The same is true with spiritual things. What do many people desire and seek after? They are after a “thing.” Many sisters have come to me and said that they want patience. I often felt that the word “patience” was too small to them. They wished they could be patient. They thought it would be wonderful if God gave them a dosage of patience and they took it and became patient. They sought patience. This is a dosage to them, and it will last for three to five days. But there is an expiration date on it. After a while, the word “patience” becomes smaller and smaller, until one day the word runs out. If it is a thing, there is always a day when it will run out. Even if it is something one receives through prayer, it will still run out. Sometimes to answer His children’s immediate need and to accommodate their foolishness, God answers their prayers. But God does not answer such prayers all the time. He will not go on this way forever.
In God’s world, there are not many “things.” Christ is all and in all. God only has Christ. He cannot allow patience, humility, or love to continue to exist as things by themselves on this earth forever. What does He want in the end? In the end He wants to show us that Christ is patience, Christ is humility, and Christ is love. He gives Christ, not “things.” One day when our relationship with the Lord becomes proper, the matter of patience will be settled. It is a matter of Christ, not a matter of patience. Once our relationship with Christ is normalized to the degree that God expects it to be, the matter of patience will be settled, the matter of pride will be settled, and ten thousand other matters will also be settled. The issue is Christ; the issue is not “things.”
Hence, in God’s eyes everything depends on how we know Christ. What does it mean to know Christ? Some people know Christ as their love. Others know Christ as their humility. Some know Christ more, while others know Him less. Whatever “thing” you know Christ to be, that “thing” becomes your proper knowledge of Christ. This is the meaning of knowing Christ. The “knowledge of Christ” is not an abstract term; it is not something objective. Our knowing of Christ is positive and substantial. We know Christ by knowing Him as the various “things”; we know that He is this to us or that He is that to us.
Some of you can stand up and testify, “I did not know what it was to be clean, because everything with me, from my heart to my head and thoughts, was all unclean. But thank the Lord that Christ has become my cleanliness. God has made Him cleanliness to me.” You can see immediately that this “thing” is not something that you have; this “thing” is Christ. When Christ lives in you, He brings this “thing” along with Him. It is something that He brings along with Him; it is not something that you have in yourself. This is genuine Christianity.
I must say bluntly that unless a child of God has his eyes opened to see that Christ is his things, he is not of much use, because all that he has is behavior. He is always the one who is doing the works. Even if he prays and God gives something to him, he only has temporary things that have no spiritual value in God’s eyes at all.
To some people, grace from God comes in the form of separate individual things. To others, who also have the experience of grace, their grace comes in the form of a person, who is the Son of God. One day you will say to God, “I thank You and praise You because the grace I have received is Christ. My grace is a person; it is something personified.” When you can tell the difference between these two things, you can tell the difference between life and death. Many brothers can only differentiate between right and wrong; they cannot differentiate between life and death. They can only differentiate between what is good and what is bad. There is only one simple explanation for this: they do not see that everything is in Christ. He, the person, is the matter. He, the person, is the thing. In the spiritual realm, there is only Christ; there are not many matters or things.
If God opens your eyes one day, you will see that this and that are things as soon as you touch them. This is very strange, yet it is very real. A man may be full of many things. He may be patient, meek, humble, faithful, loving, warm, forgiving, and merciful; he may be filled with many things. But what you see is only a big pile of things. You can at least tell the difference between a man’s ring and his finger. You can at least tell the difference between a man’s hat and his head, his glasses and his eyes, or his clothes and his body. If you can tell the difference between these things, you should be able to tell the difference between a thing and Christ. If you have never seen this, you will be surprised by what I am saying. But if you have seen this, you will see that this is a simple matter. Everything that is a thing is dead in itself, and outwardly it produces nothing but death. It is dead in itself, and when you perform this thing, if you have any spiritual sense at all, you will feel dead as well. While you are doing it outwardly, you sense that the result is death and not life.
