We should not think that God is inactive. When God is added into us, He does not just remain there, doing nothing. Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.” God is not within us in a silent and inactive way. God is operating within us. The Greek word for “operates” in Philippians 2:13 is equivalent to the English word energizes. God is operating in us, energizing in us.
The divine element is very active. It is energizing, it works, and it is organic. Anything that is organic has an energizing capacity within it. Within the divine life that we are enjoying today, there is a renewing capacity. This capacity is not merely the measure of the divine life. When I use the word capacity, I mean the ability of the divine life in its nature. In God’s divine nature, there is the ability which is energizing all day. Once the divine life with the divine nature gets into us, it energizes within us. We all have the divine element energizing in us, and in this divine element there is the renewing capacity.
We may use soap as an illustration because it has the capacity to wash away dirt. There is the ability to wash away dirt in the nature of the soap. Likewise, in the divine life which we have received and which we are enjoying, there is a renewing capacity according to its nature. Thank the Lord for the renewing capacity of the divine life. We need to enjoy the renewing capacity of the divine life in resurrection day by day.
This is why we have to learn to die to ourselves. How do we die to ourselves? Every morning we should contact the Lord. First, we have to confess our sins. Second, we have to reject ourselves. In rejecting ourselves, we pass through the death of Christ, and the death of Christ kills us. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul talks about “the putting to death of Jesus” (v. 10). This means that Jesus, in a positive sense, is always killing us. In many medicines today there is a healing element and a killing element that kills the bad germs and bacteria within us. In Jesus there is the killing element. He is our medication to heal us, enliven us, and kill all the negative things within us. In this dose there is the killing power. Morning after morning, we need to come to the Lord and take Him as our antibiotic. Jesus is our daily antibiotic. When we take Him as our medication, we enjoy the killing of Jesus, or the putting to death of Jesus. This killing is the process of renewing. Furthermore, this killing brings in resurrection. Jesus does not only comprise killing but also resurrecting. In the resurrection of Christ, the divine life has the renewing capacity. When we reject ourselves in the morning to receive God into us, we have the sense during the day that a killing process is going on within us. Also, there is a capacity in the divine life that is renewing us in all our actions.
Philippians 2:13 tells us that God is operating in us, and then verse 14 tells us to do all things without murmurings and reasonings. If we receive the addition of God in the morning, this addition has the killing power. It will kill our murmurings and reasonings. In the previous chapter, I told you that when I was young, I heard someone say that the church in Philippi was the best church, but Philippians 2:14 shows us that even the church in Philippi had murmurings and reasonings. Murmurings are of our emotions, mostly by the sisters; reasonings are of our mind, mostly by the brothers. In the church the sisters are used to murmuring because they are emotional, and the brothers are used to reasoning because they are logical. It is mostly the brothers who consider according to their reasonings who is wrong and who is right. Psalm 133 tells us how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in oneness, but if the church life is full of murmurings and reasonings, how can we live together in peace? Murmurings and reasonings are according to the old creation.
In my early days of ministry, I advised people to take care of their behavior, but this only worked with them temporarily. In a training in 1953 and 1954 I stressed thirty aspects of character. All the trainees received this fellowship and practiced it. After a short time, however, many of these aspects of character disappeared with them. Many of the trainees, including the co-workers, went back to their old character. Our character is the old creation that needs to be renewed to become the new creation.
God’s intention is altogether to make us new. This is not an overnight matter. It takes a long time in our life and it requires us to contact God, to receive God, and to get God added into us all the day. It requires us to pray, confessing our sins and rejecting ourselves to take the cross of Christ. To take the cross of Christ is a killing, and this killing is death. This death brings in resurrection, and in this resurrection, the divine life in us will carry out its renewing capacity. Then we will be changed metabolically. This process of renewing takes a period of years. Brother Nee once said that this renewing requires twenty years.
The renewing process should be continuous. Moment by moment we have to receive God so that He can be added into us, and we have to reject ourselves to receive the death of Christ so that we can cooperate with the Lord within us. Then we will enjoy not only the renewing capacity but also the renewing result, which is a metabolic change in our behavior, in our character, in our disposition, and even in our habit. The most difficult thing to renew is our habit. When we experience God in Christ daily, we will see that God’s intention is to renew us bit by bit, especially to renew our habit. This is the real experience of being renewed day by day. For this purpose God raises up all kinds of environments to consume our outward man so that our inward man can be renewed day by day.
God desires us to be the new creation. When all of the Lord’s children pass through the process of renewing to become the New Jerusalem, they will be in a state of being fully renewed. The holy city is called the New Jerusalem because it has no old element of God’s old creation. As we pass through afflictions, there needs to be a continual renewing taking place in us day by day so that God can accomplish His heart’s desire.
This message was given by Brother Witness Lee to the church in Anaheim on June 11, 1989.