For centuries the human mind has been in captivity to religious and natural concepts. For this reason, many read the Bible for years but do not see what it reveals. We are short because we are veiled by our natural concepts. Of the four Gospels, only John emphasizes life. We must set aside our natural concepts in order to see life revealed in John. John does not begin his Gospel with Jesus’ human birth. Instead, he opens from eternity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). John 1:3 says, “All things came into being through Him.” Then verse 4 says, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” When Matthew speaks of life, it concerns the blessing of eternal life in the coming age (7:14; 19:16-17), but the life spoken of in John is present in Christ.
John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.” Verse 17 says, “Grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.” The items mentioned in these verses are all related to life. This life is a person, Christ Himself (11:25; 14:6). Grace and reality are our experience of the life that is Christ. We have to spend much time to know who and what Christ is. Christ being life may sound simple, but John’s twenty-one chapters reveal many aspects of this wonderful person.
Regrettably, when most Christians read John, they see only stories and miracles, and they miss life. John 3 concerns regeneration, which is to receive the divine life by being born of God, but this is a mystery to most Christians. John 1:12-13 says, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” These verses clearly reveal that whoever receives the Lord and believes into His name becomes a child of God by being born of Him. This is not a small thing. We should be deeply impressed that we were born of God when we were saved through believing.
Some in Christianity deny that we receive God’s life and nature through regeneration. However, every living thing has the life and nature of the being of which it was born. Whatever is born of a lion is a lion with the lion life and nature. To say that such an animal is anything other than a lion is illogical. This shows that many Christians are clouded by natural concepts. They dare not say that we are children of God who possess the divine life and nature. However, 2 Peter 1:4 says, “He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature.” Since we were born of God, we surely have God’s nature. Of course, we do not possess the Godhead as deities to be worshipped, but because we are born of God, and God is our Father, we are the same as He is in life and nature. Nevertheless, many Christians deny this truth. Therefore, they do not understand regeneration in John 3.
The Gospel of John is not a record of stories and miracles but a description, a detailed portrait, of various aspects of Christ as life to us. In 10:10 the Lord said, “I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly.” In 11:25 He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” The Lord being the resurrection and the life indicates that He is a life that can withstand, overcome, and never be conquered or terminated by death. In 14:6 the Lord said, “I am the way and the reality and the life.” If we only see the stories and are attracted by miracles when we read John, this means that our concept is natural, and we lack the heavenly revelation. With revelation we will see that the miracles were done to signify something deeper about life. Miracles are not the goal. The apostle Paul did many miracles, but he did not heal himself or his co-workers Timothy and Trophimus (Acts 19:11-12; 1 Tim. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:20). Paul had a thorn in his flesh, which was a physical sickness (2 Cor. 12:7). After he asked the Lord three times that it would depart, the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you” (vv. 8-9). Grace is Christ Himself as life experienced by us.
Most Christians who read the Bible pay attention to miracles but not to grace. They do not see that grace is Christ as life in our experience. Even many so-called great teachers of the past centuries did not see life. Martin Luther was used by the Lord to recover the truth of justification by faith, but Luther did not see life. I found only doctrine and no life in Luther’s writings. Kaspar Schwenckfeld, a contemporary of Luther, saw something of life, but Luther called him a fool possessed by the devil. William Law, an eighteenth-century teacher, was initially concerned only with doctrinal knowledge of the Bible, but one day he had a turn and saw life. It is good to read his book The Power of the Spirit. Yet Schwenckfeld and Law did not see as much as we see today. In the same principle, an ordinary electrician today knows more about electricity than the great inventor Thomas Edison. Therefore, we do not boast, but we thank and worship the Lord that He has shown us more than what the great teachers of the past have seen.
Because Luther did not see what Schwenckfeld saw, Luther considered him to be heretical. This indicates that seeing means a great deal. Those who do not see consider those who do see to be heretical. When I was young, I read Luther’s expositions on Romans and Galatians. Compared to what we see today, his exposition is elementary. He saw the doctrine of justification by faith, but the main point of Galatians is life. Justification by faith is only a beginning; the result is life. In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Justification issues in life so that we can have this experience. Luther did not see this. Although Romans has sixteen chapters, Luther covered mainly the first four chapters in his exposition. Life-study of Romans points out that Romans has four stations—justification, sanctification, the Body, and the churches (p. 393). Luther saw only the first station. We may compare the first station to elementary school and the next three stations to high school, college, and graduate school, respectively. Nevertheless, theologians today still hold Luther in high regard and may be offended by this comparison. Few in Christianity have seen the later stations in Romans. Few practice the genuine church life, because they have no idea about these things.
Many in the local churches are still quite natural in their concepts concerning the spiritual things and their understanding of the Bible. They remain under a thick veil of their natural concepts. Some are still distracted by miracles, thinking that miracles and divine healing are life. These things are not life, for their effects are temporary, but life is eternal. The resurrection of Lazarus was not life but a miracle, because he eventually died again. Life is zoe, the eternal, divine life, which never dies. John 2:23-24 says, “When He [Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed into His name when they saw the signs which He did. But Jesus Himself did not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all men.” The Lord did not entrust Himself to those who believed because of miracles. We have to see that miracles are not life. The Lord did miracles, and He still does miracles in certain situations today. However, His main intention is to impart life to man. In some situations the Lord will not do a miracle. For instance, He did not remove Paul’s physical infirmity so that Paul would experience more grace, more life.
