We need to read the Bible again and again. This means that we need to know the written Word and be filled with it. Then we need to pray, “Lord, show me what You intend to speak in all the books of the New Testament.” If you pray like this, light will gradually come.
In order to have a more accurate understanding of the words in the New Testament, it is helpful to learn Greek. However, we should not think that to know the Bible it is sufficient to have an excellent knowledge of Greek. Someone may have a thorough knowledge of every word in the Greek New Testament, but still be spiritually blind and not know anything of what is revealed in the New Testament. Even if we have the knowledge of Greek, we still need heavenly enlightenment in order to see the divine revelation in the New Testament.
Today we are fighting against spiritual blindness. Many have doctoral degrees in Greek, but, spiritually speaking, they are utterly blind. They know the Greek New Testament in the way of scholarship, but they do not know what the Lord is speaking in the New Testament. No matter how many degrees we may have or how great our scholarship may be, we still need to humble ourselves and say, “Lord, I do not know anything. I am nothing, Lord. Show me Your revelation.” If you pray like this, the Lord’s revelation will come to you.
In the Gospels the Lord Jesus spent three and a half years with His disciples. During those years He was very patient with them. We may say that the Lord was “playing heavenly music” to His disciples; however, they were not able to appreciate it. We see this especially in the case of Peter.
Full of patience and sympathy, the Lord Jesus did what He could with Peter. In Matthew 16 Peter received a heavenly vision and declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). The Lord answered and said to him, “You are blessed, Simon Bar-jona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in the heavens” (v. 17). After the Lord spoke about the church and the kingdom, He went on to “show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised on the third day” (v. 21). But Peter began to rebuke Him saying, “God be merciful to You, Lord; this shall by no means happen to You!” (v. 22). The Lord then turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men” (v. 23).
We may feel sympathy for Peter as we read the account in Matthew 16. Although Peter was pitiful, the Lord Jesus did not let him go. Peter was not a “dropout” from the Lord’s “college.” As the chancellor of this college, the Lord Jesus patiently kept Peter with Him.
The Lord Jesus was patient even when Peter denied Him. On the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed, Peter said to Him, “If all shall be stumbled in You, I will never be stumbled” (Matt. 26:33). The Lord said to him, “Truly I say to you, that this night, before a cock crows, you will deny Me three times” (v. 34). Later Peter did deny the Lord three times. Nevertheless, the Lord was not disappointed, for Peter’s experience was part of the “college course.”
Eventually, Peter received the understanding of the heavenly music the Lord Jesus was “playing.” He received this understanding, not during the three and a half years he was with the Lord, but after the Lord had been transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit. When He was in the flesh, He was not altogether successful in teaching Peter, because He was not able to enter into him. He had, of course, a way to correct and adjust Peter, but no way to regenerate and recreate him and dwell in him. In other words, with Peter and the other disciples, the Lord Jesus did not have a way in His flesh to propagate Himself. For the Lord to propagate Himself is for Him to impart Himself into others as life.
The Lord Jesus knew when He was taking His disciples through their “college course” that it was necessary for Him to enter into them. Of course, as long as He was in the flesh, He was unable to be in the disciples. Therefore, in the Gospel of John He indicated to them that it was expedient for them that He die and then be resurrected. In resurrection He would then be able to enter into the disciples as life and remain in them as their person and thereby propagate Himself.
After His resurrection, the Lord Jesus came back to the disciples as the life-giving Spirit and breathed Himself into them (John 20:22). Instead of teaching the disciples or giving them a lecture, He breathed Himself into them. That was the initiation of the last part of their four-year “college course.” The Lord’s breathing of Himself into the disciples was His propagation of Himself in them as life.