The main revelation of the Bible is the relationship between God and man. What this relationship should be also occupies very much of human thought. When man thinks of God, he thinks in terms of worshipping, fearing, and perhaps loving Him. God, in man’s concept, is far off in the heavens, dwelling in unapproachable majesty; the best mere man can do is to offer Him worship and try to please Him.
This natural concept is that man’s relationship with God is objective. Religion also promotes such a concept, whether that religion is Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Verses from the Bible can be used to support this idea of a God to be worshipped and revered from afar.
If we penetrate the heart of the Bible, however, we shall see that man’s relationship with God is to be a subjective one. God wants to come into us and become our life and nature. Then He wants us to become His living. Colossians 3:4 says “Christ our life.” Galatians 2:20 says, “Christ lives in me.” Philippians 1:21 says, “To me to live is Christ.” Since Christ is God, Paul was saying that for him to live was God.
God is our life. We are the living of God. God lives within us. To us to live is God. These four sentences are the center of the New Testament. If they are not our daily experience, we are not up to the standard.
When we speak of the subjective experience of God, we are touching something hard to grasp. How can it possibly be that God becomes our life? that we become His living? that He lives within us? that for us to live is God?
To help our understanding, the Bible uses pictures. Words alone are not so clear. It is hard to visualize a person’s looks, for example, by reading a description of him; a photograph, on the other hand, shows what the person looks like even if no words are used.
What Old Testament picture prefigures how the Lord Jesus shed His blood for us that God might pass over us in His judgment, and that He might become our life and be taken into us as food? As you probably all know, it is the Passover lamb in Exodus 12. What Old Testament type shows us that to be in the Lord Jesus is to be saved even through the waters of God’s judgment? Even those in the children’s meeting know that the answer is Noah’s ark.
Can you think of a picture that shows us that God is our life, that we are the living of God, that He lives within us, and that for us to live is God? There is such a picture! For over fifty years, however, I did not realize that such was the meaning of this picture.
There is the illustration in John 15, where the Lord Jesus told us that He is the vine and we are the branches. We are to abide in Him, and He will abide in us. To some extent this picture does show us that He lives in us, and that for us to live is He. However, this picture is more like a sketch than a photograph.
A most comprehensive picture is the golden lampstand, which is first mentioned in Exodus 25. There it stood in the tabernacle as a testimony for God. Zechariah 4 is the second mention. There the lampstand represented the true Israelites, who were also God’s testimony. The final mention, in Revelation 1, pictures the church as the golden lampstand and as the testimony of God.
You may have too shallow an understanding of what God’s testimony is. Do not think that standing up to speak for God makes you His testimony; that your good works, done to glorify Him, make you His testimony; that honoring your parents, or not arguing with others, means that you have a testimony of Him. These outward things are far beneath what His testimony is.
God’s testimony is a golden lampstand. It means that God comes into us to be our life and to cause us to become His living. He lives within us, and we live Him out.
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