BASIC WORD THE INTRINSIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

THE INTRINSIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

The general subject of this series of messages is “The Christian Life.” Although this is a short general subject, there are many crucial matters that the Lord will reveal to us in the course of these messages. What would we say if someone were to ask us what the Christian life is? In order to answer this question and to be able to share with others what the Christian life really is, we need much revelation and experience. For this reason we all need the Lord’s speaking in these messages. We truly believe that through His speaking, the Lord will meet both His need and the need of every brother and sister from the oldest to the youngest.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BEING A LIFE OF LIVING CHRIST;

OUR LIVING NEEDING TO BE CHRIST,

AND THE WAY TO LIVE CHRIST

BEING TO LOVE CHRIST

The Christian life is a life of living Christ; our living should be Christ, and the way to live Christ is to love Christ ( Phil. 1:19-21a ; Gal. 2:20 ). We cannot live Christ if we do not love Christ. We may have heard Brother Lee’s fellowship in The Experience and Growth in Life, from which this point is derived ( The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1989,vol. 3, pp. 30-31), but we ourselves must see that our living should be Christ and that the way to live Christ is to love Christ. We need to give ourselves to love the Lord every day. Stanza 1 of Hymns,#368 says,

More love to Thee, O Lord,

More love to Thee!

Hear Thou the prayer I make

On bended knee;

This is my earnest plea:

More love, O Lord, to Thee,

More love to Thee,

More love to Thee!

Our Being Able to Live Christ by Loving Christ to the Uttermost;

If We Do Not Love Christ, Our Not Being Able to Live Him, and Loving Him Being the Best Way to Concentrate Our Entire Being on Him

We can live Christ by loving Christ to the uttermost; if we do not love Christ, we cannot live Him, and loving Him is the best way to concentrate our entire being on Him (2 Cor. 5:14; 1 John 4:19; Phil. 1:19-21a; Mark 12:30; Rev. 2:4-5; John 14:21, 23; 21:15-17; 1 Pet. 1:8; 1 Cor. 2:9; 16:22). In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 Paul says, “The love of Christ constrains us because we have judged this, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all that those who live may no longer live to themselves but to Him who died for them and has been raised.” We want the love of Christ to constrain us so that we would no longer live to ourselves but live to Him. We do not graduate from being constrained by Christ’s love to live to Him. Every day we should have a conversation with the Lord in which we say, “Lord, I want Your love to constrain me today so that I live to You today, so that everything I do is according to Your preference, likes, taste, and desires. I want to live to You in that kind of a way.”

In Mark 12 a scribe questioned the Lord, saying, “Which is the first commandment of all?” (v. 28). Jesus answered, “The first is: ‘Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from your whole mind and from your whole strength’” (vv. 29-30). Miss M. E. Barber was very thankful for this commandment. When she went to be with the Lord, she left all her belongings to Watchman Nee, including her Bible with all her precious notes (Watchman Nee—a Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age, p. 18). Concerning her love for the Lord, Brother Nee testifies,

Miss Barber once wrote the following words in her Bible beside the passage in Matthew that says we should love the Lord our God with our whole heart, soul, and will: “Lord, I thank You for this commandment.” (The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 42, pp. 457-458) [16]

How wonderful that she thanked the Lord for commanding her to love Him! Likewise, we can say, “Lord, thank You that You commanded me to love You.”In the first epistle to the seven churches, the Lord, through the messenger to the church in Ephesus, said, “I have one thing against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev. 2:4). To have the Lord as our first love means that we give Him the first place in all things. The Lord should have the first place in our daily life, our church life, and our family life. Practically speaking, what does it mean to give Him the first place in all things? Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing I have asked from Jehovah; / That do I seek: / To dwell in the house of Jehovah / All the days of my life, / To behold the beauty of Jehovah, / And to inquire in His temple.” We should be those who simply want to behold the beauty of Jehovah and to inquire in His temple. In the Life-study of the Psalms Brother Lee tells us that to inquire in His temple means to “check with God about everything in our daily life” (p. 160). When we inquire in His temple, we are checking with Him about everything in our daily life, including what we should do, where we should go, what we should wear, what kind of car we should buy, and even how we should comb our hair. Checking with the Lord in this way indicates that we are not on automatic pilot. This is the way we give Him the first place, which is what it means to have Him as our first love.

Furthermore, for Him to be our first love means that He is everything to us and He does everything in us, through us, and for us. We should daily pray, “Lord, be everything to me today, and do everything in me, through me, and for me for the building up of the Body of Christ to consummate the New Jerusalem.” This is our goal. John 14:21 says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him.” When we love the Lord, when we really turn our heart to Him and exercise our spirit of love, and when we say, “Lord Jesus, I love You,” the Father will love us, and the Lord will love us. We can take this to mean that if we say, “Lord Jesus, I love You,” He and the Father will say, “I love you too.” Not only will the Father and the Lord love us, but He will also manifest Himself to us. The Lord lives in us all the time; He does not leave us. However, we also want to enjoy His manifestation all the time. To manifest means to make something clearly apparent to the sight and understanding. When the Lord manifests Himself to us, He makes Himself clear to our sight and to our understanding. We may also say that His manifesting Himself is His becoming very real to us. We want Him to be more real [17] to us every day. As the Spirit of reality, we want Him to guide us into all the reality every day.

In verse 23 the Lord said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” Verse 21 indicates that the Son manifests Himself to us when we love Him. Verse 23 then shows that we have the Father and the Son’s personal visitation to us to make a mutual abode with us; in this mutual abiding, we dwell in the Father and the Son, and the Father and the Son dwell in us by the Spirit. The Father and the Son are our home, and we are the abode of the Father and the Son. We live in the Father and the Son, and th