In God’s eyes, what is important is not the gifts of Christ. In God’s eyes, He has given us Christ Himself. God has not given us humility or endurance; He has given us the whole Christ. Christ is becoming our humility, and Christ is becoming our endurance and meekness. It is Christ, the living Lord. This is Christianity.
Please remember that there are no non-personified things in Christianity. We must never receive a merely non-personified thing. In Christianity, all things are personified, and that person is Christ. In other words, our endurance is not a thing; our endurance is a person. Our sanctification is not an experience; our sanctification is a person, something personified. Our justification is not an experience; our justification is a person. Our righteousness is not an act; our righteousness is a person. Our redemption and deliverance are not something that we receive at one time; our redemption and deliverance are a person. Our endurance, humility, meekness, love, etc., are the Lord Himself; they are not things. This is Christianity. Christ is everything to the saints today. There is no need to wait for that day to come.
Many people ask how we can say that Christ is all. If you know the Christianity of life, you will acknowledge that He is all. He does not give all, rather He is all. These are two entirely different things.
Why is it that God’s children fail so much today? They fail because they have only received a gift before the Lord; they have not received Christ. They have received fragmentary things before the Lord; they have not received the Christ God has given them. They have received only matters and things; they have not received a person. I do not know how much you have seen before the Lord. But I can say that when this question is resolved, all questions are resolved.
When we were saved, many of us heard God’s Word, which says that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that we will not perish, but will have eternal life. When we heard such a word, we felt that we needed to be saved, and we went to God and prayed, “Lord, You have loved me and given Yourself to me. Can You give salvation to me also? You have become my Savior. Can You give me salvation also?” How foolish we were! We felt that having a Savior was not enough and that we needed salvation also! Many people have done this. And what do we do in our gospel preaching? We say that God has given us the Savior, yet when we repent, we pray, “God, grant me Your salvation.” However, God has only one Son, and this Son is salvation. When we have the Savior, we have salvation. Do we still have to ask for salvation? Only a foolish man would say, “God, You have given me a Savior. Now please give me salvation.”
Today we are Christians, and we are saved; God has given Christ to us to be our life. But we constantly ask for one thing after another; we ask for one, two, three, ten, fifty, a hundred, ten thousand, a million, and ten million things. We think that these individual things are important. But God shows us that Christ is our everything.
This is why God’s Word shows us that Christ’s name is “I am.” Perhaps I should not be speaking so much of this matter outside the Bible; we should consider more of what the Bible says about this.
In the Gospel of John, the Lord said that He is the bread of life. We often ask God for food; we think that there is something called food. We are hungry, and we ask God, saying, “Please give us food.” But it is so strange that those who ask for food never receive food. Those who ask for food are always hungry. Those who beg for food are the ones who are always hungry. I cannot say that I have been serving the Lord for many years. But I can at least say that I have been serving Him for some years. During these years, I have never met a person who asked for food who received it. You may say, “Does this mean that God’s Word is wrong? Does not Luke 1:53 say that He will fill the hungry with good things?” I say, yes, it is true that the hungry ones will be filled with good things. But with what are the hungry ones filled? We have to realize that what fills us is not food, but Christ. We often feel hungry, and we have a need. We feel empty and believe that God has food. So we pray and hope to receive food. But we do not know how we can get the food. All we know is that we should contact the Lord, believe more, receive more, and enjoy more. But the amazing thing is that when we believe more, receive more, and look to Him more, we do not get the food that we hoped for, yet we are filled. We do not receive the food that we expected to receive. But through our looking to the Lord, and through contacting and receiving Him, we are filled. God’s food is Christ. His food is not just food. God has no matters; His food is just Christ. The Chinese have an idiomatic expression “Chien-pien-yi-lu,” which means “a thousand pages of the same thing.” It is not a good thing to be all the same. But before the Lord, all the things of God are “a thousand pages of the same thing.” No matter what we are seeking before the Lord, what He gives us is the same—Christ; He is “a thousand pages of the same thing.” He is the One who meets our need; things do not meet our need.
Many times, I can praise and rejoice for one reason only: my righteousness is not my conduct; my righteousness is a person, who is the Lord Jesus. Because the Lord Jesus has become my righteousness, every time I mention my righteousness, I can say that not only do I have righteousness or justification, but I can speak to my Righteousness, praise my Righteousness, and give glory to my Righteousness. Is this not a wonderful word? You may wonder how one can give glory to his righteousness. Yes, I often give glory to my Righteousness, because my Righteousness is the Lord Jesus. My sanctification is not my work. When I praise my Sanctification, I am not praising my work. No, I hate my work. Yet I can say that I praise my Sanctification, because my sanctification is my Lord. These are two entirely different things. Can you see this? It is not things but the Lord.