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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 1:22-24; Col. 1:18-19; 2:2-3, 9; Eph. 3:8; Gal. 1:16; 2:20; 4:29; Eph. 3:17; Phil. 1:20-21; 1 Cor. 2:16; Matt. 16:24-25; Rom. 12:2; John 6:57
In the previous chapter, we fellowshipped concerning Christ being everything to us. We furthermore learned that when we realize the glorious fact that we are in Christ and Christ is in us, automatically we will be normal Christians. In this chapter, I feel burdened to fellowship more concerning this Christ who is in us and in whom we are. Although we know that Christ is life and everything to us, we have to know more particularly who Christ is and how we can experience Him practically.
Christ is the embodiment of God. Colossians 2:9 says, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” We can explain what the fullness of the Godhead is in a very simple way. God is love, so love is an item of the fullness of the Godhead. God is also light, so light is an item of the fullness of the Godhead. Moreover, God is power and life, so power and life are items of the fullness of the Godhead. Furthermore, because God is holiness and righteousness, these are also items of the fullness of the Godhead. This fullness—the fullness of the Godhead—dwells in Christ bodily. Hence, because everything of God is in Christ, Christ is the embodiment of God. It is impossible to experience God without Christ; outside of Christ, we can never contact God in a practical way. Everything that God has and is dwells in Christ.
Not only so, from Colossians 1:18-19 we also know that God’s desire, intention, and eternal plan is to give the first place to Christ in everything because God’s pleasure is to have all His fullness dwell in Christ. Christ must have the first place, that is, the preeminence, in everything. In God’s heart, mind, desire, intention, and eternal plan, there is nothing but Christ Himself. God put everything of Himself into Christ, made Christ to be everything in His purpose, and gave Him the first place. Such a Christ is surely beyond our imagination. Hence, the apostle Paul told us that what he preached was the “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). The riches of Christ are unsearchable; that is, they are endless. This is the Christ in whom we are and who is in us.
Although it may be easy to understand such a Christ and to speak of the unsearchable riches of Christ doctrinally, it is difficult to experience Him in a practical way. Practically speaking, what aspects of Christ have we experienced? It is one thing to say that Christ is unsearchably rich; it is quite another to actually experience this Christ. I once counted two hundred seventy-seven aspects of Christ in the Bible. We need to experience Christ in each of these aspects. But in particular, we need to practically experience Christ as two things—food and drink.
Christ is the bread of life and the living water (John 6:35; 7:38). In John 6:57 the Lord said to His disciples, “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.” It is not enough for us to simply realize that Christ is food to us; we have to eat Him. We must not only realize that He is the living water to us; we must drink Him. The Lord emphasizes in this verse that we must actually eat Him. Frequently I want to ask the young people, “How much have you enjoyed Christ today? Did you feed on Him? Did you drink of Him?” We should not say that Christ is food and drink to us yet not practically enjoy Him daily as such. I have found that many people do not know how to feed on Christ and drink of Him. They know that Christ is food and drink to them, and they know that they are in Christ and that Christ is in them. Nevertheless, they neither know how to feed on Christ nor how to drink of Him. They know so much, but they cannot bring their knowledge into practice. We need to know how to enjoy and experience Christ in our daily life. Christ is food and drink to us, and we must know how to eat and drink Him.
God’s eternal desire is that He would mingle Himself with us to make each of us a God-man. God’s intention is to make each of us not merely a man of God but a God-man—a man who is mingled with God. We can illustrate very simply how God can be mingled with us. In order for anything to be mingled with us, it has to be eaten by us. When we eat something, that thing mingles with us and becomes our element and a part of us. When a typical American man is fully grown, he may weigh two hundred pounds and stand over six feet tall. The way that this man became so big was by eating the produce of America over the course of many years. After eating the meats, fruits, and vegetables of America, he is, in a strict sense, a constitution of American food. Because this man has eaten and digested this food, it is mingled with him and has become his element.