We need to see that life is a person—the Triune God, who in Christ has passed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension and has come into us as the life-giving Spirit to be our life and to mingle with us. Because we have received Him, we have been regenerated, are being transformed, and will be conformed to His image and glorified. The Christian life is not an exchanged life but a grafted, mingled, regenerated, transformed, conformed, and glorified life. This is beyond our human thought. It is easy to understand an exchanged life—because our life is bad, and Jesus’ life is wonderful, we trade our life for a better one. However, according to the Bible, we are grafted into Christ and mingled with Him (Rom. 11:17; 1 Cor. 6:17). The Lord does not nullify our humanity but fills, transforms, and uplifts it. Regeneration, sanctification, transformation, conformation, and glorification are the work of life within us, and this life is the processed Triune God who became the life-giving Spirit to dwell in our spirit and be one with us. This is why Paul is able to say, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). This experience is a matter of life.
In Christianity I was taught to hope to be raptured, to be suddenly taken up by the Lord into glory. However, according to the Bible, glorification is part of a lifelong process (Rom. 8:30). Christ is the processed Triune God who is dwelling within us as our life and mingling Himself with us to sanctify, transform, conform, and eventually glorify us. This is beyond our natural, human concept; we need the heavenly vision to see this.
We need to see that life is a wonderful person who is both God and man, who passed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and who is now the indwelling Spirit. John 7:39 says, “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” At that time the Spirit was not yet. But since the Lord’s resurrection, the Spirit has been, and He is now within us and is everything to us. This is what we mean by life. We need a vision of this profound reality.
Revelation depicts the churches as golden lampstands (1:12, 20; 2:1). The church can be golden, having God’s nature, because His life is being worked into the believers through their regeneration, transformation, conformation, and glorification. Apart from this process, there is no way for the church to be a golden lampstand, a shining testimony of God’s nature. The churches are seen as golden lampstands in Revelation because in God’s eyes, in His eternal view, the church is altogether divine. The church is divine because Christ, the divine person, has been wrought into it. The lampstand was patterned to depict the Triune God (Exo. 25:31-40). The golden substance signifies God the Father in His divine nature, the form of the lampstand signifies God the Son as the embodiment and expression of the Father, and the seven lamps signify God the Spirit as the seven Spirits of God for His expression. This implies that the church is the Triune God’s reproduction not in the Godhead as a deity to be worshiped but in life, nature, and expression. Life is not only our experiences, such as the law of life, the sense of life, the fellowship of life, and the anointing, but primarily the Triune God dispensing Himself into us and making us one in Him to be the golden lampstands. We need to see a vision of the churches as the lampstands—the embodiment and expression of the Triune God. When we see this vision, we will know what life is.
The New Testament revelation concerning life is that the Triune God becomes one with His chosen and redeemed people and that they become His embodiment. This is what the Bible means by life. The Lord Himself told us that He is life (John 11:25; 14:6), and Paul in Colossians 3:4 says, “When Christ our life is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory.” Christ is our life, and glory is His expression. When we are manifested with Him in glory, we will be exactly the same as He is in life, nature, and expression.
If we see the revelation in the Bible concerning life, we will know what the Lord’s recovery is. It is not any kind of work, movement, activity, teaching, or practice but a living of the life that is the Triune God. Once we see this, nothing will distract us, because nothing else is as valuable, precious, or high. The churches in the Lord’s recovery are the lampstands in Revelation, which are the testimony of Jesus and the embodiment of the Triune God. We have to know the Lord’s recovery in life. This vision will keep us; it has kept me. It was this vision that kept Brother Nee while he was imprisoned for twenty years. Perhaps no other Christian in history has been in prison for the Lord’s sake for so long without changing his belief. I believe that what kept him without any change was this vision. I can testify concerning him because I was with him.
If we have the vision of the Lord’s recovery in life, no matter what happens, we will be kept in the Lord’s recovery without any change. No one will be able to persuade us to change, because we have the best. If a man possesses costly gold and realizes what he has, no one will be able to convince him to exchange it for something less valuable. Nothing is better or higher than what the Lord has revealed to us in His recovery. If we see this, we will never be convinced to change. I have seen the vision clearly for forty-five years, since 1933. In myself I am weak, but I cannot deny what I have seen. This is what burdens me to share with others. We need to see the Lord’s recovery in life—the Triune God in Christ realized as the indwelling Spirit to be our life.
Question: Is it possible to have life outside the proper church life?
Answer: There are two aspects of the Christian life: the individual aspect and the corporate aspect. Regeneration is an individual matter; the church life is a corporate matter. The individual aspect is for the corporate aspect. Outside the church life, people can be regenerated to receive the divine life, but without the church life, people will not have the abundance of life. In church history many people have been regenerated and to some extent transformed without experiencing the proper church life, but they did not have the abundance of life. We experience life individually, but because our individual experience is for the corporate aspect, we must be in the practical church life in order to have the abundance of life.