The only thing you can say about certain persons is that they are very good, that they are nice men. You can only see good and evil in them; you cannot see anything spiritual in them. You can only say that some brothers are good, that they are nice men, that they have a good temper, that they are patient, and that they can suffer and deny themselves. That is all you can say. If patience, suffering, self-denial, humility, and love are only things, you may love them, but the minute you touch them, you are deadened within, and something collapses within you. There is a reaction against these things. Life has a strong reacting power. Sometimes a person says a very nice word, yet it is something that should not have been said, and there is immediately a very violent reaction within you against it. Take the prayer meeting as an example. What does it mean for you to say amen? It means that you are touched by life. When a brother prays, and the prayer touches your life, spontaneously you respond with an amen from within. Other prayers may be very earnest; the words may be very nice and the tone very loud, yet the more the prayer goes on, the colder you feel within. You wish that the prayer would stop because the prayer is exactly like the person who prays. There may be a thing, but it brings nothing but death. Just as a thing is dead in you, it is also dead in others. Things have no spiritual value at all, because man is doing all the work.
If what we have said is true, there is nothing more we can do before the Lord. We can only look to Him; we cannot do anything or perform any work. Brothers and sisters, we should realize more and more that works are abominable in the eyes of God. If we are truly led by the Lord to go on in this way, we will surely find out one thing: God hates sin, and He also hates behavior. When man sins, God says he will perish. When man behaves, God says he cannot be saved. God rejects behavior as much as He rejects sins. God only accepts one thing: His Son Jesus Christ. Only what Christ has done in us counts. Thank God that it is Him and not us. It is not we who are humble, but He. It is not we who love, but He. He does not give us the power; He is our power.
Brothers and sisters, I do not know what to say. I hope that the newly saved ones would pay special attention to this matter. As soon as you are delivered from the spiritual things, you will touch the Lord. The sooner you are delivered, the better it will be. The more you procrastinate, the more you will not see. Those who have many things piled upon them cannot see easily. God will have to do a great deal of work in chastising you and putting you down before He can take many things away from you and before you will take Christ. Nevertheless, as you advance somewhat in your Christian life, God will take things away day by day so that He can give you Christ.
I hope that this day will come. One day all the things in heaven and on earth will be headed up in Christ. One day God’s Word will be fulfilled, and Christ will be all. Those who do not know that Christ is all today can never expect that Christ will be all. Today Christ is all my things already. He is already all things to me. God has given us His Son already. He has given us Himself. This is what He has given us. Today Christ has to be all in us. There must be no difference between Christ and things. Nothing can be considered a spiritual thing in itself. Only Christ is all. All things are Christ. Christ is all and in all. This has to start in the church; it has to start with us today. We can declare that He is all because we know and acknowledge that He is all. We can also declare that He is in all. He is in our patience, He is in our meekness, and He is in our love because He is in all. One day (and we hope that that day will quickly come) God’s Son will be all and will head up all things because He is all and in all! In that day, we will know that what we learned today is for that day. May the Lord bless all of us!
O Lord, we pray for grace before You. Lord, we confess that our eyes are blind; we do not see clearly enough. We know about things, but we do not know Christ. Our Lord seems so far away from us. The things seem so real to us, while Christ does not seem real to us. Lord, we pray that You would open our eyes so that Christ would become real to us, so that the things will pass away and life will fill us. Lord, we pray for deliverance from the many things, so that we can know the Lord as a person. May the Lord who is our person become our things so that everything in us becomes living and full of life, and so that others would see Christ when they see the things. Lord, we know that these two ways are entirely different. How different is the sinner’s way from the way of the righteous. In the same manner, how different is the way of a genuine Christian from that of a false Christian. Many things need to be broken. You have to break us. Do not allow us to deceive ourselves, to think that we have seen it when we have not seen it, to think that we have touched the right way when we really have not touched it, to think that we are full of life when we are full of behavior, and to think that we are full of Christ when we are full of things. Lord, touch us. Lord, build up Yourself in us in a powerful way so that everything within and without us is just Christ, just Yourself.
Lord, bless these words so that they would bear fruit and would bring men back to Yourself in a rich way. May You utter what man cannot utter. May You cover man’s weakness and forgive man’s foolishness. May You gain something among us. We need to be laid bare. May tonight be the night when many are laid bare, when they see themselves as You see them. May a little light enter us, and may it shine through all falsehood and all performance so that we would see the replacements and everything that is not You. Bless Your own word, and glorify Your name. In the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.