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Scripture Reading: John 14:19; Gal. 2:19-20a; Col. 3:4a; John 6:57b; Phil. 3:9; 1:19-21a; 2:12-13, 15-16; 4:8-9, 12-13; Rom. 8:4
In the previous chapters we have seen Christ’s person, Christ’s work, and our organic union with Him. For us to experience Christ, we need to see who He is and what He has done for us. He is the complete God and the perfect man, and He has done everything for us. As such a wonderful person who has accomplished all the excellent things for us, He became a life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is the totality of His person and His work. In this life-giving Spirit is the person of Christ and everything He has accomplished for us. All the elements of His wonderful person and His excellent work are condensed and compounded into this life-giving Spirit. When we believed in Him and called on His name, He came into our spirit as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. Now within us there is an organic union. It is in this organic union that Christ lives in us and we live in Him. This is the subjective experience of Christ.
Many Christians experience Christ only in an objective way. However, the holy Word reveals that there are two aspects of our experience of Christ. With everything in the universe there are always two aspects, two sides. Even a very thin piece of paper has two sides. When you look at one side, it may be blank, but when you turn to the other side, you may see a composition written there. If you concentrate only on the blank side, you will miss a great deal. In the same way, it is possible for us to completely miss the subjective side of the experience of Christ by concentrating only on the objective side.
On the objective side, Christ was God. Then He became a man, lived on this earth, went to the cross, died for us, and was buried. He rose from the dead and ascended to the heavens where He is now on the throne at the right hand of God. He is in the heavens waiting for a time when He can come back and set up His kingdom to rule over this earth. At that time He will close the old dispensation and bring in the new heaven and new earth with the holy city, New Jerusalem, and all of us who have believed in Him will be with Him there for eternity. This is the objective side of experiencing Christ presented in the Bible.
According to the objective teaching concerning the experience of Christ, we worship God as though we are far away from Him. We believe that the Lord Jesus is our Savior who died for our sins and that God forgives us because of Jesus Christ. Then we try to do good to please God and glorify Him, and finally one day we will die and go to a prepared place. When Jesus returns, He will raise us up from the dead and take us to be with Him where we will enjoy eternal blessing with Him for eternity. With this objective view we cannot see that Christ and we, we and Christ, have an organic union. It seems that Christ has never been united to us and that we have never been united to Him. He lived apart from us and accomplished everything apart from us. We believe in Him and accept Him altogether in an objective way—He is He, and we are we. It seems that there is no union between Christ and us. Objectively, this may be right, but subjectively, it is absolutely lacking and altogether wrong.
Consider our physical being. We have skin, flesh, and bones; we have many physical parts that are touchable and visible. Yet this is merely the outermost part of our being. Inside of our body there is a life that is invisible and untouchable. However, although this life is intangible, it is the most crucial part of our human being. Without this crucial part we would be like a lifeless machine or a robot. Today’s objective teaching is too superficial; it has made many Christians like robots or machines in their spiritual life. Many do not know how to fellowship with the Lord or how to experience and enjoy the Lord in the fellowship of the Spirit, and they do not know that the Lord today is one with them in their spirit. They fail to see the two aspects of the Lord’s being.
Christ is the King of all, the Lord of all, and even the Head of all in the heavens. He is sitting there on the throne exercising His authority to rule the entire universe. However, this is just one side. On the other side, through His death and resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Today Christ is the Lord, the King, and the Head objectively, far away from us. As such a One, He is great, marvelous, high, and dignified. But in this aspect we cannot experience Him. He is there in the heavens, yet we cannot touch Him. But, Hallelujah, He has another aspect. He became a life-giving Spirit. The word for spirit in both Hebrew and Greek also means “air.” Today Christ is just like the air. Hallelujah, He is the life-giving air!
We all know that physical air gives us life. If there were no air, after a few minutes all of us would be dead. We live by breathing; we live by the air. Today the Lord Jesus is our air. John 20:20 tells us that on the day of the Lord’s resurrection He came back to the disciples. They were not expecting Him. As they met together, they were fully disappointed, thinking that the Lord Jesus had left them. To their great surprise, all of a sudden the Lord Jesus was there. Then the Lord breathed on them and told them to receive the holy air, the Holy Spirit (v. 22). He breathed on them to bring in more air.
