Christ is the Word of God that defines, explains, and expresses God, speaking and revealing God by the Spirit through the Scriptures, the prophets, and the apostles through the ages in many ways (Rev. 19:13; Heb. 1:1-2a; 4:12; 2 Tim. 3:15-17; 1 Pet. 1:10-12; John 6:63).
Christ is the life contained in Himself as the Word of God (John 1:4a; 11:25; 14:6; 10:10b) to be the base of a believer's life. Our regenerated life is based upon the very divine life in Christ as the Word. If we are going to enjoy Christ's life, we must come to the Word of Christ. We must pray His Word, say "Amen" to His Word, and sing "Hallelujah" to His Word.
We can be vitalized by singing the following song with an exercised spirit: "Now Christ is the life-giving Spirit./Now Christ is the Spirit today./Now Christ is the life-giving Spirit,/So turn to your spirit and say,/O Lord! Amen! O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah!/O Lord! Amen! O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah!" In one meeting in Elden Hall in 1965 I told the saints that we can all say four words. When I spoke this, I did not know what the four words were. Then I said that we can say, "O Lord! Amen! Hallelujah!" This is a simple way to touch the Lord by turning to our spirit. We have a spirit (1 Thes. 5:23), and the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) who dwells in our spirit. Therefore, we should turn ourselves from our mind to our spirit, from our thinking to praising.
Christ is the light of life (John 1:4b-12; 8:12; 9:5; 12:46) to bring the divine life to the world by shining (speaking) forth God that man may be born of God to be His children, making man God in His life and nature but not in His Godhead. When we receive the shining of the light of life, this shining imparts the divine life into us. That divine life becomes our authority to be God's children (1:12-13), God's kind, God's species, God's family.
Christ became the flesh through His incarnation (1:14a), that is, a man fallen in sin, but Romans 8:3 tells us that Christ became the "flesh of sin" only in its "likeness," without its sin in reality. It was in the "likeness of the flesh of sin" that God had the way to condemn sin, that is, to annihilate sin, to abolish sin. Christ became the flesh of sin only in its likeness, like the bronze serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness (John 3:14; Num. 21:4-9). This bronze serpent was a type of Christ, indicating that Christ was in the form of a serpent but without the serpentine nature and poison. In Numbers God told the children of Israel to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole. In this way God would condemn the real serpent; that is, He would condemn, annihilate, and take away sin.