In this message we want to continue our fellowship concerning living Christ.
The Bible, especially the Gospel of John, presents the divine and mysterious things in very simple words. John 14:19 says, “Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me; because I live, you shall live also.” The Lord Jesus spoke this word to let His disciples know that in resurrection He would be transfigured from His physical body of blood and flesh into the Spirit. In His resurrection He would live, and they would live also. This word itself is very clear, but the nature of our relationship with Christ is not so apparent from this word alone. This word spoken by the Lord implies the mingling of God and man.
The basic truth of the mingling of divinity with humanity is seen throughout the New Testament. Although some have condemned the use of the word mingle, the word mingle as defined by Webster’s Third International Dictionary gives an accurate description of our relationship with the Lord. It states that to mingle is “to bring or combine together or with something else so that the components remain distinguishable in the combination.”
Philippians 1:21 says, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” To say that we must live Christ is easy, and to understand this simple phrase is also easy, but for us to actually live Christ involves a great deal. To live Christ means that when Christ lives, we who believe into Him and who are now in Him also live. Christ lives, and we live also (John 14:19). This means that we live in Christ’s living and that He lives in our living. If we live in His living, His living will also be in our living. This is the mingled living of two lives. God and man live together. This mingled living is illustrated by the grafting of two trees. When a branch is grafted into another tree, the two live together as one. On the one hand, they are two, but on the other hand, they are one. They are one, yet their two natures remain distinct, and a third nature is not produced.
In 1935 as a young co-worker, I stayed together with another co-worker who was a few years older than I was. During our stay together, I committed many small offenses toward him, so I apologized to him quite often each day. After a number of days, when I went to apologize to him again, he said, “To apologize is good, but not to offend is better.” This disappointed me very much because I could not stop making offenses. One of my frequent offenses was to spill a few drops of water on his bed as I brought water from the rest room into our bedroom to wash myself. Actually, this was a very small thing, but according to my conscience, I had committed an offense, so I had to apologize. I practiced this according to the instruction I had received about keeping a conscience without offense toward God and man (Acts 24:16). I tried very much to practice this, but it was rather difficult. If I had been careless, I could have spilled a little water on the brother’s bed without being bothered, but that kind of careless living or behavior kills our fellowship with the Lord. Although I exercised to keep my conscience void of offense, I had not been fully helped to live Christ.
Through many years of experience, I have learned that the Christian life is more positive than merely keeping our conscience void of offenses. We Christians should keep a clean conscience, but the main point of our Christian life is to live Christ. To live Christ should be our goal. Whether our conscience is clean or not is secondary. Living Christ should be primary. All the troubles in our Christian life come because of our not living Christ.
To merely keep our conscience clean is to be in the realm of morality and ethics. The practice of keeping my conscience clean was a help, but it also became a snare. As I look back on those early experiences, I now realize that morality and ethics is not the Christian life. Today I would never stress only the matter of keeping your conscience without offense; rather, I would charge you to forget about all the other things and live Christ. To me to live is Christ. To live is not ethics or morality but Christ.
To a banker, to live is his money and the current interest rate. The interest rate is always on his mind, and he is always looking at the newspaper to find out what the current interest rate is. To a stockbroker, to live is the stock market. To the young, ambitious college students, to live is to get the highest degree in the best field. As a trainee in the training, you may think that to live is the training. Actually, our living should be Christ.
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