We all must learn to meet with the resurrected Christ, not just with the Bible, not just with the hymn book, not just with some chairs and a piano, not just with the saints.
What kind of Christ is the resurrected Christ? It is so clear that He is the very Christ who is living in the Spirit. The resurrected Christ is the living Christ in the Spirit; in fact, He is just the life-giving Spirit. The main thing that this resurrected Christ did in this kind of meeting was to breathe into His disciples and say to them, “Receive ye the Holy Breath” (John 20:22). It is also in this kind of meeting that Christ speaks and asks of us something to eat and offers us something to eat. This is the first kind of meeting, the meeting with the resurrected Christ, the life-giving Christ, the Christ who is so living in the Spirit.
Where is this Christ today? Yes, in our spirit. We all have to say, Hallelujah! This Christ is within us! This is the resurrected Christ, not the ascended Christ. This is the Christ who is so living as the Spirit within us, not the One who is so powerful in the heavens.
By what way do we meet with this Christ? Be sure that with this Christ we meet without any forms. We may meet Him with all the doors shut, or we may meet Him on the mountain top. It is interesting that there is no name given to this mountain. Any mountain will do to meet the resurrected Christ—as long as there is a mountain, that is sufficient. And while we are backslidden at the seashore we may still meet Him there. When we are in the room, He is there; when we get to the mountain top, He is there; when we are backslidden at the sea, He is also there. You may say, “It is rather difficult to remain here for the Lord’s testimony; let us go back to the world.” Even so, when you go, He goes with you. You can never get rid of Christ; you have really got involved. Jesus is the resurrected One, and now He is in you. He is the life-giving Spirit; He is the Spirit that gives life within you all the time. So what kind of forms can we have? My heart is bursting to tell you that if we set up any kind of forms, it is a sinful offense to the Lord. We cannot possibly have any forms when we meet with the resurrected Christ.
The disciples were meeting in fear, the doors were shut, and suddenly there was Jesus standing in their midst saying, “Peace be unto you.” “Who is this?” they might have exclaimed. Then they realized it was the Lord, and they were all so glad. Jesus breathed upon them, and after breathing, He just gave them a short message, a very short message (John 20:19-23). I do believe if we were there, we would say, “Lord Jesus, please sit down and give us a long message just as You did in the sermon on the mount—three chapters, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Or speak to us as you did on the night before You were betrayed in John 14, 15, and 16, followed by a long prayer as in John 17.” But the Lord just spoke a few words. Then do you think He said, “Now the meeting is dismissed. You go home, and I’ll go back to heaven”? No, it was not like this. Read the record: the Lord Jesus, just as He came, suddenly disappeared. He did not come in by knocking: He did not enter in a formal way. And He did not give them a long message. He did something very extraordinary—He breathed upon them. And then He disappeared. There was no time limit—I doubt if they had a clock there. I doubt if they had any special arrangement for their seats. There was absolutely no form. But, I tell you, just from that short time of meeting with the Lord Jesus and being breathed upon by Him, everybody was satisfied. There was just a short visitation, just a little doing, a little breathing, a short message of two or three sentences, and complete satisfaction. They did not call a hymn, nor did they ask brother so and so to offer a prayer, etc. It was a living meeting with a living Christ.
We are still very much under the influence of degraded Christianity. We just need the resurrected Christ, the living Christ, the Christ whom nothing can hold. Even death, the most powerful force in this universe, cannot hold Him. He is the resurrected Christ with the resurrection life. He is meeting now with us, and this is the best way for us to meet. How should we meet? We should meet with the Christ who is the living Spirit; we should meet with the living Christ without any forms.
In the next meeting of the disciples, Jesus suddenly appeared again (John 20:26-29). There is no record telling us how He came in—He was just there. Do not think that before that time He was not there. He was there all the time. The only difference was that sometimes He appeared and sometimes He disappeared. But whether He appeared or disappeared, He was always with them. Our physical eyes today cannot see Jesus, but we must believe that the Lord Jesus is right here with us. And He is within us. We are not meeting with an ascended Christ; we are meeting with a resurrected Christ. When they arrived at the mountain in Galilee, Jesus was there. When they backslid to the sea to fish, Jesus was there. Before they reached the mountain, where do you suppose Jesus was? Yes, He was within them. Before He appeared to them on the seashore, where was He? He was within them. You see, all the time the Lord Jesus was within them.
We all must realize that whenever we as the disciples of Christ come together, we come with Jesus, we bring Him with us. We come to meet with Him—not just with a Bible, a hymn book, or with the brothers and sisters, but with the living Christ, the resurrected One, the life-giving Spirit. We all must pray that no one would come to our meetings any more just with a Bible and hymn book. All those who come must come with a full realization that they are coming with the living Christ. We are coming to meet with Christ, the very Christ who breathes Himself into us in all our meetings and the very Christ who speaks to us, even today. We meet to breathe Him in, to speak for Him and let Him speak through us, and to offer Him something for His satisfaction and take something from Him for our satisfaction. It may be just a short meeting, but we will be fully satisfied.
Never forget that these meetings with His disciples after His resurrection were Christ’s first meetings with the whole Christian church. This must be the example, and we must heed the principles from these meetings, the first Christian meetings mentioned in the Bible.
In the past years in the local churches we have seen some behavior in the meetings which has not been so becoming. But we dare not do anything. Why? Because we are aware of the background, the dead religion, and we shrink from regulating things and forming another kind of meeting. We would rather tolerate some confusion than any kind of religion. The Lord be merciful to us. He is going to recover all things. He did not go to the temple to meet His disciples; He went to some shut up room, He went to a mountain in Galilee. He did not even notify His disciples that He would be waiting on the seashore for them—He just went. All the meetings with the resurrected Christ were absolutely outside of religion.