Although we may have been Christians for many years, we have mostly known Christ only as the Word. We have not enjoyed Him sufficiently as the life-giving Spirit. One kind of seeking believer studies to know Christ as the Word, making notes in his Bible, highlighting his Bible with different colors, and exercising his mind in concordances, lexicons, dictionaries, and expositions. Many times in dealing with Christ, we have exercised only our mind to study in this way.
Another kind of Christian says that this is too dead. This second kind of Christian seeks the Pentecostal experiences, possibly even manufacturing something in a man-made way. All of a sudden something seems to come upon him from the heavens, and he jumps, laughs, rolls, and changes his voice to speak in tongues.
However, not many Christians know the way of the inner life. Christ first was the Word, but after His crucifixion and resurrection, He became and still is the life-giving Spirit who is dwelling in our spirit. Now we have to exercise our human spirit as the organ with which to contact Him, experience Him, and enjoy Him in a living and inward way. The New Testament does not correspond to the way of the fundamentalists, those who only study the Word, nor to the Pentecostals, those who only seek the Pentecostal experiences. Rather, the New Testament corresponds to those who realize and enjoy that Christ today is the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit. We must know Him in the way revealed by 2 Timothy 4:22: “The Lord be with your spirit.” We must know how to exercise our spirit to realize, enjoy, and experience Him. I do not say that we do not need the fundamental knowledge or the proper gifts. We need these. However, the fundamental knowledge and the proper gifts are for Christians to know Christ as the life-giving Spirit and experience Him by exercising their spirit to contact Him.
In the four Gospels, Christ was the Word to reveal God to us, and in the Acts and the Epistles, Christ is the life-giving Spirit for us to enjoy, contact, and experience. Therefore, we all have to know how to deal with the Word and with the Spirit. Some may know how to deal with the Word, but not in an adequate way. However, I am more concerned that many do not know how to deal with the Spirit.
We have the Bible as the Word of God, and we also have the Holy Spirit within us. These two items are the wealth, the property, that we inherit from God. If you ask me, “Brother Lee, what do you have?”, I would say that I have only these two items—the Bible in my hand and the Holy Spirit in my spirit. A good Christian is one who knows how to deal with the Word and with the Spirit. In these days we have realized that we need a proper way to meet. In order to have a proper meeting, however, we need to have a proper Christian life. A proper meeting is the corporate expression and testimony of our Christian life. Moreover, in order to have a proper Christian life, we need to know how to deal with Christ as the Word and as the life-giving Spirit day by day. Until we know how to deal with Christ as the Word and the living, indwelling Spirit in an adequate way, we are not able to have a proper Christian life and a proper meeting life.