Let Us make man in Our image.” Us and Our are used to denote the divine person. First, the old creation came into existence. Then in God’s resurrection the new creation came into existence. In both the old creation and the new creation God’s fullness was involved. In His resurrection and ascension Christ was made preeminent. He has the first place in the old creation and the new creation. This One in whom all the fullness was pleased to dwell has the preeminence. He has the first place in everything.
In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). Before His incarnation, the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him as the eternal Word, but not bodily. From the time that Christ became incarnate, clothed with a human body, the fullness of the Godhead began to dwell in a bodily way; and in His glorified body (Phil. 3:21) now and forever it dwells.
In God’s old creation Christ is the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15b). He is the first item of God’s creation. Christ as God is the Creator. However, as man, sharing the created blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14a), He is part of the creation, having the preeminence in all creation.
In God’s new creation in resurrection, Christ is the Firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18b). Christ is the first in resurrection as the Head of the Body, having the first place in the church. Some may argue that we cannot say that Jesus was the first in resurrection because others in both the Old and New Testaments were resurrected before Him (2 Kings 4:32-37; John 11:41-44). But all these other resurrections were not something that involved divinity. Those resurrected people, such as Lazarus, died again. But Jesus, once resurrected, will live forever; He will never die again. Therefore, He has the preeminence. Christ as the firstfruits of resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20) is the Firstborn from the dead to be the Firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29) and the Head of the Body (Col. 1:18; Eph. 1:20-23).
We can also see the preeminence of Christ in God’s exaltation.
Christ has been exalted to the right hand of God in the third heaven (Acts 2:33a). It took a tremendous amount of power to land a man on the moon, but that was very insignificant compared to the power it took to raise Christ from the dead and seat Him at the right hand of God (Eph. 1:19-20).
In God’s exaltation of Christ, He has been given to be Head over all things (v. 22b). Jesus today has been ordained and appointed by God to be the Head of the entire universe.
God has also given Him the name above every name (Phil. 2:9b). Since the Lord’s ascension there has never been a name on this earth above the name of Jesus. Even the entire human race is under the calendar of Jesus. According to history, the one whose calendar you use is the one to whom you are in subjection. If anyone used the calendar of a certain king, he would have to be under the rule of that king. People today refer to our calendar as an international calendar, but actually it is the calendar of Christ. In this way they unconsciously admit that He is their Ruler. He is the One whose name is above every name.
Christ has the preeminence in the church, being the Head of the Body, the church (Col. 1:18a). Christ is the unique Head, and the preeminence belongs to Him only.
Christ is the God-allotted portion to the saints. In the Bible Christ is likened to the good land. When the children of Israel entered into the good land, they allotted the land to the twelve tribes, so every tribe received a lot. Today every saint has received a “lot,” a portion, of Christ. Christ is our allotted portion from God. Christ is not only our life and our Savior but also our lot, our portion.
Colossians 1:12 says that the Father has qualified us for a share of the allotted portion of the saints. The allotted portion of the saints is the all-inclusive Christ for our enjoyment.
First Corinthians 1:2 speaks of “all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, who is theirs and ours.” The phrase theirs and ours indicates that Christ as the all-inclusive One belongs to all believers. He is their portion and our portion. Paul indicates that whoever calls upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ will enjoy Christ as his portion. Then in verse 9 Paul says that the faithful God has called us into the fellowship of this portion. Now we all are in the fellowship, in the participation, in the enjoyment, of this portion. Paul went on to show the Corinthians so many items of Christ as our portion. This portion is the divine power from God to us (v. 24a). This portion is the divine wisdom from God to us (vv. 24b, 30a). This portion is the divine righteousness, the divine sanctification, and eventually the divine redemption from God to us (v. 30b). These five items are wonderful!
As the God-allotted portion to us, Christ is our life (Col. 3:4a). Life is the top enjoyment. If our life is gone, all our enjoyment is finished. Today Christ is our life. It is a fact that we have Christ as our life, but some may wonder how we can prove this fact. All of us have our physical life, but this life is not something that we can show others. Life is unseen; it is invisible. Life cannot be seen, but the activities of life are strong proofs that someone has life. Can we show others that we have Christ as life? We cannot show them, because this life is invisible, but there are the activities of this life, which show that we possess it. Our being so living, so active, and so aggressive for the Lord is a proof that we have His life. His life within energizes us. Many times I feel tired, but when I am ministering the word, the Lord supplies me with His life, and I am full of the energy of His life. Our being so active in Christ and for Christ shows that we have Christ as our life.
In Galatians 2:20a Paul says, “Christ...lives in me.” Not only is Christ our life, but He also lives in us. We have died in Christ through His death, but now He lives in us through His resurrection.
