Colossians 3:4 speaks of “Christ our life.” Christ is God and also life (1 John 5:12). The life which is God, the life that God is, is in Christ (John 1:4). Hence, the Lord Jesus said that He is life (John 14:6; 11:25) and that He came that we may have life (John 10:10). Therefore, he who has Christ has life (1 John 5:12), and He now dwells in the believers as life. Just as life is God Himself, so also life is Christ. Just as having life is having God Himself, so also having life is having Christ. Christ is God becoming life to us. Through Christ God is manifested as life. Therefore, Christ is now our life.
Human words cannot express adequately what it means for Christ to be our life. But even though we cannot define this life fully, we can experience and enjoy it. We should not stop with the doctrinal knowledge that Christ is our life. Christ must be our life in a practical and experiential way day by day. He should be our life within, and we should have one life and living with Him.
For Christ to be our life means that He is subjective to us to the uttermost. Nothing is more subjective to us, or more intimately related to us, than our life. Our life is actually we ourselves. It is impossible to separate a person from the life of that person, for a person’s life is the person himself. If we did not have life, we would cease to be. To say that Christ has become our life means that Christ has become us. Since our life cannot be separated from us and since Christ is our life, He cannot be separated from us. Because our life is our self and because Christ is our life, we may say that, in this sense, Christ has become us.
For our physical existence everything depends on our having life. If there were no life in our body, everything related to us would be terminated. Without life we could not have such virtues as love and submission. Everything associated with human living is based on human life. This illustrates the crucial importance of Christ being the believers’ life. It is vital for us to see that the all-inclusive Christ is our life.
With Christ as the believers’ life there are three characteristics. First, this life is a crucified life. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He always lived a crucified life. If we truly experience Christ as our life, we also shall live a crucified life. Such a crucified life is a life that has been processed and thoroughly dealt with. The second characteristic of Christ as our life is that this life is a resurrected life. Nothing, including death, can suppress it. Finally, this is a life hidden in God (Col. 3:3). Only the divine life can be hidden in God. If we experience Christ as our life, what we do in the church will not be done in a showy way but rather be done by a life hidden in God.
In relation to the believers Christ is also the Sanctifier. Hebrews 2:11 says, “Both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one.” He who sanctifies is Christ as the firstborn Son of God, and those who are being sanctified are the believers of Christ as the many sons of God. Both the firstborn Son and the many sons of God are born of the same Father in resurrection (Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 1:3). Both the firstborn Son and the many sons are thus the same in the divine life and nature.
If Christ had not been incarnated, He would not be able to sanctify us according to God’s economy. The Sanctifier is not only the Son of God but the Son of God incarnated. As the incarnated One, Christ is the Son of Man. This Son of Man could not sanctify us until He had been crucified, resurrected, glorified, and exalted. These are His qualifications to be our Sanctifier. With respect to His human nature Christ was begotten as the Son of God on the day of resurrection and thereby became the firstborn Son of God. Now as the firstborn Son He is the Sanctifier. He can sanctify us because He has two natures, divinity and humanity, and because we, the many sons of God, also have two natures, human and divine. Our Sanctifier, therefore, is not the only begotten Son of God; He is the firstborn Son of God, the One who has the human nature as well as the divine nature. Because He and we are of the same two natures, He can sanctify us. He is qualified to be our Sanctifier, and we are qualified to be sanctified. Now as the Sanctifier He, the firstborn Son of God, is working on us, the many sons of God.
Christ, our Sanctifier, sanctifies us not only positionally but also dispositionally. This means that He gives us not only a change in our position but also a change in our disposition. This means that the Sanctifier is actually the Transformer, for He transforms us in our disposition, saturating our entire being with Himself as the new element that causes a metabolic change in our character.
Hebrews 13:12 is another verse that speaks of Christ as the Sanctifier: “Jesus, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.” The blood of the sin offering being brought into the Holy of Holies on the day of atonement to make atonement for the people and its body being burnt outside the camp (Lev. 16:14-16, 27) typified the blood of Christ, the real sin offering, being brought into the true Holy of Holies to accomplish redemption for us and His body being sacrificed for us outside the gate of the city of Jerusalem. Christ’s body suffered the death of the cross outside the gate, and His blood was brought into the Holy of Holies for our sanctification so that we may be a people sanctified unto God. Christ suffered the death of the cross, shed His blood on it, and entered the Holy of Holies with His blood (Heb. 9:12) so that He might be able to do the sanctifying work by the heavenly ministry (Heb. 8:2, 6) of His heavenly priesthood (Heb. 7:26) and that we might, by His blood, experience Him as our Sanctifier, as the One who sanctifies us both positionally and dispositionally.
Christ is not only our Sanctifier; He Himself is our sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). This means that Christ is the element that produces transformation. Apart from Him we cannot have the element that, when added to our being, produces a metabolic change.
Whereas the crucified Christ was for our justification, the resurrected Christ is for our sanctification. As the life-giving Spirit in our spirit, Christ lives within us for our sanctification. As the life-giving Spirit, He is our life, and He is saturating our being with His holy nature until we are thoroughly sanctified dispositionally. Sanctification, therefore, is not only positional by the Lord’s blood but also dispositional by the divine life, even by the living Christ Himself. The Lord is now working within our spirit, spreading Himself from the center of our being throughout every part of us until He reaches the circumference. Then we shall be completely saturated with His holy nature. Separation, or objective sanctification, can take place rather easily and in a very short time. But it takes a long time for us to be sanctified dispositionally. If we remain under the dispensing of the Triune God, experiencing Christ as our dispositional sanctification, we shall daily be saturated with the divine nature until we are thoroughly transformed in mind, emotion, and will.
According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, Christ is even our redemption, that is, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23). As the One who is our redemption, Christ “will transfigure the body of our humiliation, conforming it to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:21). The body of humiliation is our natural body, made of worthless dust (Gen. 2:7) and damaged by sin, weakness, sickness, and death (Rom. 6:6; 7:24; 8:11). The body of glory is the resurrected body, saturated with God’s glory and transcendent over corruption and death.
According to 1 John 3:2, we shall be like Christ “because we shall see Him even as He is.” Today we are not like the Lord in our body. But when our body is transfigured, fully redeemed, we shall be wholly like Him in spirit, soul, and body. As the redemption of our body, Christ Himself is the element by which we shall be transfigured in our body to have His glorious likeness.
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