The word “live” in this verse can be translated two ways according to Greek. It can be translated “have life,” or “live.” In Romans 1 it should be translated “have life,” while in Hebrews it should be translated “live.” Because Romans talks about sinners, “live” should be translated “shall have life by faith.” Hebrews is written to the believers, those who are saved and have eternal life; therefore, the more accurate translation is “live by faith.”
I have met many believers who have mentioned various spiritual problems. Of all of the spiritual problems, there is one that many people have difficultly overcoming. Many believers frequently wonder why at times they feel spiritually dry and tasteless, while at other times they are happy and excited. When they are happy and excited, even though they are not having the experience in the third heaven, it seems as if they are having a unique mountaintop experience. They wonder how they can overcome the dry life to remain all the time in a happy and excited condition. They wish that their whole life would be one of constant flowing and bubbling. If they could do this, they would be able to sing hallelujahs all their life. Many believers are seeking a solution to this problem.
Believers ordinarily refer to this type of living as “wave-like.” They live a fluctuating life. In their feelings, many Christians live a life that is sometimes on the mountaintop and sometimes in the valley. Sometimes they are on the top of the wave, and sometimes they are under the waterline. Sometimes they are high, and sometimes they are low. Almost every Christian feels that he is living a fluctuating life. Sometimes he feels very happy and will not be satisfied with only two hours of prayer. The more he testifies, the more he has to say, and the words come out like a river. When he listens to a message, he feels very interested and does not become tired at all. When he studies the Bible, he feels that God’s Word is as sweet as honey. But then sometimes, things seem to be completely different. He feels that praying is the same as not praying. Whether or not he prays does not seem to make much difference. The Bible seems to be letters of black and white only, and it is dry and tasteless. When he meets someone, he feels guilty if he does not testify, and so he reluctantly says a few words like, “If you believe in Jesus, you will have eternal life.” However, in his heart he feels uninspired and has nothing to say. Other things of the same nature are done halfheartedly. Sometimes he feels that it is only profitable to draw near to God and pray to Him and that no work is necessary. Yet at other times he feels that even this is too dry, and there is not much joy in drawing near to God. Since he feels obligated to draw near to God, however, he does it reluctantly.
We can compare this kind of Christian life to nature. Where there is a mountain, there must be a valley. Where there is a high wave, there is also a low wave. Because many Christians frequently have this kind of experience, they conclude that a fluctuating life is inevitable and that it is impossible to live a steady life. They think that this will be their experience until they die. There is another group of Christians who say that mountain and valley, high and low wave experiences are unnecessary and that the Christian experience of life can be steady and on a straight line. What I want to tell you is that it is not altogether right to say that a Christian must have fluctuating and wavy experiences, nor is it altogether right to say that a Christian’s experience must always be level and flat.
If we want to find out the principle of something, we have to combine the experiences of all kinds of people. Only by combining the spiritual experiences of all kinds of people can we come up with a common principle. For example, a person may study patients who have suffered from a certain illness. He will study the causes, symptoms, and results of many cases before he can draw a conclusion. If the hundreds or thousands of patients that are studied are found to have the same cause and same result, he can then draw a conclusion from what is common in all the cases. For this reason, we have to study how the highs and lows of a Christian life occur and how they develop before we can find out the proper principle.
A Christian begins his life from the time he is saved. Is a person sad when he is saved? No, he is very happy. When someone finds a treasure, he is happy. When someone tells you that believing in Jesus Christ will give you eternal life and that you will pass from death to life and never come under condemnation anymore, that is the happiest day of your life. But let me ask, can this happiness remain forever? No, after a while this happy feeling will go away. How long will the happiness last? It is not certain, and it differs from person to person. According to my knowledge, the happy feeling and great joy that one had at the time of salvation seldom lasts more than a few months. Generally speaking, after a month or two, the feeling goes away. With some, the feeling of joy from salvation is gone in only a matter of one or two weeks.
Let us use a horizontal line to illustrate the experiences of a Christian. Anything above this line is joy, and anything below this line is dryness. When some are saved, for the first few months they live in joy. But one morning, though they study the Bible, pray, and fellowship just as before, they feel that their joy is not as full as the day before. It has diminished. Some people are persecuted and ill-treated after they are saved. Others want to deal with their sins to the extent that they are willing to cut off their right arm after they are saved. Still others want to confess their sins to others and give up their sins after they are saved. At this time they are happy and consider it worthwhile to be saved because their happiness more than compensates for their loss. Of course, they should be happy when they are saved. Even God is happy that they are saved. But a few months later, they begin to lose their joy, or the joy is no longer as full as it was before. At the time of salvation, they loved to read the Bible. Even though they may not understand the meaning of the Bible, they are interested in reading it. Although there are many things that new believers do not understand about the Bible, they like to eat and do not think that it is too much to read more than a dozen chapters a day. At that time they feel very happy about praying. Although they cannot tell how many times God has answered their prayer, they still like to pray. They lock themselves up in a room for a few hours and jump up and down for joy. But when the joy is gone, they begin to feel sad. Temptation will come from two sides. On the one side, the enemy will come; Satan will tell them that they are backslidden and no longer saved. On the other side, they will think that they have committed some sins and have become fallen. Yet in spite of their searching, they cannot find out what sins they have committed. Now, they feel that everything has dried up.