In Philippians 1:21a Paul says, “To me, to live is Christ.” We may know the doctrine that Christ lives in us and that for us to live is Christ, but most of the time, in actuality, He does not live, but we live. In many formal wedding ceremonies around the world, the bride has her head covered to indicate her submission to her husband. At the wedding there are two persons but only one head. According to the Bible, the husband is the head of the wife (Eph. 5:23). If a wife has Christ as her life, she has to admit that her head is her husband. While I am saying this, though, I feel very sorry. We have this teaching, but in many of our families we do not have this reality. In many families the wife is acting as the head, not the husband. We need to realize that two lives can never live together. They have to be combined to be one life. Christ is our life, and Christ lives in us. Now we have to live in His living. Outside of His living, we do not have any living. We live Christ. Christ was not only Paul’s life within but his living without. He and Christ lived together as one person.
Christ should also be magnified in our body (Phil. 1:20b). This should even affect the way that we dress and comb our hair. Does the way that we dress and comb our hair magnify Christ? Christ needs to be magnified, exalted, and extolled in us in every way and in every circumstance.
Christ has to be formed in us (Gal. 4:19). This means that we have to let Christ occupy every part of our being. Christ should occupy our mind, our thinking, our consideration. Christ should occupy our emotion, our love, our hatred, our happiness, our sorrow. Christ has to occupy our will. He should be in all the decisions that we make. He also needs to fully occupy our conscience in everything. For Christ to occupy us in this way means that He is making His home in us. In Ephesians Paul prayed that Christ may make His home in our hearts (3:17). Then in Galatians 4:19 he expressed his desire for Christ to be formed in us. To have Christ formed in us is to have Christ grown in us in full.
Christ is invading our mind, our emotion, our will, and our conscience. He is invading our entire inward being. Eventually, through our soul He will even invade our body, saturating us with Himself and dispensing Himself into our entire being. His invading is His saturating, and His saturating is His dispensing. Eventually, we will be fully and thoroughly permeated with Him. He will be formed in us, and we will be conformed to His image.
We also need to grow up into Christ, the Head, in all things with the growth of God (Eph. 4:15b; Col. 2:19b). Maybe the way that we cut or style our hair is still outside of Christ. This means that we have to grow. When we grow further, we will grow up into Christ in the way that we cut our hair.
To grow we need some element added into us. We need to grow up into Christ in all things with the growth of God, which is the increase of God, the addition of God. This is revealed in Colossians 2:19. Christ is spreading Himself into us. When He is spreading in us, He grows in us, and He is adding Himself into us. With this element of God, we grow. This is not a matter of following ethical teachings in an outward way. This is altogether something organic. We have the organic God within us as our life. He is growing in us, adding Himself to us, and invading us.
In order to grow up into Christ in everything, we must be very careful and considerate. Since we realize that we have Christ living in us as our life, we have to walk carefully with much consideration. Before some of us were married, we lived in whatever way we pleased. But now that we are married, we have to be careful. We need to walk carefully with much consideration of the one with whom we live. We have to apply this principle to Christ. Before we were saved, we may have been wild or quick. Now that we have Christ living in us, we should not be that wild or that quick.
Because we fail so much by not living Christ, I am so thankful that Christ is our washing, cleansing fountain (Zech. 13:1). This is why we need to confess our sins throughout the day to enjoy the cleansing of the Lord’s blood. We should confess that we are still in the flesh, still in the old creation, and still in the natural man. Because we are so rough, we do not consider Christ much of the time. We do not walk carefully and slowly, with much consideration of Christ. We must learn to walk and have our being in Christ slowly, carefully, and with much consideration. We need to live Christ in such a way. We need to live carefully all the time, with much consideration of Christ.
Eventually, we have to grow to such an extent that we can be presented to God full-grown in Christ (Col. 1:28b; Eph. 4:13b). We have to mature with Christ in full growth.
Christ is in us as the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Christ is not only life to us today but also our glory in the future. Our hope is for our body to be saturated with Christ’s glorious, splendid element. This will be the redemption of our body, the transfiguration of our body.
The hope of our calling (Eph. 1:18b; 4:4b) is the hope of glory, which is the transfiguration of our body and the revelation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19, 23-25). The Lord did not give us or allow us to have any other hope on this earth. Our hope is that we will be transfigured in our body, redeemed to the uttermost.
Christ is every necessity and all the enjoyment.
Christ is our light. John 8:12 says that He is the light of the world and that everyone who follows Him shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.
Christ is also our food. In John 6 He told us that He is the living bread and that if we eat Him, we shall live because of Him (vv. 51, 57b).
According to 1 Corinthians 10:4, Christ is our spiritual drink. In the Christian race, we should not drink anything other than the all-inclusive Christ as our all-inclusive drink.
Christ is our very breath. John 20:22 shows that Christ breathed Himself into the disciples. We need to breathe Him in moment by moment by calling on His name.
Christ is even our clothing. Galatians 3:27 says, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” To put on Christ is to wear Christ as our clothing.
Christ is also our dwelling place, our abode (John 15:7a).
Christ is our enjoyment and rest (Col. 2:16-17; Matt. 11:28). According to Colossians 2:16-17, He is our food, our drink, our feast, our new moon, and our Sabbath. He is the body of all the shadows, the reality of every positive thing in the universe for our enjoyment.