We have an imbalanced idea of what God is to us. We frequently think that God is high, great, and far-off from us. Our idea is that we must bow down and prostrate ourselves before Him. This is a mistaken concept. The Scriptures tell us clearly that immediately after God created man, He presented Himself to man in the form of the tree of life (Gen. 2:9). God came to man as the tree of life not to be outwardly worshipped by man but to be eaten by man. One day God came to this world in the form of a man (John 1:1, 14). When He was on the earth, a woman addressed Him as “Lord, Son of David” (Matt. 15:22). The Lord responded by telling her that He was “the children’s bread” (v. 26). While the woman called Him “Lord, Son of David,” He identified Himself as bread. In the Gospel of John, Christ is God incarnated. Yet He told us that He is the bread of life for us to eat and the living water for us to drink. According to our concept, God is mighty, glorious, great, and very far from us. However, God’s intention and desire are that He would be food that we would take and eat. The more we eat Him, the more pleased He will be. The best worship—the real worship and the worship that the Father seeks—is enjoying God (cf. 4:14, 23-24). God’s eternal intention is to make Himself food to us so that He can be eaten and digested by us and thereby be mingled with us. God is in Christ (Col. 2:9), who is our true food and drink. Everything of God is in Christ, Christ is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), and now the Spirit is in us.
When we eat Christ, He as the Spirit comes into us and operates in a number of ways.
First, the Spirit reveals Christ in us. Galatians 1:16 includes the phrase to reveal His Son in me. The more we are filled with the Holy Spirit, the more we will sense the presence of Christ. Christ dwells within us, but it is because the Holy Spirit is within us that we know this. Radio waves bring messages to us, which we receive and play on the radio. As long as we have the radio waves, we have the message, because the radio waves contain the message and bring it to us. The radio waves in this example signify the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit there is the presence of Christ. As long as we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, we have the presence of Christ within us. Hence, the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us. Our experience confirms that whenever we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we feel Christ’s presence. Not only so, the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit, the more we sense the glorious presence of Christ. This is because the Holy Spirit reveals Christ in our spirit.
Second, Christ lives in us as the Spirit. When the Spirit indwells us, Christ lives in us, for Christ is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Galatians 2:20 tells us that Christ lives in us. This Christ lives in us to be our life (Col. 3:4) so that we may live by Him. Because we are regenerated, we possess two different kinds of lives—the natural life and Christ Himself as life. Since Christ is life to us and since He lives within us, we must daily live by Christ and not by the natural life.
Third, the Spirit works within us so that Christ is formed in us. In Galatians 4:19 Paul writes, “My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you.” We can use the example of an egg to understand what is meant by the word formed. If we place a fertilized egg in an incubator and observe the egg day by day by holding it up to the light, over a period of time we will see a chick form within the egg. At our regeneration, Christ came into us as a seed (1 Pet. 1:23). Now He needs to be formed within us. It is not enough that Christ has been revealed in us and now lives within us—He must be formed in us. For Christ to be formed in us means that He becomes everything to our entire being. When Christ is formed within us, our whole soul—mind, emotion, and will—is full of Christ. This is why 1 Corinthians 2:16 says that we have the mind of Christ. This is a mind that Christ fills until it is full of Him, a mind in which Christ is formed. Many times we can tell just by the way a person thinks that his mind is full of Christ and that Christ occupies his mind. It is the same with the emotion. When Christ occupies the emotion of a person, whatever he loves is what Christ loves. Likewise with the will, whatever a man who has Christ formed within him chooses or decides, we sense that with him is the presence of Christ.
Christ being formed in us is very much related to Christ making home in our hearts (Eph. 3:17). Our heart is a composition of the three parts of our soul—the mind, emotion, and will—plus one part of our spirit, the conscience (Matt. 9:4; John 16:22; Acts 11:23; Heb. 10:22). For Christ to make home in our heart simply means that Christ occupies all the parts of our heart. It is not enough for us to declare how glorious it is that we are in Christ and how sweet it is that Christ is in us. We have to realize that Christ wants to make home in every part of our heart; this will give Him the ground to occupy our whole being.
The simple way to give the Lord the ground to make home in our hearts is to deny ourselves. In Matthew 16:24-25 the Lord Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake shall find it.” To deny the self means to lose the soul-life, that is, the natural life. The terms self, soul, natural man, and old man are, for the most part, synonymous in that they all relate to one thing—the old life, the natural life. We have to deny our soul-life; that is, we have to deny our natural mind, natural emotion, and natural will. If we deny the self, that is, the soul-life, and put it to death, we will give Christ the ground to take over and possess our mind, emotion, and will and thereby make home in our heart. At that point, all the parts of our heart will be full of Christ, and we will have the mind, emotion, and will of Christ. To deny the natural life of the mind, emotion, and will and let Christ occupy all the parts of our being are to live by Christ, take Christ as our life, let Christ live in us, and take Christ as everything in a very practical way.
