Question: What is the relationship between our receiving of the truth and our experience of it?
Answer: When we see the truth, we receive it, and it becomes our experience. Our receiving of the truth ushers us into the experience of it. If we reject a particular teaching from the Bible, we are rejecting God in that aspect and cannot experience Him as such. However, we must be careful not to interpret the Bible according to our old, natural concepts, for this will cause us to miss important aspects of the truth. When we genuinely receive the truth, we experience and practice it. Therefore, any real truth always issues in our experience of God, even the matter of the ground of the church. When we see the truth of the church ground and receive it, we apply it and experience an abundance of life.
In previous chapters we saw that life is God and that the truth is the content of the Bible. God is life to us through His steps of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, descension, and indwelling. The content of the Bible is the truth because the Bible reveals God to us. However, when we read the Bible, it is merely doctrine to us until the Spirit enlightens us. For this reason, we must daily touch the Lord and allow Him to deal with us so that we will have a sincere heart, an open spirit, and a pure conscience. Then when we read the Bible, the Spirit will enlighten us, and the doctrines in the Bible will become truth to us, which is God Himself, who is light, life, and grace. Thus, our receiving of the truth is our experience of God as truth. Everything that we speak and teach must convey such truth; otherwise, it is mere doctrine.
Question: Is it all right to speak things that we have not yet fully experienced?
Answer: A great teacher once said, “A good minister always speaks beyond what he has experienced.” We should not speak in pretense, but we often must speak concerning things that we have not fully experienced. In a sense, our ministry must always be ahead of our experience. The apostle Paul ministered beyond what he had experienced when he wrote concerning glorification (Rom. 8:17, 30). John also ministered beyond his experience when he wrote concerning the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21—22).
Ministering beyond our experience differs from teaching doctrines without life. The things that the apostles Paul and John taught beyond their experience were full of life. We may not have fully experienced what we minister, but whatever we minister should be the truth, which conveys God. The Bible is different from any other book, for it is full of God as the truth. When we read a piece of Christian literature, we should judge its value by whether it helps us to touch God.
Question: How is truth related to the growth in life?
Answer: The increase in truth results in the growth in life. As a believer receives more truth, life becomes more abundant in his experience. This is why we need to know the Bible, receive the truth, and care only for teaching that conveys God as life.
Question: What is grace?
Answer: According to John 1:17, when the Lord came, He brought grace, which is God Himself as our enjoyment. Many Christians define grace simply as unmerited favor. This is not wrong, but it is a shallow understanding. According to this definition, some consider grace to be material blessings, such as wealth and success in business and family life. God may allow us to have such things, but Paul counted all things other than Christ as refuse (Phil. 3:8). If grace were merely material blessings, when a believer is imprisoned for his faith, as Brother Watchmen Nee was, he would lose grace. This is absolutely false. Such ones surely receive more grace in their suffering.
Question: Ephesians 4:20-21 says, “You did not so learn Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him as the reality is in Jesus.” What does it mean to learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus?
Answer: The phrase the reality is in Jesus refers to the actual condition of the life of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels, because His life was the expression of God. Everything the Lord did in His human life was God expressed and was therefore truth, reality. Thus, we learn Christ according to the living of Jesus in the four Gospels.
The Bible is the revelation of God as reality, but when we first read it, it is not such a revelation but only doctrine to us. When the Spirit enlightens us, the doctrine becomes reality. The word that Peter spoke in Matthew 16:16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” was a revelation to him. But when we first read it, it is not a revelation to us but a doctrine. Millions have read Peter’s word and received it merely as a doctrine. However, when the Spirit enlightens this word in the believers, it becomes revelation and truth. This is why the Spirit is called the Spirit of reality. It is the enlightening of the Spirit that brings revelation, reality, light, and life.
Question: Ephesians 4:25 says, “Having put off the lie, speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” What does it mean to put off the lie and speak truth?
Answer: According to the natural concept, this may be taken to mean only that we should be sincere, honest. However, according to the context, to put off the lie means to put off everything false, which is to put off everything that is not Christ; and to speak the truth means to speak Christ, who is the reality. Ephesians 4:15, says “Holding to truth.” According to the Lord’s word in John 14:6, in Ephesians truth indicates Christ along with all that He is, such as God, light, life, and grace.
We must see that the Lord’s recovery is altogether a matter of life and truth. Life and truth characterize the recovery. Life is God Himself in all His processes to reach man, and truth is God Himself as the reality. Accordingly, the purpose of the Lord’s recovery is to bring us back to God so that we may experience and participate in Him.