How can we differentiate the love, humility, and patience that are out of ourselves from that which is the spreading of Christ? How can we differentiate the “brass” from the “gold”? The best way to differentiate these two categories of things is by our inner sense. However, in order to sense these things, we must have a proper spiritual “nose.” If we are spiritually healthy, we will have a healthy spiritual nose. Many times we will sense that someone has love, but this love is not so sweet. This love has no sense of Christ. There is not the sweet odor of Christ in that love. Rather, this love is full of the self. Again someone may have humility toward a brother, but this humility has no sense, no sweetness, no sweet odor of Christ. We can sense the odor of Christ or the odor of pride in humility. We cannot define it, but we can sense it. We all have to learn to do this. Then Christ will grow within us.
Here we can see how much we need to deny the self, how much we need the work of the cross. The work of the cross is not only to deal with the evil things but also to deal with the good things. It is to deal with our behavior. Strictly speaking, we should not have mere behavior. What we should have is simply life, Christ spreading Himself from within us.
Sometimes people advise us to behave in a certain way in order to show people that we are humble; otherwise, they say, people may think that we are proud. This is merely an improvement of behavior. This is wrong. As real, normal Christians, we should not do this. If someone advises us to have a change and be more humble, it seems that this is good advice given by love and in love. We may take this advice and go to pray, “Lord, help me,” and soon afterward our attitude may change. However, this is only the improvement of behavior. This is not the teaching of Christ; it is the teaching of ethical philosophy, like the teaching of Confucius.
Someone may ask, “Doesn’t the Bible tell us that we have to be humble?” Yes it does, not in the way of behavior but in the way of Christ. What we need is for someone to help us to contact the Lord. If a brother knows the proper way to contact the Lord, he should help us to contact the Lord by opening ourselves to Him to let Him come in more and more to fill us, saturate us, permeate us, and swallow us up in Himself. Then spontaneously we will have a change by the spreading of Christ as life to meet the need of humility among the brothers. This humility is Christ spreading Himself and expressing Himself from within us. Then we will have the growth of life instead of the mere improvement of behavior.
We talk about the inner life and the church life, but the more I travel and contact the Lord’s children, the more I am concerned and burdened that people simply do not know what the real inner life and church life are. The real inner life is nothing of behavior. The real inner life is altogether something of Christ.
After I was saved, I sat at the feet of certain teachers. From John 13 and 15, sometimes they stressed that we must love one another. They taught that we should wash one another’s feet to show that we love each other, and sometimes they practiced this. At that time I was convinced by their teaching, because apparently this was the word of the Lord Jesus. One day, however, I found out that in the same chapter, John 15, the Lord Jesus says that apart from Him we can do nothing (v. 5). Therefore, the love for the brothers must not be something out of me; it must be something out of Christ. This caused me to be puzzled. It seemed that I could do something without Christ. Apart from Christ I could still come to a brother and wash his feet. Yes, we can do many things without Christ, but those things are not of life. Anything of life must be of Christ.
Consider the branches of a tree. The branches can bear many things apart from the tree. We may, for example, hang a handkerchief or a hat on a branch. However, these things are not real fruit. Apart from the tree, the branches cannot bear fruit. In order for branches to bear fruit, they must abide in the tree. Without the tree, the branch can do nothing as far as fruit-bearing is concerned. Apart from Christ as life, we can have only the improvement of behavior, but we cannot have the growth of life. The growth of life is the spreading of Christ within us.
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