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Scripture Reading: Col. 2:2; 1:27; 1 Tim. 3:16; Gal. 2:20
From August and September of 1986, when we started the full-time training in Taipei, the total number of people who have been led to the Lord and baptized through door-knocking has reached more than seventeen thousand five hundred. Therefore, we beseech the brothers and sisters to receive a burden from the Lord to take care of these new ones and to pray much for this matter.
We hope to help all the newly baptized brothers and sisters to see the central mystery in the Bible. Through several thousand years of testing, the Bible has been recognized as the book of books. It is the most noble and excellent book in many aspects, such as literature, truth, and ethics. The Bible does not merely teach us to know God and to worship God, nor does it teach us merely how to live and walk in an excelling way. Rather, in a deeper way it unveils to us many mysteries. These mysteries include the mystery of God, the mystery of the universe, the mystery of human life, the mystery of the kingdom of the heavens, the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the church, the mystery of life, the mystery of resurrection, the transformation and rapture of the believers, the consummation of the age, the millennial kingdom, and eternity. Of these, the mystery of Christ and the mystery of the church are great and deep, and all these mysteries are unfathomable.
First, we want to see the mystery of Christ. Christ is not merely a character in history. He is a person who transcends history. He is so unfathomable that it is very hard for man to know Him thoroughly. Throughout the generations, historians have been studying to find out who this Christ is. Even when Jesus was on earth, many were studying Him and asking, “Who then is this?” (Mark 4:41; Luke 8:25; cf. Matt. 21:10; Luke 7:49; 9:9). He Himself asked His disciples, “But you, who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). He is too profound and too all-inclusive; moreover, He is the One who fills all in all. Therefore, it is not a simple matter to understand Him.
According to the Bible, there are over three hundred items concerning the person of Christ. Here, we will briefly bring out twelve items. First, Christ is the only true God in the universe. There is no other God besides Him (1 Cor. 8:4; Rom. 9:5). Second, He is the Creator of the universe, including the heavens, the earth, and all things (Heb. 1:10). All things did not come out of evolution; rather, they came into existence through the Lord’s creation. Third, He is the Upholder of the universe; as such, He upholds and bears all things so that the whole universe can operate orderly (v. 3). Fourth, He is the Lord, the Possessor, of the universe, and all things belong to Him (Acts 2:36; 10:36). Fifth, He is God yet man; He is God putting on human flesh and taking on humanity to be a real man (John 1:1, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16). Sixth, as God yet man, He lived thirty-three and a half years on earth (Phil. 2:7-8a; Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15). Seventh, as the Redeemer, He bore our sins on the cross and died and bled for us to accomplish redemption (1 Pet. 2:24a; John 19:34; Eph. 1:7).
Eighth, He is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). After He died and was buried, because He had the divine, eternal, and uncreated life in Him, He resurrected from the dead and became the life-giving Spirit to impart Himself to us as life. Ninth, as our Savior, He applies salvation to us in all our circumstances and environments (Luke 2:11; Phil. 1:19). Tenth, as our good Shepherd, He shepherds us and takes care of us (John 10:11). Eleventh, as the High Priest appointed by God, He prays for us before God and bears all our problems (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15). Twelfth, He is the King established by God to be the King of kings. Only He is the highest King in the universe (Rev. 1:5; 19:16).
First of all, this mysterious Christ has a moral standard that is transcendent. Especially in the record of the Gospel of Luke, where the details of Christ’s living are depicted, we can see that His speech, His character, and His moral standard were all transcendent. For example, He required people not only to love others but also to love their enemies (6:27). He required people not only to be clean and pure in their outward behavior but also to be pure in their inward motive (cf. 11:39-41). Therefore, His moral standard was transcendent.
Second, His words were trustworthy. He never said anything far-fetched, like the things found in myths. Third, His wisdom was extraordinary. He formed many of the extraordinary expressions in the Bible. For example, He said that He is the life and the bread of life as well and that he who comes to Him shall by no means hunger (John 6:35); that He has the water of life, and he who draws near to Him shall by no means thirst forever (4:14); that He is the resurrection (11:25); and that He is God Himself (1:1, 14). These words, which otherwise might sound proud and haughty, contain a great deal of wisdom and cannot be spoken by ordinary people. That is why Rousseau, a writer and a philosopher in France, said that if the Bible were a fabrication, the one who fabricated it would be the greatest inventor. Christ is truly a trustworthy One. His moral standard is transcendent, and His wisdom is extraordinary, yet His living was very practical. Whatever He said is practical and has reality.
Furthermore, few great men prophesied concerning the things in the future. Only Jesus Christ prophesied concerning the things that would happen on earth and the things that would be accomplished in the future after His departure. All those who study history have been surprised that two thousand years ago, during the time of Christ when the modern world situation was yet to be formed, He already told us all about the world situation in principle. To put it briefly, according to Matthew 24, after the resurrection and ascension of the Lord, the first thing to happen on the earth was that the gospel was to be preached in the whole inhabited earth (v. 14). Today, among the five great religions in the world, not one of them has been preached as widely as Christianity. The Bible has been translated into almost all languages and dialects. Nearly every place inhabited by men has the preaching of the gospel and the translation of the Bible.
Along with the spreading of the gospel, wars were to become rampant; nation was to rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom (v. 7a). In these two thousand years, wars on the earth have increased constantly. The Bible also says that earthquakes were to be intensified constantly (v. 7b). Geologists all acknowledge that there have never been so many earthquakes in these two thousand years as there have been in the recent days. All these prophecies prove that Jesus Christ is the extraordinary One. He is God, and the prophecies He spoke have already been fulfilled for the most part. This shows that His words are trustworthy.