In Greek the word for air, for Spirit, and for breath is pneuma. When I was a young man living in north China, not many of the young people there knew English. An agent of Chevrolet began to sell automobiles in China, and since they needed some young people who knew English, they asked me to be their agent. As I looked at one of the cars, I saw the word pneumatic printed on the tires in large English letters. Although I knew English, when I read this word, I said, “What does pneumatic mean?” Later I learned that it meant to be full of air. A tire needs to be full of air; otherwise, it becomes flat. No one desires to have a flat tire. However, spiritually speaking, when we are short of the Spirit, we are like a flat tire. We are not pneumatic, because we lack the spiritual air. Many Christians do not see that Jesus Christ today is the life-giving pneuma. He is very pneumatic, and when we are filled with Him, we also become pneumatic, full of air. When the tires of your car are short of pneuma, you go to the gas station to get more air. Then the tires are full of air. In a spiritual sense, we need to check ourselves, whether we are pneumatic or a flat tire. I can testify that I am pneumatic; I am full of air. We should not be Christians who are short of air; we should be pneumatic Christians. Not only every day but every second we must breathe in Christ.
In our hymnal we selected about eight hundred hymns from over ten thousand collected hymns. Among these selected hymns were a number of hymns written by A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. One of his hymns (Hymns, #255) speaks of breathing in the Lord. The first stanza and chorus of this hymn say,
After singing this hymn for the first time, one brother was offended at the thought of breathing the Lord. However, a few years later, after having had the experience of breathing Christ, he expressed his appreciation of this hymn.
The Lord’s recovery is to recover all the subjective experiences of Christ. This is why in the previous chapters, after I presented to you many items of Christ’s person and work, I emphasized the fact that now there is an organic union between us and Christ. This organic union is not physical. It is not material, visible, or touchable. It is something organic, something of life. No life, whether animal, vegetable, human, or divine, is visible. Life is real, but life is invisible. Electricity is a good illustration of this. Electricity is not visible, but it is real. All the tubes in a fluorescent light fixture are united to the power plant in a kind of electrical union. It is this electrical union that affords the light. This electrical union is the electrical current flowing between the power plant and the fluorescent tubes.
We may apply this illustration to understand our organic union with Christ. We are the fluorescent tubes, and Christ is the power plant. Between us and Christ there is a spiritual current. This spiritual current is an organic union. We are united to Christ and Christ is united to us in this current. In this organic union Christ is in you, in me, and in every one of His believers. This is the organic union in which we should abide, in which we should remain. To abide in Christ is to remain in this organic union. Every day, morning and evening, we have the deep sense that in our spirit there is a kind of current flowing. This is the living Christ, this is the organic union, and this is the spiritual fellowship of the divine life. Christ lives in this organic union, and we also live in this organic union. He and we are living together in this one organic union.
This organic union was fully illustrated by Christ in John 15. There He told us that He is the vine, and we are the branches of this vine. In the vine with all the branches we can see an organic union in which life is flowing and circulating. It is in this circulation that both the vine and the branches grow. The vine and the branches are growing together in this organic union. We are living together with Christ. Christ lives, and we live with Him. The vine lives in all the branches, and all the branches live in the vine. They live together one with another. We all need to see this.
Christ lives in resurrection, and He lives within us. This is clearly indicated in John 14:19 and Galatians 2:20. In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Oh, Christ lives in us! He sits on the throne as the Lord, but He lives in our hearts as the Spirit. In John 14:19 the Lord Jesus said that because He lives, that is, in resurrection, we shall live also in Him. As the vine lives in the branches, the branches also live. We all need to be deeply impressed that Christ lives in us and we live in Him. How wonderful this is!
Christ is our life, and we live by Him through enjoying Him. In Colossians 3:4 we are told that Christ is our life, and in John 6:57, that if we eat Him, we shall live because of Him. Christ is not only our life but also our life supply. He is the bread of life (v. 48). Bread is something for us to eat. We live by what we eat. If we did not eat, how could we live? We live by eating. At times I become tired, but always after eating a good meal, I am nourished. I live by what I eat. In a spiritual sense, we live by eating Jesus. Just as a car runs by the gasoline it “eats,” we “run” by eating Jesus. Jesus is our food and Jesus is our “gasoline.” We live by Him through enjoying Him. For this reason, every day we need some time to contact the Lord. We should not say that we are too busy to eat. If we refrain from eating, after a certain period of time we will die. We can never graduate from eating. The more we eat Jesus, the better. We eat Jesus, and we live by Him.
