Scripture Reading: Col. 2:13; 3:4; John 6:57; 14:19; 15:4-5
When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He did not live by His human life. Although, as a man, He was a perfect and complete individual person with a life of His own, He lived by the life of the Father, not by His human life. Since the Father’s life is divine and eternal, the Lord Jesus lived by the divine life. He and the Father had one life and one living. The Son lived by the Father’s life because the Son’s intention was to express the Father. Since the Son is the image, the expression, of the Father, and since He lived by the Father, the Son expresses the Father in a full way. The Son lives, but it is the Father who is expressed.
In John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said clearly that the living Father sent Him and that He lived because of the Father. The Father sent the Son, and the Son lived on earth through, because of, or by, the Father. I prefer to say simply that the Son lived the Father, for the Father was the Son’s life.
The Bible reveals that the Son is a seed who is to be reproduced in the believers. According to John 12:24, the one grain of wheat needs to fall into the earth and die in order to produce many grains in resurrection. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He lived the Father’s life. Now, after His resurrection, He has become our life. He wants us to live His life, not our own natural life. As individuals, we all have our own life. But in His economy, God does not intend that we live our natural life; He intends that we live Christ. As Christ lived the Father, so we should live Christ.
We have pointed out that Christ is versus our culture. Our self-made and self-imposed culture, as well as the culture we have inherited, may be excellent, but as long as it is not Christ Himself, it is a hindrance to our experience of Christ, to our enjoyment of Christ, and to our living by Christ. In order to see this clearly, we need a heavenly vision. If we try to drop our culture without seeing that Christ is our life and our everything, we shall succeed only in exchanging one kind of culture for another. To be uncultured is also to have a culture. Those who are cultured have a culture, and those who are uncultured also have a culture, although of a very different kind. If we realize this, we shall see that it is of no avail simply to decide to drop our culture. Apart from Christ, whatever we are and whatever we do is related to culture in some way. Every human being has culture. The culture may be developed or undeveloped, high or low, but it is nonetheless a culture. At the time the book of Colossians was written, the Greeks had their culture and the Jews had theirs. Throughout the thousands of years of history, every race and nationality has had its particular kind of culture. The crucial point here is that every kind of culture is versus Christ and that Christ is versus every kind of culture. Any culture, no matter what kind of culture it is, is versus Christ. Apart from Him, every human product and development is part of culture.
We should not try in ourselves to do anything about the culture within us. What is of vital importance is that we see the vision of God’s economy. God’s economy is to work the living, all-inclusive Person of Christ into us. According to the revelation in the book of Colossians, Christ is the portion of the saints, the firstborn of all creation, the image of the invisible God, the Head of the Body, the firstborn from among the dead, the One in whom all the fullness is pleased to dwell, the mystery of God’s economy, the mystery of God, the reality of all positive things, and the constituent of the new man. Christ is everything: He is life, light, power, might, strength, righteousness, holiness, kindness, and every other divine attribute and human virtue. Because Christ is everything to us, He is all-inclusive. God’s intention in His economy is to work this all-inclusive One into us. As the all-inclusive One, Christ has the highest attainments. He has ascended to the heavens and has been exalted to the highest place in the universe. He is now sitting at the right hand of God. Christ has been enthroned, and He has become the Lord and Head over all. Furthermore, He has obtained everything, for all things have become His. This Person with all He has attained and obtained is the very One that God desires to work into our being. Do you truly believe that such an all-inclusive living Person has been wrought into you? I doubt that very many Christians, including those in the Lord’s recovery, actually believe this.
The all-inclusive Christ is to be our life (3:4). If Christ does not become our life, then all He is and all He attained and obtained remain objective. He is He, and we are we. In that case He has nothing to do with us in a practical way, nor we with Him. Therefore, in our actual daily experience, Christ must be our life. However, we may have the doctrinal knowledge from the Bible that Christ is our life without living by Christ in a practical way day by day. Instead of living by Christ, we live too much of the time by our natural life.
