We are in the Lord’s recovery. Because we are in His recovery, we must know what the word recovery means. To be recovered is to be brought back by the Lord to the beginning. At the beginning, there was the Lord Himself and the pure, living Word. Christianity, however, has deviated both from the Lord and from the living Word and has become a religion of doctrine. In Christianity there is very little of the Lord Himself. Most Christians have the Lord Jesus only as their Redeemer and Savior; they do not have Christ as their everything. Some have Christ in name, and others have Christ in doctrine; however, they do not have Christ in His all-inclusiveness and the complete, pure, living Word. Instead, they have the so-called creeds that cover only certain parts of the Bible. We in the Lord’s recovery do not care for creeds; we care only to follow the whole Bible. No matter how good or how accurate a creed may be, it can never contain the entire Scripture. If you devote your attention to creeds rather than to the Bible, you will certainly be lacking something.
Fifty years ago, we saw that we had to come back to the beginning, to the Lord Himself and not to any kind of religion, including the religion of Christianity. Furthermore, we saw that we had to return to the whole Bible, not just to part of it. For this reason, we have never followed anything blindly. Anything we observed in Christianity, we brought to the Lord, and we prayed about it. Then we considered it in the light of the Bible to see whether or not it corresponded to the Scriptures. We studied everything carefully and thoroughly according to the pure, complete, living Word of the Bible.
At the time of Martin Luther, the majority of the so-called Christians in the historic church had lost the Lord Himself and had been deprived of the Bible. Therefore, the Lord raised up Martin Luther and brought him back to Himself and to the Scriptures. In the Bible Luther saw the matter of justification by faith, which was absolutely a contrast to the teaching of Catholicism. Luther fought for justification by faith, the battle was won, and justification by faith was firmly established.
However, that was just the beginning of the Lord’s recovery. What about the practice of the church life? More than four hundred years have passed since the time of Martin Luther. Although justification by faith was recovered long ago, the church life has not yet been fully recovered. The reason for this is that the church life comes out of the experience of Christ. It does not take much experience to be justified by faith. As long as we believe in Jesus Christ, we are justified. But to have the church life, we need the experience of Christ. The eating of the manna signifies the experience of Christ. As we have seen, the tabernacle comes out of the eating of the manna, that is, out of the experience of Christ. Likewise, the temple issues out of the enjoyment of the rich produce of the good land. This strongly indicates that the experience of Christ issues in the church life.
The reason the church life has not been practiced throughout the centuries is that Christians have had mainly the doctrine of Christ; they have had very little of the experience of Christ. Whenever we experience Christ, we spontaneously have the desire for the church life. If you enjoy and experience Christ in the morning, you will desire to meet with other Christians in the evening. The enjoyment of Christ will bring you to the church life. When I speak of the experience of Christ, I refer to the eating of Christ, the enjoyment of Christ as our food and our life supply, the partaking of Christ as our daily enjoyment. Everyone who enjoys Christ and eats Him desires to attend the meetings of the church. Whenever I experience Christ, this experience encourages me and even inwardly compels me to seek the church life.
Many Christians have no interest in the church life because they have merely a mental doctrine of the three Persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Although they hold to their doctrine, they have no experience of the Triune God. To them, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are very remote. While some of them hold the Triune God as a doctrine, they continue to go to movies, to drink, and to dance. Apparently, their doctrine has no effect on their living. But when they hear of someone speaking of the Son and the Spirit in a way that differs from their concept, they rise up to defend the traditional teaching of the Trinity. What a pitiful situation! We, on the contrary, want to have a Father whom we can experience, a Son who is our life supply and daily enjoyment, and a Spirit who transforms us and changes our entire being. If we have merely the doctrine of the Trinity, we shall not sense our need for the church life. But if we experience the Triune God, we shall immediately become aware of our need for the church life.
We in the Lord’s recovery are burdened for the practice of the church life. We are not in tradition and we do not care for tradition. We care for the living Lord and the living Word. In the living Word, we see the all-inclusive Christ. The all-inclusive Christ is not for doctrine. He is for our enjoyment so that we can have the proper church life. Therefore, for the sake of the church life, we need to see who Christ is and what Christ is.