In Galatians 2:19 Paul says that we have died to law that we might live to God. Although this verse is in the Bible, we may be unaware of it. When we read the law, the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and realize that it is good, we may determine to keep it. However, Paul says that we Christians have died to law. The law is good, but it is not for us to keep. We have died to law that we might live to God. This means that we are not responsible to the law, but we are responsible to Christ. We are responsible to our God, who is Christ.
Let me illustrate in this way. Suppose you read in the Bible, “Honor your father and your mother” (Exo. 20:12). You may say to yourself, “I am a child of my parents, but I do not honor them all the time. Through reading the Bible I have learned that I should honor my parents.” Immediately you may make a strong decision to honor your parents. You may tell the Lord, “Lord, You know that I am weak. I have the desire to honor my parents, but I cannot do it. Lord, help me to honor my parents.” I prayed this kind of prayer many times. I can testify to you that this kind of prayer was never answered. The more you pray that the Lord will help you to honor your parents, the more you may lose your temper with your parents. When you read such a verse, you need to say, “Satan, let me tell you that I have died to law, and I am not responsible to the law. I am living to God; I am living to Christ. I do not care for the Ten Commandments. I only care for Christ. He is within me. He lives within me, and I live with Him. I am responsible only to Him. Morning and evening, day and night, every minute and every second, I am responsible to Christ. I live to Christ, I live by Christ, I live in Christ, I live with Christ, and I live Christ (Phil. 1:21a). I am one with Christ.” Spontaneously, Christ in you will live to honor your parents. Now your honoring of your parents is not you but Christ. It is not you who honor your parents; it is Christ in you who honors them. We all need to see this.
Many of God’s people use the Bible in a wrong way. For example, many Christian husbands and wives misuse Ephesians 5:22 and 25. These verses say that wives should be subject to their husbands and that husbands should love their wives. However, each may read these verses for the other, not for himself. The husbands may read verse 22, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord,” while neglecting verse 25; and the wives may read verse 25, “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church,” while overlooking verse 22.
In the early years of my ministry a number of cases between husbands and wives were brought to me. Both the husband and the wife came to me to present their case. The husband complained that his wife was not submissive, and the wife, that her husband was not loving. In this way the Bible became the law for a lawsuit. But we need to see that we have died to law. We no longer live to the law and are not responsible to the law. We live to Christ and are responsible to Him. We should no longer care about the law; we should only care for Christ. Our need is simply to pray, “Lord Jesus, I love You. Thank You, Lord, that You are one with me. You live in me, and I live in You. Lord Jesus, it is not I but You. I desire to live You every minute and every second.” A wife who prays in this way will gradually find that she can easily submit herself to her husband. She will do it unconsciously, willingly, and unintentionally. It is the same with the husbands. There will be no need for the husbands to determine to love their wives; they will love their wives spontaneously. We have died to law that we may live to Christ. This is to live Christ.
If you are a person who lives Christ, then everyone will find you in Christ. People will realize that you are a person in Christ, not in anything else. You live Christ, and you express Christ in your daily life; thus, what people see in you is Christ expressed by you. In Philippians 3:9 Paul expressed his desire to be found in Christ. He was a person who aspired to be found in Christ.
If you are living Christ, you are a person absolutely in Christ. Whatever you do is Christ, and whatever you say is Christ. In this way Christ becomes your righteousness, which is considered in the Bible as God’s righteousness. Christ is your love, kindness, and humility. Christ is everything in your virtues.
When we experience Christ to such an extent, we magnify Christ, regardless of the environment, by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (1:19-20). The Spirit of Jesus Christ is simply the life-giving Spirit, who is Jesus Christ Himself. In this all-inclusive life-giving Spirit is the bountiful supply for our daily life. It is by this bountiful supply that we magnify Christ.