We all should be willing to admit that we love our own life, our natural human life. We may claim to hate our life, but actually we love it very much. Even as you testify of your hatred for your natural life, deep within, you still appreciate your life and consider it better than that of others. For example, deep within, a sister may feel that her life is better than her husband’s life. Of course, a brother will have similar feelings toward his wife. We all are alike in thinking highly of our natural life.
In addition to appreciating our natural life, we all are in the habit of using it, that is, of living according to it. Over the years we have become accustomed to living by our own life. Moreover, we have even endeavored to refine the natural life. Through the training we have received at home, our natural life has been somewhat refined. It has been refined further through education and religion. We must admit that the natural life has even been refined by our participation in the local church. A brother who has been in the church for several years truly is much more refined than he was before coming into the church life. Some of the most refined people in this country are to be found in the church life. However, instead of carrying on such a refining work, the church should terminate and bury the natural life. But most of us have not been buried by the church; instead, we have been refined. Before you came into the church life, you may have been like unpolished copper. But now that you have been refined by the church life, you are like shiny, polished copper. Although polished copper may look like gold, it is not gold. Likewise, although our natural life may be refined and polished, it is still not Christ. In the churches, there is too much refined copper and too little gold. There is too much of the natural life and not that much of Christ.
Christian preachers often give people the wrong kind of advice. They may be like doctors who prescribe the wrong medicine. In the early years of my ministry, I would tell those who were about to get married that they needed to be balanced and subdued. I told them that the Lord would use their husband or wife and their children to subdue them. I regret having given out that kind of teaching, for it leads to the refinement of the natural life, not to living by Christ. In my early ministry I could not clearly discern between gold and copper that had been refined and polished. Now I see that no matter how much copper is refined and polished, it will not become gold. In the same principle, refining our natural life will not transform it into Christ. What God desires is that we live Christ. He has no intention merely to refine our human life.
When we do not live Christ, we live according to our own philosophy. When I told the saints that in their married life they needed to be balanced and subdued, I was ministering philosophy to them, not the riches of Christ. My philosophy at that time was a mixture of the Bible and certain ethical teachings according to which I had been raised. Thus, what I shared with the saints concerning married life was culture; it was not Christ. In certain respects my philosophy was quite good. I could defend it by appealing to those verses in the New Testament which charge wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives. It seemed to me that in some ways my philosophy was better than that of Confucius. Confucius never taught that a wife needs to be balanced by her husband and that a husband needs to be subdued by bearing the burden of his wife and children. If we consider the matter of married life apart from Christ, we may agree with this philosophy. Nevertheless, even if this philosophy is right, it is not Christ, and it serves only to refine the natural life.
Even we in the church life have been short of the heavenly vision concerning God’s desire that we live Christ. Because the vision has not been clear, we have spent a good deal of time refining our human life instead of living Christ. Therefore, I am burdened to point out that the local church should not be a place where the work of refinement is carried out. Rather, the church should be a place where Christ is ministered. When the young people come to me for fellowship about marriage, I now tell them that they need to experience Christ as their grace. I no longer tell them that they need to be balanced and subdued according to God’s sovereign arrangement in their married life. I wish to tell all the saints that our unique need is Christ. Christ lives in us, and we are one spirit with Him. Oh, our need today is for the indwelling Christ!
If we would enjoy Christ and experience Him by being one spirit with Him, we should turn from all the standards, rules, regulations, and principles we have made for ourselves. To tell others that they need to be balanced and subdued is to fellowship with them according to a standard. Today I do not minister standards — I simply minister Christ. I would encourage all the saints to no longer set up standards and regulations, but continually contact Christ as the life-giving Spirit. If you are a slow person, do not try to be quick; if you are quick, do not try to slow down. Instead of trying to balance yourself, just live Christ. Let Christ be your standard, regulation, principle, and goal.
