In recent months, the Lord has arranged for me to visit many groups of Christians of various backgrounds. After all these visits, I realize that believers today have a need for the real knowledge and experience of the inner life, a life which is Christ Himself. According to my realization, exceedingly few brothers and sisters know what life is, fewer have the real experience of life, and nearly no one knows the right way to experience the inner life. In all of my recent travel across the United States, this has been my unique impression.
I have also discovered that it is rather difficult to help Christians know the proper way to experience the inner life. Although we may talk about the inner life and read articles about it, it is very hard for us to realize the proper way to experience the inner life. By knowledge, I do not mean knowledge in a general way, which is very easy to attain. For example, we may know very clearly that Christ is life and that what we need is not knowledge but life. We may furthermore know that the life we are discussing is not outward but inward, that is, the inner life. Such a superficial knowledge may be common to many of us, but the real meaning of knowing Christ as our inner life is a mystery to many believers. We may know the words, but we very well may not know the proper way to experience Christ as the inner life. It is relatively easy to receive spiritual gifts, but it is very difficult to bring a brother or sister to know the proper way to experience the inner life. As we progress through these chapters, let us pray to receive a definite and much needed vision by which we can both see and experience the central matter of the Christian faith, the Scriptures, and the Christian life—Christ as our inner life.
God’s desire and ultimate intention is to work Himself into us so that we may express Him and represent Him. However, there is only one way that this can be accomplished: God must come into us to be our life. Today there is a great need for Christians to see that God’s intention is to make Christ life to us. We are vessels, containers, to contain God, and God is the content that should come into us. If God is going to be our content, He must be life to us. The life that we possess through our natural birth from our parents is not the real life. That life is but a figure, a shadow, that points to the real life, which is God Himself in Christ as the Spirit.
Let us use the illustration of a glove to clarify this point. Although a glove has fingers, its fingers are not real fingers. Real fingers are the fingers of a hand, not the fingers of a glove. Even if a glove has many fingers, those fingers are empty. In the same way, the life with which we were born physically is not the real life; it is but a vessel to contain the real life, which is God Himself in Christ as the Spirit. This is why we need to be born again (John 3:3, 7). We do not need to be born again simply because our human life is sinful. Even if our human life were not sinful, we would still need to be born again. This is because it is not enough that we have the human life; we need the divine life. As human beings, we already have the human life. Now, as those who are fashioned by God to contain Him, we need the divine life, which is God Himself. The ultimate goal of God’s salvation is that we take God as our life. Although this is a fact, if we ask most Christians what the ultimate goal of God’s salvation is or why God saved us, we will realize that not many are clear concerning this. We must all realize that God saved us for a purpose. This purpose is that we would take Him as our life. God—the almighty, infinite, omnipotent God—intends and even desires to come into us as life to live in us.
Hence, there are a number of passages in the Scriptures that present this truth. Galatians 2:20 says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” The phrase Christ who lives in me means simply that God is life to us. We know that Christ is the embodiment of God (John 1:1, 14; Col. 2:9). Consequently, if Christ lives in us, that means that God is life to us. The Lord Himself told us that He came that we may have life and may have life abundantly (John 10:10b). He also told us that as He lives because of the Father, we must live because of Him (6:57). The meaning of these verses is that God has come to be life to us. My burden is that in these days each of us would pray one thing: “O Lord, open my eyes that I may see one thing in a definite way—that You are my life.” We all must see that the Triune God is life to us. We must see this as God’s goal and as the central matter in the Christian life. The central matter in the Christian life is not the acquisition of holiness, power, or any other spiritual matter. The center of the Christian life is our having God in Christ as the Spirit living within us as our life.
This is not a matter that we can cover in a quick way. We all stand in great need of God opening our eyes to show us His desire. His desire is that He would live within us and that each of us would take Him as life. The unbelievers have missed the mark of God’s intention. They do not know God’s intention for either the universe or human beings. Not only have the unbelievers missed the mark, however; even we Christians do not know God’s desire, much less have a clear vision concerning it.
In God’s intention, He made man in a certain form yet without content. In God’s creation, man is simply a form, a vessel, a container. God intended that the content of this vessel be Himself as the divine life. God’s intention is therefore to make Himself one with man. First Corinthians 6:17 states this clearly: “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” When we believed into the Lord and were regenerated, God as life came into our human vessel, and we and the Lord became one spirit. Today our body is a vessel and our human life is our content. If the human life were not in our body, our body would be empty. In the same way that our body is a vessel meant to contain our physical life, so too is our entire being—body, soul, and spirit—a vessel that is meant to contain something. God intends that we be filled with Himself as life. Once we are filled with Himself as life, He intends that we live by Him. God’s salvation, on the one hand, is to recover us and cleanse us because we as created vessels have been damaged and dirtied by Satan, sin, and the fall. This, however, is not the positive side of God’s goal in saving us. God’s positive intention in His salvation is that after cleansing us He put Himself into us. Christ’s redemption and cleansing prepares us as vessels to receive God as life. God’s ultimate and positive intention in His salvation is to come into us as life.