The reality of godliness is the growth of life, and the growth of life is the increase of Christ within us. It is not to have an outward show. Rather, it is to open ourselves again to the Lord, to contact Him daily and all the time, to be one spirit with the Lord, and to be filled, saturated, and permeated with Him and swallowed up by Him. Then He will live Himself out of us, and spontaneously and unconsciously we will be godly persons. We may have no intention of being like God, of having godliness, but we are one with the Lord and always filled with Him. Our inner man is strengthened by Him, He makes His home in all the parts of our being, and we are even filled unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19). Then spontaneously whatever we are will be the likeness of God. This is the living reality of godliness. There is no need to make a show that we are holy as God is or to show that we have love as God has.
Suppose that we all live by Christ in such a way that we are filled with the riches of Christ unto the fullness of God. We have the growth of life with the living reality of godliness. In this case, will we all be the same? Since we all have God-likeness, the living reality of godliness, it seems that we would be the same. However, godliness is God manifested in man. God Himself is the same, but with the manifestation of God in man there is a difference. The manifestation of God in man differs with different people. We can see God manifested in Peter in one way and in Paul in another way. In all the apostles we can see the manifestation of God, but the manifestation differs with different persons.
We all appreciate the way the apostle Paul was. A small brother may think that he should imitate Paul in order to have the likeness of God, but this is to have merely the form of godliness. When I was seriously ill in 1943, there was an elderly co-worker, Sister Wong. She was very much with the Lord and came from Shanghai purposely to see me. She gave a great deal of help to the brothers and especially to the sisters. As such a sister in the Lord, she no doubt had a certain kind of appearance. After she stayed among us for about two weeks, all the young sisters began to imitate her. She spoke in a certain way, so all the young sisters learned to speak in the same way. After I recovered, I gave a message to these sisters to tell them that this is not godliness. It is merely a kind of imitation, a form. I told them that they should simply be genuine. They should learn to open themselves to the Lord so that He can fill them. Then with each of them He would come out in His own way. All the manifestations would be of the Lord, but the manifestations would be different. Again I say, the growth of life is simply the increase, expanding, and spreading of Christ. It is not anything with only a form.
There is also a difference between the growth of life and zeal in service. Acts 22:3 proves that zeal is something different from Christ as life. Paul said of himself that before he received Christ, he was “trained at the feet of Gamaliel, according to the strictness of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, even as you all are today.” Paul was without Christ, yet he was zealous. Nearly all the Jews at that time were zealous without Christ. What then is the real zeal? It is the burning of Christ. When we open to Christ and let Him come in to fill us, He is the burning One. Not only will He flow out of us, but He will burn us and cause us to be burning to burn others. The more we contact Him and are filled with Him, the more we are burned, and the more we will be burning.
The real zeal comes not from the soul but from the spirit, as Romans 12:11 says, “Do not be slothful in zeal, but be burning in spirit, serving the Lord.” How can we be burning in spirit? This requires that we open to the Lord from the depths of our being, from our spirit, and let the Lord fill us from within. Then we will be burned in the spirit, and we will be zealous, fervent, in the spirit.
We must learn how to differentiate between a person that is merely fervent and zealous in the service to God from a person who is filled with Christ, burned by Christ, and burning in spirit. This zeal, this burning, must be Christ Himself. Again, this is the real growth of life. We may have Christ as life within but not have the growth of life. If we do have the growth of life, we will be burned by Him, and we will become burning. This is the real zeal for service.
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