If we would experience Christ and live Him, we need to remain in an atmosphere of prayer. Many of us can testify that by prayer we are brought into the spirit, where we are one with the Lord and take Him as our life. This experience is so precious that when we are enjoying it, we do not want it to end. We like to remain in spirit to be one with the Lord. However, as soon as our time of prayer is over, most of the time we revert to our natural way of living. We are no longer in an atmosphere of prayer. Automatically we begin to try once again to be holy, spiritual, and victorious. Whenever we fail, we repent, confess to the Lord, and resolve to try again. This is not the way to live the Christian life. On the contrary, our daily living should be the same as our experience in genuine prayer. When we pray ourselves into the spirit, we are one with the Lord, we enjoy His presence, and we spontaneously live Him. Without exerting any effort, we are holy, spiritual, and victorious. We have no problems and no anxieties. I believe we all have had experiences like this in prayer.
These experiences of genuine prayer should be the model for our daily experience with the Lord. This means that our experience in our daily life should be the same as that in prayer. However, most of the time we live according to the natural life, not according to Christ. To live Christ it is necessary to persevere in prayer, to pray without ceasing. We need to stay in the atmosphere of prayer. Here we are one spirit with the Lord. He is our life, we live Him, and we are spontaneously holy, spiritual, and victorious. We have no thought of balancing ourselves. Instead of standards, principles, and regulations, we have Christ experientially and in a practical way. Whenever we are in such an atmosphere of prayer, we are one with Christ, and He is our life. This is what it means to live Christ.
The teachings I gave out many years ago about being balanced and subdued did not minister Christ, and they did not bring the saints into direct, living contact with Christ. Instead of refinement, we need a kind of living in which Christ is lived out directly. God has not given us holiness, victory, or spirituality. He has given us Christ as a living, all-inclusive Person. What God desires is this Person, not any virtues or attributes. Therefore, our need is to contact this living Person in prayer. Then we need to remain in an atmosphere of prayer. If we do this, we shall live Christ spontaneously. Furthermore, we shall be freed from our culture without trying to adjust or correct ourselves. Everything other than Christ will fade away. Christ will be whatever we need: life, light, grace, comfort, health, strength, humility, patience, kindness, meekness. When we have Him, we have all the divine attributes and the human virtues. Furthermore, in our experience the Bible becomes living and full of light.
My burden in this message is that our eyes would be opened to see that what God wants is Christ lived out from within us. His concern is not that we be balanced, but that we be one with Christ and live Christ. God wants us to live Christ. You may be a young person, but you should live Christ, not the life of a typical young person. To be balanced, subdued, or refined is not the way to live Christ. The way to live Christ is in prayer to contact Christ as the life-giving Spirit within us. As we pray ourselves into an atmosphere of genuine prayer, we shall live Christ spontaneously. I can testify that this is real and that we all can experience it.
The way to experience the indwelling Christ is to pray in a genuine way. We do not need to pray for a better job or home. That kind of prayer hinders us from experiencing Christ. We need the kind of prayer which brings us into contact with the Lord, prayer that causes us to be one with Him in our spirit. If we pray in this way, we shall enjoy Christ, experience Him as our life, and live Him.
Instead of trying to be a certain kind of person and instead of trying to live up to certain standards and regulations, we should simply contact Christ, be one with Him, and live Him. Our goal should be to know Christ and Christ alone, not to know what to do or where to go. As we enjoy the Lord and experience Him, He will be our life and we shall live Him. How marvelous! This is what Paul means in Philippians 1:21: “For to me to live is Christ.”
In order to live Christ, we need to pray without ceasing. As soon as we stop praying, we stop living Christ. I wish to point out again and again that only in an atmosphere of prayer is it possible to live Christ. Therefore, every aspect of our daily living must be brought into such an atmosphere, where we and Christ are truly one. In this atmosphere Christ is real, substantial, practical, and even touchable. It is in this atmosphere that Christ is our life in a practical way. Here we live Him and enjoy all He is to us. This Christ is unsearchable and unlimited. In our experience we are one with Him, we contact Him, and we enjoy all His riches. In this way we spontaneously live Christ.