In Philippians 2:12 we are told to work out our own salvation. The salvation spoken of here is not the salvation that saves us from perdition. Rather, it is the salvation that saves us from our daily problems. If, as a husband, I cannot love my wife, that is a real problem. And if, as a wife, you cannot submit yourself to your husband, that is also a problem. Not being able to control our temper is another problem. From these kinds of problems we all need a daily salvation. We ourselves work out this daily salvation by living Christ. By living Christ we are saved not only from losing our temper but from every kind of shortcoming and weakness. Living Christ saves us from every defect and makes us perfect. We all need to experience this daily, subjective salvation.
If we experience such a daily salvation, we will shine as luminaries, as lights, in the world, holding forth the word of life (vv. 15-16). Our living holds forth, presents to people, the word of life. On the one hand, we are preaching and teaching the word of life; on the other hand, we are presenting the living word of life by our living Christ. When we live Christ, we shine. We shine as the lights of Christ, and that shining presents to others the word of life.
If we live Christ, we will be empowered to do all things (4:13). To be empowered to do all things means to be strengthened to show forth all the human virtues created by God for His expression. Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man in His own image in order that man might express Him. The image of God refers to the divine attributes. With God there are the divine attributes, and with man there are the human virtues. God created man with human virtues. That is the reason man is ethical, moral, and good.
In Philippians 4:8 Paul refers to six virtues: “Finally, brothers, what things are true, what things are dignified, what things are righteous, what things are pure, what things are lovely, what things are well spoken of, if there is any virtue and if any praise, take account of these things.” As a man, as a human being, you need to be true, honorable, righteous, pure, lovely, and well spoken of. I repeat, every human being must be true, not false, and must be honorable and righteous. He must be right with God and with everyone, and he must be pure, lovely, and well spoken of. He must have some virtue, and he must have something worthy of praise. As a human being, you should be such a person. In Philippians Paul is instructing us how to live Christ. If we live Christ, we will be a person who is true, honorable, righteous, pure, lovely, well spoken of, full of virtues, and full of things that are worthy of praise.
A human being should express God in all the human virtues, which reflect all the divine attributes. However, man became fallen. The entire human race became the opposite of what God intended. Mankind became untrue, dishonorable, unrighteous, impure, unlovely, ill spoken of, without virtue, and without anything worthy of praise. However, on the day we were saved, God in Christ came into us. This God now lives in us. If we live Christ, who is the embodiment of God, surely we will live a person who is true, honorable, righteous, pure, lovely, well spoken of, full of virtues, and worthy of praise. Although we should be such a person, in ourselves we cannot be. But in Philippians 4:13 Paul says, “I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me.” In this verse to do all things does not refer to healing the sick, performing miracles, or speaking in tongues. Paul does not say that he was able to do all things in this way. Paul says that he was able to do all things to be true, honorable, righteous, pure, lovely, well spoken of, full of virtues, and worthy of praise. Paul was able to do all these things in Christ who empowered him.
When reading Philippians 4:13, the wives should say, “I am able to do all things, including submitting myself to my husband.” On the side of the husbands, the hardest thing on this earth for the husbands to do is to love their wives. It is easy to love while dating, and it is easy for the bridegroom to love the bride on the wedding day, but later on it may become difficult for the husbands to love their wives. But Paul says that we are able to do all things in the One who empowers us. Therefore, the husbands are able to love their wives. The sisters can be the proper wives submitting to their husbands, and the brothers can be the proper husbands loving their wives. We are able to do all things in Him, that is, in Christ, who empowers us. This is to live Christ.
Finally, to live Christ is simply to walk according to the spirit (Rom. 8:4), the mingled spirit. This spirit is the life-giving Spirit, who is Christ Himself, mingled with our regenerated spirit. There is such a mingled spirit within us. We simply need to walk so that our daily life may be according to this spirit. Confucius said that the highest learning is to cultivate the bright virtue, that is, the human conscience. But we have something much higher than the bright virtue, something much higher than the conscience. We have a mingled spirit. This mingled spirit is our regenerated human spirit indwelt by and mingled with the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. Now we need to walk according to this spirit. This is to experience Christ by enjoying Him, and this is the secret of experiencing Christ.
