According to common understanding, faith means to believe, to depend on, and to trust in, but in the New Testament, faith means to receive. This differs from the common understanding of faith. The Bible says, “As many as received Him,...to those who believe into His name” (John 1:12). To believe in Jesus is not merely to believe that He exists and that He is truly the Savior who was crucified to accomplish redemption for us; it is not merely to believe and be convinced of these facts. This type of believing or being convinced is inadequate. This is not the faith referred to in the Bible. The faith referred to in the Bible is to receive, that is, to receive the One in whom we believe into us, to receive the facts that we believe into us. When we believe, we receive Jesus Christ, and we also receive the redemption that He accomplished for us on the cross. Therefore, according to the Bible, faith means to receive. We believe and are convinced because we have received.
This illustration shows that we should not understand the words in the Bible merely according to their common meaning. After understanding what is written, we still need to go further to see the revelation in the Bible. Let us now apply this principle to the phrase the fullness of God.
In everyday language the words riches and fullness can be similar in meaning. For example, if a person has plenty of food in his house, we would say that his house is rich in food or full of food. In our understanding riches and fullness are more or less the same.
The book of Ephesians has only six chapters, but it contains the words riches and fullness. Riches is used in 3:8, which speaks of “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” and fullness is used in 1:23, which speaks of “His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all.” In Greek riches and fullness are two different words. However, because of the similarity of these two words in Chinese, almost everyone who reads the Bible in Chinese understands fullness as riches. But fullness and riches are two different things. I hope that this fellowship will help us to see this matter clearly.
Some of you may wonder what my intention is in speaking to you concerning these particular and profound words. My intention is to release the profound revelation in the Bible. It is a pity that Christianity releases only ordinary doctrines to people instead of the fundamental and profound revelation and truth in the Bible. When I was young, I studied in a Christian school run by Americans, and every Lord’s Day we had to dress neatly and walk to the chapel for Sunday service. In those days the Chinese people had the impression that Christianity spoke only concerning matters such as “Jesus loves me this I know,” going to heaven, and going to hell. This aroused much disgust among the Chinese because they had a long history of hearing about heaven and hell, and therefore, they did not need Western missionaries to speak to them about these things in imperfect Mandarin.
I am a fourth generation Christian in my family. Hence, the things they taught me in school were fairly clear. When I was twelve or thirteen years old, I heard a British missionary say that the Bible speaks about benevolence, justice, morality, women’s submission, and virtues in nearly the same way as the philosophy of China’s Confucius and Mencius. After hearing this, I was disgusted and thought that if this was the case, the Chinese did not need the missionaries to teach them; rather, the Chinese should be the ones teaching the missionaries. Therefore, I became annoyed with Christianity, and by the time I was about fifteen years old, I no longer went to the chapel. I felt that the teachings of the Chinese philosophers were more profound than the preaching of the Western missionaries. During those few years I stayed away from Christianity and did not attend any of their meetings.