Love and obedience are two requirements for the operation of the law of life within us. If we are able to love and are willing to obey, the law of life will spontaneously operate in us and manifest its function. We must be clear that the life of God has two elements: one is death and the other is life. The element of death is produced out of the life of God that has passed through death. The Lord Jesus died on the cross and resurrected; although He dies no more, there is a divine mystery, one beyond our understanding, related to His death. When He passed through death, the element of death was added to His life. This element of death is a good element. We usually think of death as a bad thing. However, after the Lord passed through death, the element of His death was good. This can be compared to water that passes through a place with sulfur, causing the sulfur, a germ-killing element, to be added to it. Before the Lord passed through death, He did not have the element of death. After He passed through death, the element of death was in Him. This is a mystery. When we live in the life of the Lord, allowing the Lord’s life to take effect in us, the element of His death will spontaneously do a killing work in us.
More than twenty years ago, we read in Romans 6:11 concerning reckoning ourselves to be dead. But no matter how we reckoned, we could not reckon ourselves to be dead. Rather, the more we reckoned, the more we were alive. Eventually, the Lord opened our eyes to see that the death in Romans 6 can become a fact only through the law of life in Romans 8. In Romans 6:8 the matter of our having died with Christ is only a doctrine, a fact to show that Christ has already accomplished a mysterious death in which we also died. However, if we try to use our own effort to believe and reckon that we are dead, we will be ineffective and destined to fail.
Romans 7 is a supplementary word between chapter 6 and chapter 8. Chapter 8 shows that our co-death with Christ in chapter 6 can be a reality only through the law of the Spirit of life. When the law of life regulates and operates in us, the element of death in the divine life spontaneously functions to kill our self and our flesh. This is the same as taking medicine. The germ-killing element in medicine kills germs through the circulation of blood; germs are not killed by our “reckoning.” Our own effort cannot produce any effect; rather, there is an element in the medicine operating within us through the circulation of the blood which manifests the medicine’s effect. Regardless of our effort, medicine cannot manifest its effect without the circulation of the blood.
Medicine has a germ-killing element, but food has both a germ-killing element and a supplying element. The white blood cells and the red blood cells in our blood are for killing germs and for bringing in the supply. Similarly, when the Lord’s life operates in us, the death element of the cross in His life will have an effect on us, killing the natural man, the old creation, the self, and the flesh. At the same time, the element of resurrection in the Lord’s life will bring in a supply. When the Lord’s life operates in us, the element of death in His life kills all the negative things in us, and the element of resurrection supplies us with God.
In order to experience the power of the Lord’s death and resurrection, we need to live in the law of life and fellowship with the Lord continuously so that we can let the law of life, that is, the Spirit and the life of God, circulate and operate in us. When the law of life operates, it spontaneously kills and removes all the things that should not be in us, cleansing us. It also supplies us with the spiritual nutrients that we need. The circulation of the blood in our human body is the best illustration of this. We need to exercise regularly because exercise increases our circulation; when our circulation accelerates, more germs are killed, and more unclean things are removed. At the same time, the supply that we receive is richer.
Hence, we need to exercise more to live in the fellowship of life, pray more, meditate more, and open to the Lord more. The more spiritual exercise we have, the more the law of God’s life will circulate and operate in us. The more it operates, the more it kills and the more it supplies. The more it kills, the more the self will go; the more it supplies, the more God will be added. What is removed from us is our self, and what is added to us is Christ. The law of life operates within us in this way day by day, and the result is that little by little our natural man decreases and God increases. Our growth in the divine life depends on this operation, Christ being formed in us depends on this operation, and our transfiguration into the Lord’s likeness depends on this operation. The more this operation works within us, the greater the killing and the greater the supply; the more our self is removed, the more God is added.
Listening to messages a thousand or ten thousand times will not cause us to grow in life; only the operation of the law of life can cause us to grow. No matter how hard we study medicine or read books on health, we cannot remove sicknesses from our body. We need to take medicine so that our sicknesses can be removed and our body can be made healthy through the effect of the medicine and the circulation of the blood. Therefore, growth is not a matter of gaining knowledge by listening to messages, reading the Bible, or studying the truth; rather, it is a matter of the fellowship of life. It is worthless to have merely an outward training and pursuit without the fellowship of life inwardly. This is similar to saying that a man’s appearance needs to match his inner being. Neither a seemingly impressive appearance nor a sloppy appearance is as important as one’s inward content. If we do not have the fellowship of life inwardly, any outward change will be like the work of a mortician applying cosmetics to a lifeless person. Hence, the growth of life involves the fellowship of life inwardly so that we can have genuine growth and transformation outwardly.
We all know that outward things are rather simple to learn, but learning inward things requires one to spend much time, to pay the price, and to continuously care for the sense of the law of life. We must speak this burden unceasingly and take this as the center of our living, because there are too many children of God who have not seen this. Even those who have been trained may not necessarily see the fellowship of life. If a Christian has not seen this and has not touched the inner fellowship of life, whatever he does will be ultimately in vain. We need God to open our eyes and have mercy on us.
The power of the law of life within us is mainly to cause our heart to incline to God, to obey God, and to endeavor to do the works that God has prepared for us so that we can have a fresh and living service. On one hand, the result of the operation of the law of life is Christ being formed in us; on the other hand, it will make us wholly and absolutely the same as Christ outwardly. Christ being formed in us is a matter of our inward transformation; our being the same as He is outwardly is a matter of our outward transfiguration. One is the transformation of our inward nature, and the other is the transfiguration of our outward likeness.
Some may ask why God needs to be in the law of life in order to be our God. God becomes our God in the law of life because He desires that we have a living relationship with Him. He desires to be a living God within us and desires that we be His living people in Him. The relationship between Him and us, and us and Him, must be living and should not be merely in letter or regulations. This is the reason that God must be in the law of life in order to be our God.
Our God first came to be our life; then in this life He becomes our God. In other words, He first becomes our Father and then becomes our God. This is the reason that in the New Testament, particularly in the Epistles, the apostles addressed God mainly as “God the Father” or “our God and Father.” We first have the life of the Father; thus, we have a life relationship with Him. Later we have Him as our God. He becomes our Father so that we may have His life, and in this life He becomes our God.
The God in the Old Testament was God to man through regulations. Man only had to act according to these regulations in order for God to be God to man and for man to be His people. Today, however, God puts the law of His life in us and desires that we be related to Him through this law. He does not give us many regulations; He gives us only one regulation—to live in the law of life. This law of life within us will give us a sense. Our only responsibility is to live absolutely and genuinely in this sense; then spontaneously we will have and experience Him as the living God. At the same time, we can practically and livingly become those who serve God.
In 1947 we spoke for the first time in Shanghai concerning God being God to man in the law of life. It is true that God is our God, but if we cause the law of life to stop working in us, we will be people of God in name only, not in reality. An electric fan can be called an electric fan, but it is not an electric fan in reality if it stops turning. Likewise, if we do not let the law of life regulate and operate in us, God cannot be our God, and we cannot be His people. If we desire to be God’s people and let God be our God in reality, not merely in name, we must live in the law of life and let the law of life regulate us within.