However, this dryness does not last long. Sometimes it lasts for one or two weeks; sometimes it goes away in three to five days. Once the dryness goes away, the joy comes back. Formerly, their reading of the Bible and praying were such an effort and drag that it felt like trying to recite a forgotten passage. Now it seems that the fellowship with God is resumed. But how the recovery came about, they do not know. Now they are more careful to maintain their joy. They try their best to maintain the exciting joy. They are more careful in reading the Bible, praying, and testifying to others.
But not long after this, the joy is gone again. They wonder why today is not the same as the day before for they read the Bible, pray, and testify just the same. Why is there such a big difference between the two days? Why was there the joy yesterday but not today? Under such a condition, they even wonder what God is like and what Jesus Christ is like. They have fallen into a great error. They think that their spiritual power is gone and that they have become fallen. Although they pray, it is not done faithfully; although they read the Bible, they spend less time on it; and although they testify, they do so only reluctantly.
After a few days or several weeks, however, the joy strangely returns. Now they feel an interest in everything again. If they are not having the experience of the third heaven, they are, at least, having a mountaintop experience. But stranger than this is the fact that after a while, they revert to their former dry and tasteless condition. They begin to conclude that their spiritual life is one of ups and downs. If someone asks them about their spiritual life, they would say that their life is fluctuating. During the highs, they read the Bible, pray, and testify with interest and joy, and during the lows, they do the same things without any interest and in dryness. This is the fluctuating life.
I would like to consider the matter of this fluctuation, starting from the first joy we received at the time of salvation. If we can find the cause of the illness, we can find the cure. From the experience of many saved people, we can find a law that joy is greater at the beginning than at the end, while dryness is greater at the end than at the beginning. The joy becomes less intense (though deeper), and the time of joy becomes shorter. At the same time, the dryness becomes more intense and lasts longer (though shallower). Perhaps the first dryness lasts for three to five days; the second dryness for a week; the third for two weeks, and the fourth for perhaps a month. In other words, the second time around, the joy is less intense and shorter than the first, while the dryness is more intense and longer than the first. The period of dryness extends longer, and its intensity increases more. All believers have this kind of experience. Eventually, our dryness is more than our joy.
Can any Christian say that he has more joy today than on the day he was saved? We may feel sad in our hearts and feel that we have sinned or failed. We are not as joyful as when we were first saved. When we were first saved, it was like riding on a cloud or like standing on a mountaintop. We were bold to testify without fear, even on the street. We could read fifty to sixty chapters of the Bible a day and still feel that this was not sufficient. But today we feel that we are dragging our feet in everything we do, and we are reluctant to do anything.
Let me say that we have made a basic mistake. We have a big misconception concerning spiritual experiences; we think that the joyful times are the peak times of our spiritual life. But the dry times are not times of spiritual decline. Suppose I lost a watch. When I find the watch again, I will become very happy. After three to five days, my joy will not be as great as when I first found the watch. Perhaps after a few days, the joy will be completely gone. But this does not mean that I have lost my watch again. What has been lost is merely the joy of finding the watch. The same is true with our spiritual life. When we found the Savior, we were saved and could not help but rejoice. Not only did we rejoice from ourselves, God gave us joy as well. If someone did not have joy when he was saved, I doubt that he has found the Savior yet. But later the joy was lost. We may think that the things that we gained are lost. Actually, only the joy is lost; the things we gained are not lost. Let me ask: Has the Lord Jesus changed? No. Has God changed? No. Has the eternal life that God has given us been taken back? No. They were ours when we were excited about them. They are still ours when we feel so dry. It does not matter how excited we are or how dry we are. What we gained has not been lost; it is still there. This is why I say that there are no fluctuations in a Christian’s life and experience. (This does not include the case of those Christians who have sinned, fallen, or backslidden. Those are exceptions. What we are talking about are the normal conditions of Christians.)
God never changes, the work of the Lord Jesus never changes, and the Holy Spirit never changes. The eternal life that we have received is still there; it is never lost. What is lost is merely our initial joy. A young child may think that the sun is gone when it rains. He may go to his father and ask, “Where is the sun?” He may go up to the roof and find that the sun is not there. He may go to a nearby watchtower and find that the sun is not there. But the sun has not changed; it has merely been blocked by the dark clouds. Today our Sun has not changed; what has changed is our feelings. The sun in the sky has not changed at all. But there are dark clouds in the sky which block the sunlight. If we live in our feelings, our sky will always change, and there will always be the covering of the clouds. If we do not live in our feelings, there will be no change in our sky. We ought to live above the clouds of our feelings.
I have said that the intensity of joy decreases while the duration is shorter, and the intensity of dryness increases while the duration is longer. These are common phenomena of a Christian’s experience; they are not accidental. The experience of most Christians falls under this pattern. We can conclude that these things do not happen by accident. Since they do not happen by accident, there must be a hand behind everything. Whose hand? It must be God’s hand. He causes our joy to become less intense and its duration to become shorter. He causes our dryness to become more intense and its duration to become longer. (We are merely referring to the experiences of ordinary Christians; we are not talking about the experiences of abnormal or outstanding Christians.)
Abnormal Christians have sinned and become fallen. Of course they have no joy. Outstanding Christians have denied themselves from the beginning in a specific way and pursued after God in a specific way. Every time they go through some special dealing, they experience special joy. Every time they see God working in a special way, they experience special joy. Outstanding Christians and abnormal Christians are exceptions. What we are talking about are the normal Christians.