The Christian daily life is for the church life. We Christians live Christ as our daily life for the church testimony. The church as Christ’s Body is Christ Himself (1 Cor. 12:12). Anyone’s body is himself. If we do not have a body, we do not have an expression. Our body is our being’s expression. As the members of the Body of Christ, the church, we should live Christ. If we do not live Christ, we are His members in name, but not in practicality. The matter of living Christ has not been taken into our practice. Even many elders do not practice to live Christ. Many elders practice behaving. They try not to make a mistake. They try not to be wrong and always to be right. They are always correcting themselves. Humanly speaking, this is very good but there is no Christ in their behavior.
Many of our church meetings are cold, old, poor, and dead because many of the saints are behaving believers. They behave well, but they do not live Christ as their daily life. Thus, among them there is no real church life. The church is just a name with them, and the church life is just a term with them. Many of the saints try to do the right things, and many of the leading ones in the local churches practice behaving instead of living Christ as the reality of their daily life. Many leading ones are afraid of doing anything wrong or of making a mistake. They feel that as long as they are right and correct, everything is okay. But we need to realize that good behavior in itself is not okay. If all of us are merely good people who behave well, then the church becomes a social club. In the church life we should practice Christ, not behavior. Christ must be our life, our essence, our being, our living, our existing, and our everything. We should practice Christ all the time. Christ can never be wrong. He is always good. But the point in living Christ is not to be right, but to express Christ. What we should express is not a certain kind of behavior or character. For the proper church life we need to express Christ Himself. The proper church life depends upon the church meeting in a living way with everybody living Christ.
The church meetings are the exhibitions of the Christian daily life. Whenever we come together, we have an exhibition. We do not come together to exhibit our ability, our wisdom, our behavior, our goodness, or our morality. We come together to exhibit Christ. If we do not live Christ daily, we have no Christ to exhibit in the church meetings. In 1961 when I was in Taipei, I wrote the hymn that says, “Let us exhibit Christ” (Hymns, #864). A few years later this hymn was translated into English, and it helped many of the saints. But the saints did not receive the help from this hymn to live Christ in their daily life (see verses 2 and 3). It mostly helped them to practice living Christ in the meetings. Formerly, they stood up in the meetings to say something to express their goodness, their kindness, their humility, or their patience. Then they learned to speak something of Christ, and not of themselves, in the meetings. Thus, the meetings changed, yet that change could not last long. For the long run, if we do not experience Christ daily, we will have nothing to say of Christ. If we do not live Christ in our daily life, we will become empty. Then we will only be able to repeat old stories in the church meetings. If we only exercise when we come together to meet, there may be a little expression of Christ in the church meeting, but no expression of Christ in our daily life. We may be good people without much of Christ in our daily living. Thus, when we come to the meeting, we are still poor in the experience of Christ.
Now that we are going to set up home meetings with new believers, we must be persons living Christ all day. What we are we minister to people, and what we live we minister to people. We must preach what we live and teach what we are by having Christ. Otherwise, we are just actors. An actor is one who does not live in the way that he acts in the theater. We should not be actors in the church meetings. Whatever we do must be the same as what we live in our daily life. In our daily life we live Christ, so we come to the meeting and still exhibit Christ. Then the meeting is a genuine exhibition of Christ.
When you come to the new believers to meet with them as a person full of Christ, spontaneously whatever you say, pray, or sing expresses Christ. Even your smile will express Christ and give people the impression that you are a man of Christ. You will be found by the new believers in Christ. Paul said that he was seeking to be found in Christ (Phil. 3:9), and we need to be found by others in Christ. To be found in Christ is not a matter of outward behavior. You may try to behave like a person in Christ, but this resembles a monkey behaving like a man. It is not genuine. We must live Christ every moment in every small detail. Then Christ will be constituted into our being to be our spiritual constitution. People will find us in Christ in whatever we say or do. Our being such persons will help the new believers to have living home meetings. To hold a home meeting is not a matter of just bringing techniques to the new ones, of teaching them how to call a hymn, sing a hymn, read the Bible, or give a testimony. The home meeting is to exhibit what we are in our daily life. We must live Christ in our daily life. We must be men in Christ, men always found by people in Christ. Then our meeting will be full of Christ. Only Christ is the living One, and only He can make a meeting alive, full of life. We must stress living Christ and practice to live Christ.