This Christ who is transcendent and trustworthy now lives in us to be our subjective experience. Christ is the all-inclusive One, yet He lives in us. Therefore, we have to realize that even though the Bible teaches us how to conduct ourselves as human beings, this is not the center of the Bible. The center of the Bible is this wonderful, extraordinary Christ. He is both God and man, and He is all-inclusive. He created the universe (Gen. 1:1), became flesh (John 1:14), went to the cross to bear the sins of and die for the whole human race (1 Pet. 2:24), and in His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to enter into us to be our life (John 20:22; Col. 3:4).
He came into man as life, not by the touching of the human hand, nor by the seeing of the human eye, nor by the hearing of the human ear, but by the spirit in the depths of man echoing to God as the Spirit. The spirit, in the deepest part of man, is the place where man can sense the Spirit of God (John 4:24; Rom. 8:14-16). Only through His becoming flesh, going to the cross to die, and becoming the life-giving Spirit can He enter into man to dispense life. Therefore, after we believe in the Lord and are saved, the divine life is added into us. This is different from all religions. All those who believe in the Lord Jesus in truthfulness feel that something has been added into them after they have called on His name sincerely (10:9-13). Actually, what has been added into them is a person — Christ as the Spirit living in them.
The primary work of the Lord who lives in us is to transform us completely with His life and nature. God’s life and nature mainly lie in God’s love, light, holiness, and righteousness. In other words, God is a God of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. These four points include all the ethics, morality, and proper behavior among men. No matter what nation it is, all its laws are within the boundary of these four words.
Love is God’s essence (1 John 4:8, 16), light is God’s expression (1:5), holiness is God’s nature (1 Pet. 1:15-16), and righteousness is God’s procedure (Psa. 89:14; Rom. 14:17; 1:17; 1 John 1:9; 2:29). That God is holy means that He is different from all that is common. He is without defilement and without mixture; indeed, He is a God who is simple and pure. To be righteous is to be just and upright, without crookedness. Hence, God being righteousness indicates that everything of God is proper. Such a God who is love, light, holiness, and righteousness is the Lord Jesus Himself. When He enters into us to be our life, He works these attributes and virtues into us.
Some saints have been saved for only a few months, but they can testify that in them there is One who supplies them all the time and who also regulates them according to God’s love, light, holiness, and righteousness. After we receive the Lord Jesus and are saved, if there is anything that contradicts love, light, holiness, and righteousness in the way we conduct ourselves and in our daily life, He will give us a feeling within, causing us to have no peace. The feeling brought to us by God’s operating in us is the indisputable proof that He lives in us. The feeling that He gives man within is gentle and fine, just like a dove, which is gentle and guileless (John 1:32). Not only so, He is in us as a living person, not merely a kind of feeling.
Before we believed in the Lord Jesus, sometimes we had a feeling of doing good, and sometimes we also had a feeling of sinfulness. Yet those feelings were never very deep and heavy. God shows us that He Himself is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Therefore, the way we conduct ourselves must also be love, light, holiness, and righteousness. As long as we have this kind of feeling within, it proves that Jesus Christ lives in us. His living in us includes His operating, moving, and acting. Even though Jesus Christ in us is meek and tender, He is not quiet and stationary. Rather, He is acting all the time, and His actions are very gentle. Sometimes, we do not feel His existence, but we actually have Someone within regulating us all the time.
If we conduct ourselves by the inner regulation, the issue of our conduct will be a living that is like God. God is love, so what we live out is also love. God is light, so what we live out is also light. God is holiness, so how we act and what we do is according to holiness. God is righteousness, so we are proper and righteous in all the ways that we conduct ourselves and in our contact with people. The fact that we can live out such conditions proves that we are submitting ourselves to the Christ who lives within us.
Christ lives in us, and what He needs is that we cooperate with Him. Therefore, Romans 12:1 says that after we have been saved, we should present ourselves to God. To present ourselves to God means to tell Him, “O Lord, You are living in me, and I want to cooperate with You by giving myself to You to listen to You and to obey You. Whatever You do in me to regulate me, lead me, and touch me, I will do accordingly and obey.” This obedience will cause us to be saved by Him from day to day and moment by moment.
God as Spirit lives in our spirit. We use our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our nose to smell, our mouth to eat, and our stomach to digest food. In the same manner, today God is Spirit, so for us to contact Him we have to use our spirit. The way to use the spirit is to pray. The more we pray to contact this pneumatic Christ, the better. We should not pray according to the imagination of our mind. Rather, we should pray according to the depths of our being, a part that is deeper than our mind. This means that we should pray by our spirit. When we pray by the spirit deep within, we feel that we have touched the Lord in the spirit. Therefore, when we pray, we may close our eyes to avoid being distracted by things outside. When we close our eyes, not letting things from the outside get into us, we can tell our feeling to the Lord with words from the depths of our being. The more we pray in this way, the more we contact the Lord. The more we pray, the more our spirit is filled with His Spirit. If we pray more, we will have more feelings within. If we pray weightily, we will feel weighty within. If we pray deeply, we will feel deep within.
We hope that the saints can practice this word and spend more time to pray before the Lord to contact the Lord Himself. The Lord is already in us, so the more we pray, the more we allow Him to increase in us, have more ground in us, and spread more in us. The more we allow Him to regulate us with His love, light, holiness, and righteousness, the more we receive grace and are filled by Him in order to spontaneously live out a living that is greatly different from our former way of living. In the past we lived alone. Now Christ is lived out of us so that we may live a God-like living, that is, a living of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Only in this way can we be spiritual, sanctified, victorious, and able to grow in life. Therefore, a Christian is one who has Christ living within and who lets Christ live in him. The Christian life is a life that allows Christ to live out through us to express God’s love, light, holiness, and righteousness.
(A message given on March 15, 1987, at a conference in Taipei.)
