In herself and by herself, no wife can submit according to the apostle's teaching. The apostle's teaching of submission starts from being filled in our spirit (Eph. 5:18). To be filled in spirit with Christ causes us to overflow with Christ in speaking, singing, psalming, and giving thanks to God (vv. 19-20) and also causes us to subject ourselves to one another (v. 21). Submission comes out of being filled in spirit. This is the invisible submission.

I can testify that many missionaries who went to China understood the Bible merely in an outward, natural sense. Some of them told the Chinese that the Bible teaches the same thing as Confucius. Confucius told people to honor their parents, and the Bible says the same thing. As a young student, I said to myself that there was no need for these missionaries to come to China. We had the teachings of Confucius for years, and we did not need the same ethical teachings.

In order to be brought out of the natural concept in reading the Bible, we need a trance. Acts 10 says that one day when Peter was praying on the housetop, a trance came upon him (vv. 9-10). All of a sudden, he was in a trance. He was transferred to another sphere. In this other sphere, he saw some things, and these things were altogether invisible to the human eyes.

Do you believe the human mind can understand that our God, the Father, chose us before the foundation of the world? Long before we were born, God chose us for holiness and put a mark upon us for sonship. Do you believe that the natural mind, no matter how intelligent, understands what it is to be sanctified unto God and what it is to be made sons of God who enjoy the divine sonship? Many readers of Ephesians 1 have their natural concept about what it means to be holy as God is. Confucius also taught people to be holy, and he is considered as a holy teacher to the Chinese. But this holiness and the Bible's holiness are two different things.

The Lord Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again, but Nicodemus understood this in a physical sense. He wondered how he could go back into his mother's womb and be born again. The Lord Jesus, of course, meant something else. He was not speaking of being born of our parents with our natural life but of being born of the Spirit with the divine life. These are two absolutely different things.

When I was young, I studied the Bible and understood it nearly ninety percent according to the natural concept. It took me many years to gradually have all of my natural concepts washed away. I pointed out previously that I have expounded Ephesians many times. Thirty-eight years ago, in 1953, I expounded Ephesians in a detailed study during a training I conducted in Taipei, Taiwan for four months. However, I consider these messages today to be the top study of Ephesians. I believe that this time my natural man has been thoroughly purged of all the old concepts. All of my former understanding has been purged away with the best "detergent."

This present study of Ephesians is altogether new. Our sharing on Ephesians in the past was not wrong, but it still was somewhat in the visible view. Today everything we are sharing concerning the Body of Christ is invisible and intrinsic. This is why I had the burden to pray the prayer I offered to the Lord at the beginning of this message. We need to pray, "Lord, we ask You to give us a trance. For years we have been in the sphere of understanding Your holy Word in our natural concept and in the natural view. We need a trance that transfers us out of the natural concept into another sphere so that we can see the things which man in his natural understanding cannot see."