It is easy to say that we are in Christ, that Christ is in us, and that Christ is everything to us, but we need to experience these things in a practical way. When we are in the midst of thinking, we must reject our natural mind. When we love something or someone, we must give up the natural emotion and deny the self. When we make choices, we must deny the self and reject our natural will. In all the parts of our heart, we need to give Christ the first place. Unless we deny the self, bear the cross, and put our natural life to death, it will be impossible for us to live by Christ and take Him as our life. The way to take Christ as our life in a practical way is to reject the natural mind, emotion, and will.
I ask you to practice this matter day by day. When you think about a certain thing, remember that you are a Christian and have Christ living in you. As such, you must deny your self and reject your natural mind. By doing this, you yield your mind to Him. When you love something or someone, remember that you have Christ living in you, and deny your self, rejecting your natural emotion. To do this is to yield your emotion to Christ and let Him occupy it. We must do the same in regard to the natural will. We have to reject our self and let Christ occupy our entire being, thereby allowing Him to make home in our hearts completely.
Christ is real, living, and active. This active One is in you, waiting to occupy your whole being. But He can do this only if you give Him the opportunity. If you give Him the ground, He will take and occupy it. As a result, you will experience Him as life moment by moment, He will be gradually formed in you, and you will be conformed to the image of Christ.
When Christ is formed in us, whenever we think, love, or decide, we will have the image of Christ and bear the expression of Christ. This means that spontaneously Christ will be magnified through us, and our life, being, and doing will be an expression, a manifestation, of Christ (Phil. 1:20-21). To have this kind of living is to live Christ. This is the Christian daily living.
The Christian daily living is a living of experiencing Christ in a practical way. As we have seen, enjoying Christ as food and drink is vital to the practical experience of Christ in a daily way. However, we may not know how to eat and drink Christ. We as Christians are familiar with many spiritual terms. Yet when we are pressed to give exact definitions of these terms and to testify concerning our experience of them, we frequently realize that we know very little. Hence, although we know that Christ is food and drink to us, very few of us know how to enjoy Him as such. We need to know practically how to enjoy Christ as food and drink.
We drink Christ by praying, and we eat Him by contacting His word. The Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). The best way to contact the Spirit is by praying. When we pray, we are exercising our spirit, and when we exercise our spirit, our spirit contacts the Holy Spirit (John 4:24; Rom. 8:16; Eph. 6:18). The more we pray, the more we exercise our spirit and contact the Spirit with our spirit. Since the Spirit is the living water (John 7:38-39), at the very moment we are praying, we are drinking the living water. Although praying is the main way to drink Christ, we drink Him any time that we exercise our spirit to contact the Holy Spirit.
The Lord is not only the Spirit for us to drink by prayer; He is also the Word for us to eat (John 1:1; Rev. 19:13; John 5:39-40). Whenever we contact the Word with our spirit, we feed on the Lord. In John 6:57 the Lord said, “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.” When the disciples heard this, many of them reacted, saying, “This word is hard; who can hear it?” (v. 60). Surely they were trying to understand how the Lord could give them His flesh so that He could be eaten by them. Then in verse 63 the Lord said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The Lord told His disciples to take Him as their food, but He was not referring to His physical flesh. Rather, it is the Spirit who gives life, and the words that He had spoken to them were spirit and life. According to these verses, taking Christ’s words is the same as taking Him as our food. The Lord’s words are to be taken not just in the mind but in the spirit. If we take the word of God only in the mind, it will be merely doctrine and teaching. However, if we take the word in our spirit, it will become food (Jer. 15:16).
If we are to enjoy Christ as food and drink, we have to take the word and pray in our spirit. When we pray to the Lord in our spirit, we are drinking the Lord as the living water. When we contact the word with our spirit, we are feeding on the Lord as our food. Day by day we have to learn how to experience and enjoy Christ by contacting the word and praying in our spirit. When we do, we will experience the Lord’s energizing power by which we can live, think, love, choose, and act.
The breakfast that we eat every morning is the strengthening and energizing power within us by which we can live throughout the day. In the same way, we have to come to the Lord every morning and eat and drink of Him moment by moment. We also need to come to Him to contact His word and to pray to Him in our spirit. The more we contact His word and pray to Him in our spirit, the more we will feed on Him and drink of Him and thus experience Him as our life, energy, and strength by which we can live as a normal Christian. If we eat and drink Him by reading and praying, we will think by Christ, love by Christ, decide by Christ, and have a life that is fully in Christ. Such a life of eating and drinking Christ is a life of enjoying and experiencing Christ as everything to us in a practical way.