As the divine provision, Christ is God’s power to us (1 Cor. 1:24a) for carrying out and accomplishing what He has planned and purposed.
Christ is also wisdom to us from God (vv. 24b, 30b). Day by day we need Christ to be wisdom to us. Christ as wisdom should unceasingly flow from God to us to be our present and practical wisdom in our experience.
Christ is our righteousness (v. 30b). He is the righteousness by which we have been justified by God so that we may be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life. Furthermore, as our subjective righteousness, Christ is the One dwelling in us to live for us a life that can be justified by God and that is always acceptable to God.
Christ Himself is our sanctification (v. 30b). This means that Christ is the element that produces transformation. Apart from Him we cannot have the element that, when added to our being, produces a metabolic change.
According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, Christ is even our redemption, that is, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23). As the One who is our redemption, Christ “will transfigure the body of our humiliation, to be conformed to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:21).
Now we want to point out five items of Christ’s being to the church.
We have already seen that, according to Colossians 1:18, Christ is the Head of the Body, the church.
Christ is not only the Head of the Body but also the Body of the Head (1 Cor. 12:12). Because He is the all-inclusive One, He is the Head and He is the Body.
Christ is the foundation of the church (3:11). As the church’s living foundation, He holds, supports, and dispenses Himself into every part of God’s building.
Christ is also the cornerstone of the house of God, the church (Eph. 2:20). As the cornerstone of God’s building, He joins together the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers.
According to Colossians 3:10-11, in the new man Christ is all and in all. This means that He is all the members of the new man and in all the members.
We may wonder how the church as the Body of Christ can be Christ and how Christ can be all the members of the new man. In our experience, this depends upon who lives. If we live alone by ourselves, we are not Christ. If we live Christ, letting Christ live in us, then we live in Him, and we are Christ. I have seen some wives who really lived their husbands. They did things according to the index of their husbands’ eyes. When they lived in such a way, they were their husbands because they lived their husbands. If the church lives Christ, the church is Christ. If we all live Christ, we are Christ. The Christian life should be like this.
We pointed out that according to the picture presented in Ezekiel 1, God’s New Testament economy is like a great wheel, having Christ as its every part.
Christ is the hub, the center, of God’s New Testament economy. Colossians 1:17 says that “all things cohere in Him,” which means to exist together by Christ as the holding center, just as the spokes of a wheel hold together by the hub at their center.
Christ is also the spokes, the support, of the great wheel of God’s New Testament economy.
Furthermore, He is the rim, the circumference. This means that God’s entire New Testament economy and His move in His economy are just Christ.
Christ is also the reality of every section of the God-ordained way.
Christ is the reality in the fulfilling of the New Testament priesthood of the gospel (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9). In whatever way we preach the gospel by reaching people where they are, we must be filled with Christ and minister Christ to people. Christ is the content and the reality of our gospel preaching.
Christ is also the reality in the feeding of the new believers in their homes (John 21:15). When we go to the new ones’ homes to feed them, that must be Christ’s going. It is not just that we go with Christ but that Christ Himself is going in our going. Furthermore, we feed the new ones with Christ. Christ is the food that we serve to the new ones. After every feeding, Christ is added into the new ones.
Christ is the reality of the perfecting of the saints in the group meetings (Eph. 4:12; Heb. 10:24-25). Our fellowship, our prayer, our care, our shepherding, our help, and our mutuality in the group meetings must be Christ. This can take place only when we live Christ.
Finally, Christ is the reality in the building up of the church, the Body of Christ, by prophesying in the bigger meetings of the church (1 Cor. 14:3-5). In our prophesying, the content must be Christ. To prophesy is not only to speak for the Lord but also to speak forth the Lord and to speak the Lord, to speak Christ, for the building up of the Body of Christ.
In the Lord’s recovery, everything should be Christ, every matter should be Christ, and every person should be Christ. All our activities must be full of Christ. Otherwise, we are just empty. I am burdened to present the crucial points in the practice of the Lord’s recovery. We have to know the oneness of the Body of Christ and keep it, and we have to learn that we should care only for Christ, forgetting all other things and cleaving unto Him.
If we live a life full of Christ, we will make demands only on ourselves, not on others. We should not put demands on others but only on ourselves. Suppose some saints love the recovery, yet they are bothered about being immersed, and they do not want to be immersed. If we cannot receive them with full harmony, we do not know what it means to keep the oneness. According to Romans 14, we need to receive all the believers according to God’s receiving and not according to doctrinal concepts.
We saw in the previous chapter that only two things are considered as heresy — the denial of Christ’s person and the making of divisions. Besides these two things, we have to learn to tolerate, to embrace, all the things with which we may not agree. There is no excuse for anyone to make a division. We must learn to keep the oneness and learn to live Christ. Again I say that we should not put demands upon others. We should put demands only upon ourselves. We have to be so strict to live Christ all the time in everything.
