The all-inclusive Christ is to be our life (3:4). If Christ does not become our life, then all He is and all He attained and obtained remain objective. He is He, and we are we. In that case He has nothing to do with us in a practical way, nor we with Him. Therefore, in our actual daily experience, Christ must be our life. However, we may have the doctrinal knowledge from the Bible that Christ is our life without living by Christ in a practical way day by day. Instead of living by Christ, we live too much of the time by our natural life.
We all should be willing to admit that we love our own life, our natural human life. We may claim to hate our life, but actually we love it very much. Even as you testify of your hatred for your natural life, deep within, you still appreciate your life and consider it better than that of others. For example, deep within, a sister may feel that her life is better than her husband’s life. Of course, a brother will have similar feelings toward his wife. We all are alike in thinking highly of our natural life.
In addition to appreciating our natural life, we all are in the habit of using it, that is, of living according to it. Over the years we have become accustomed to living by our own life. Moreover, we have even endeavored to refine the natural life. Through the training we have received at home, our natural life has been somewhat refined. It has been refined further through education and religion. We must admit that the natural life has even been refined by our participation in the local church. A brother who has been in the church for several years truly is much more refined than he was before coming into the church life. Some of the most refined people in this country are to be found in the church life. However, instead of carrying on such a refining work, the church should terminate and bury the natural life. But most of us have not been buried by the church; instead, we have been refined. Before you came into the church life, you may have been like unpolished copper. But now that you have been refined by the church life, you are like shiny, polished copper. Although polished copper may look like gold, it is not gold. Likewise, although our natural life may be refined and polished, it is still not Christ. In the churches, there is too much refined copper and too little gold. There is too much of the natural life and not that much of Christ.
Christian preachers often give people the wrong kind of advice. They may be like doctors who prescribe the wrong medicine. In the early years of my ministry, I would tell those who were about to get married that they needed to be balanced and subdued. I told them that the Lord would use their husband or wife and their children to subdue them. I regret having given out that kind of teaching, for it leads to the refinement of the natural life, not to living by Christ. In my early ministry I could not clearly discern between gold and copper that had been refined and polished. Now I see that no matter how much copper is refined and polished, it will not become gold. In the same principle, refining our natural life will not transform it into Christ. What God desires is that we live Christ. He has no intention merely to refine our human life.
When we do not live Christ, we live according to our own philosophy. When I told the saints that in their married life they needed to be balanced and subdued, I was ministering philosophy to them, not the riches of Christ. My philosophy at that time was a mixture of the Bible and certain ethical teachings according to which I had been raised. Thus, what I shared with the saints concerning married life was culture; it was not Christ. In certain respects my philosophy was quite good. I could defend it by appealing to those verses in the New Testament which charge wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives. It seemed to me that in some ways my philosophy was better than that of Confucius. Confucius never taught that a wife needs to be balanced by her husband and that a husband needs to be subdued by bearing the burden of his wife and children. If we consider the matter of married life apart from Christ, we may agree with this philosophy. Nevertheless, even if this philosophy is right, it is not Christ, and it serves only to refine the natural life.
Even we in the church life have been short of the heavenly vision concerning God’s desire that we live Christ. Because the vision has not been clear, we have spent a good deal of time refining our human life instead of living Christ. Therefore, I am burdened to point out that the local church should not be a place where the work of refinement is carried out. Rather, the church should be a place where Christ is ministered. When the young people come to me for fellowship about marriage, I now tell them that they need to experience Christ as their grace. I no longer tell them that they need to be balanced and subdued according to God’s sovereign arrangement in their married life. I wish to tell all the saints that our unique need is Christ. Christ lives in us, and we are one spirit with Him. Oh, our need today is for the indwelling Christ!
If we would enjoy Christ and experience Him by being one spirit with Him, we should turn from all the standards, rules, regulations, and principles we have made for ourselves. To tell others that they need to be balanced and subdued is to fellowship with them according to a standard. Today I do not minister standards—I simply minister Christ. I would encourage all the saints to no longer set up standards and regulations, but continually contact Christ as the life-giving Spirit. If you are a slow person, do not try to be quick; if you are quick, do not try to slow down. Instead of trying to balance yourself, just live Christ. Let Christ be your standard, regulation, principle, and goal.