Suppose we have two brothers together. How many lives do they have? Some may say that they have two, others may say they have three. But I do not agree. They only have one life, and Christ is that very life. We all have the same life, because we all have Christ within us. But to have one life is one thing. To live by this life is another matter. The problem is that although we have one life, we live by another life. We all have one life, but we all live by different lives. Instead of living by Christ as our life, we live by our own life. We may have done nothing wrong. In fact, we may have lived the whole day without doing one wrong thing. But can we say that for the whole day we lived by Christ? There is a big difference.
The Lord Jesus said, “He that eats me, even he shall live by me.” This is not a standard of good nor a regulation of doing everything right. The standard and the regulation are just Christ. Good should not be our standard; neither should right be our regulation. Our standard and regulation must be the Lord Jesus Himself. Why do you not go to the movies? Is it because it is wrong? If this is the reason you do not go, I am afraid that you do not know how to live by Christ. The proper reason should be that the Lord Jesus does not wish to go. If He does not go, then I do not go. The reason we do not do something should never be because it is bad. It must be because the Lord Jesus does not do it. We should be one with Him, and we should live by Him.
The real love is to live by the person you love. If we love the Lord Jesus, we should not try to do anything for Him. We should just live by Him. To live by Him is the real love. All wives know that it is much easier to do things for their husband than to live by their husband. They all know that to live by their husband will surely put them to the cross. Any wife can do good for her husband, but I am afraid that there is not one wife that really lives by her husband. To do things for your husband is one thing, but to take him as your person is another.
Many times I have told the Lord Jesus that I would do anything for Him. But He would say, “I know that you will do things for Me, but you will not take Me as your person. You like to do things for Me, but you do not like to live by Me.” To do things for the Lord is easy, but to live by Him is not so easy. To help a brother for the Lord’s sake is easy, but to go to that brother living by the Lord is not so easy. To do things for the Lord requires no denial of the self, but to live by the Lord requires putting the self aside. Whenever we are going to contact a brother or a sister we must be abiding in the Lord and let Him abide in us. For without Christ we can do nothing. The problem is that without Christ we can do everything. We can talk without Christ. We can fellowship without Christ. We can do many things without Christ. But as far as God is concerned, what we do without Christ is nothing.
The indwelling of Christ is a life, not a doctrine. This indwelling Christ must become our daily life. The problem is that we all have been educated. We have been taught by all the religious teaching. We know all about the baptism, and we know the doctrine of the indwelling Christ. But who is living by Christ? There is the real need to practice the indwelling of Christ. This means that whatever we do, we must not do by ourselves, but by the Christ who lives in us. We must be able to say, “Lord Jesus, it is not me doing this, it is You. You are the One who indwells me, and Your indwelling must be my daily life.”
The basic issues of the Gospels of Matthew and John are really simple. Matthew tells us to baptize into the name of the Triune God, and the Lord Jesus is with us all the days until the completion of the age. Then John tells us how the Lord breathed into His disciples. That is all. One book tells us that we have all been baptized into Him. The other tells us that He has breathed Himself into us. Now He is living within us. Matthew says that we are in Him, and John says that He is in us. It is so simple. Yet we stray from the simplicity of Christ.
We all have to come back again and again. Many times a day, hour after hour, we must come back to this one point that we are in Him, and He is living within us. He must be our daily Christ. When we practice this, we will see that our daily life will be enriched by the indwelling of Christ. Then our daily life will become so living and new. Whenever we come together in the meetings, we will always have something to share of Him because we will be so rich, so new, so fresh, and so one with the Lord in our spirit. His indwelling life will become our daily life.