In this series of messages, we want to fellowship concerning the Christian life. Such a topic may seem common to us, but I must honestly tell you that to my impression it is very hard to find one believer that knows what the Christian life is. The Bible is a very complicated book. Some fundamentalists say that the Bible does not contradict itself. But the more we study the Bible, the more contradictions we find in it. We have to realize that in the whole universe if there is no contradiction, nothing can remain, nothing can exist. All things exist by contradiction. Do we always laugh? We laugh and we also weep. Someone may say, "I am a happy person." But this is not completely true because this person is also full of anxiety.
To know the Christian life is not an easy thing. Do you believe that the apostle Paul was always victorious? Today among us we have a saying—"Revived every morning; overcoming every day." Do you believe you can be revived every morning and overcoming every day? If within a day you do not have any defeat to match your victory, you actually do not have a good day. Can anyone among us say that we had one day in our entire life which was full of victory with no defeat? Today we are in the "kitchen" of the Christian life. While a meal is being cooked in a kitchen, everything is a mess there. Today our experience is in the kitchen, not on the dining table. In our Christian life, when everything is cooked and put on the dining table, that will be the New Jerusalem. In our present experience, however, the New Jerusalem seems mostly like a "bird in the air." I have spoken much about the New Jerusalem, but this New Jerusalem "bird" has never been fully in my hand even though it is always in my expectation.
The Christian life is a mystery. I cannot tell you that I know what the Christian life is in an absolute way. Some may ask, "Since you don't know, why do you speak about it?" I am still endeavoring to know. On the one hand, I say that I do not know. On the other hand, I can say that I do know what the Christian life is to some extent. We need to see what the Christian life is from the Bible. Furthermore, I hope that what I have seen and experienced in the Christian life can be a help to you.
In this message, I want to cover two main points. The first point is that the Christian life is the life in which the believers of Christ live Christ and magnify Christ. The second point is that the Christian life is the life in which the Christians live Christ and magnify Him corporately in their locality as a local church to be a local expression of Christ as a part of the universal Body of Christ. The Christian life is and should always be in these two aspects—the individual aspect and the corporate aspect. We need to live an individual Christian life for a corporate Christian life. The corporate Christian life is the church life. This refers specifically to the local church. If we do not have a local church life, we cannot experience anything of the universal Body of Christ.
Now I would like to point out why I said that the Bible is contradicting. This is because the truths of the Bible are not written and presented in an orderly sequence. Instead these truths are here and there, scattered, throughout the Bible (cf. Isa. 28:13). The Bible is like a great jigsaw puzzle with many small parts, but all of these parts are scattered. The Bible does not arrange the truths in a certain sequence, putting the parts together to present a full and perfect picture. We have to gather the many parts of a truth to see it in a complete way. In your study you may have picked up ten parts, but none of these parts are connected to one another. Every part stands by itself. You need to spend time to collect more parts of the puzzle and put them together gradually.
I have been studying the Bible for over sixty-five years. I have found that it is very difficult to put the parts of the Bible together. We should not just hold one part and think that this is everything. We have to be patient and go on to pick up more and more parts until we have a complete view. In the past thirty years, there were times when I thought that I had put all the parts of the Bible together. I thought I had a completed jigsaw puzzle. But eventually there was still something more. Through the help of others' understanding of the Bible, I have put many parts of the Bible together, but I cannot tell you that I have finished. I have spoken much throughout the years concerning the Divine Trinity. This is because the parts in the Bible concerning the Divine Trinity are scattered from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of the book of Revelation. In this series of messages, we want to put together the parts of the Word concerning the Christian life so that we can see what the Christian life is.