The Bible reveals that God is our enjoyment and that all the riches of God, what God is in His fullness, are the riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8, 19b). All the fullness of God is embodied in Christ (Col. 1:19) and becomes the items of the riches of Christ. The reality of Christ is the Spirit, who is the Spirit of reality (John 14:17), and all that Christ is, that is, all the riches of Christ, are revealed in the Word (1:1). Therefore, in order to know the riches of Christ, we have to know the Word, which is the revelation of all that Christ is. Moreover, the place in which we realize the Triune God is our human spirit (3:6). In order to realize Christ and always enjoy Him, we have to exercise our spirit. There is no other way to enjoy Him, and there is no other organ with which we can enjoy Him. We have to exercise our spirit to realize all that God is in Christ through the Holy Spirit and as revealed in the Word. These five items— God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Word, and our spirit—are the factors of our enjoyment of God.
Christ is first revealed as the Word, and in His resurrection He was transferred from the Word into the Spirit. Therefore, our experience of Christ is an experience of constantly transferring the word into the Spirit. John 6:63 is a great verse in the Bible. It says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The word is spirit, and the Spirit is life. The word is life to us only when it is transferred into the Spirit. We do not have the word of life directly. We need a step in between; that is, the word must be spirit in order to be life to us. Without this step, the word is mere knowledge to us. In order to know the Scriptures and to know life, we must be familiar with and very clear about all these principles. Then we will have the keys to open the Word. Otherwise, no matter how many times we read the Word, we will read it in a blind and foolish way, and it will never be clear to us.
The four Gospels tell us that the Lord Jesus came as the Word. In the beginning, in eternity before the foundation of the world, He was the Word, and in time He came in incarnation (John 1:1, 14). Therefore, the New Testament begins with Christ as the Word. Then at the end of the Gospel of John Christ became the Spirit as the breath of life (20:22). This Gospel begins with the Word and ends with the Spirit. The Word and the Spirit are not two persons; they are one person with two aspects. First He was the Word, and eventually He became the Spirit. With the help of the Epistles we can realize who this Spirit is. The proper term used for this Spirit is the “life-giving Spirit.” First Corinthians 15:45b says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” Again we see that the Bible is opened by this one principle, that the Word becomes the Spirit as life. Christ is the Word, Christ has become the Spirit, and this Spirit is the life-giving Spirit.
It is by the Word through the Spirit that Christ is life to us and imparts life to us. According to the letter of the Bible, many Christians know that Christ is life, but not many can say how Christ can be life to us practically. We must be clear that Christ is life to us because He is the Word who became the Spirit who gives life. Now in order to receive, realize, and experience Christ as our life, we must know the Word and how to transfer the Word into the life-giving Spirit. This is the way to take Christ as life.
From my youth I heard Christian teachers say that the word of the Bible is life. However, they did not tell me how the black and white printed words of the Bible can be life. The answer is that the word in black and white must be transferred into the Spirit. If the word is merely in letters, it is not life; it is mere knowledge that kills (2 Cor. 3:6). It is when the word is transferred into the Spirit that it becomes life, because it is not the words directly but the Spirit who gives life.