Married brothers know how difficult it is for husbands to truly love their wives, and married sisters know that it is difficult for wives to be genuinely submissive to their husbands. It is extremely difficult to be a proper husband or wife. It is even difficult to be a human being. Since man was created to express God and represent Him, to be a proper human is to be God’s expression and representation. But it is difficult to represent another person or an organization; how much more difficult it is to represent God. If it is difficult to be a proper human being, it is all the more difficult to be a Christian, especially a Christian who lives Christ. Paul could say, “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Who among us can say that we are able to live Christ? If we see God’s standard, we shall feel like giving up, for we shall realize that in ourselves we cannot meet God’s requirements. Although it is impossible for us in ourselves to meet God’s standard, with Christ this is possible. When we have the realization that we cannot meet God’s requirements, we can open to receive grace. Grace is the Triune God coming into us to express Himself, to represent Himself, and to live Himself in us and through us. Experiencing the grace of God in this way is altogether different from trying to improve our behavior or attempting in ourselves to meet God’s requirements.
In the Life-study of Exodus we pointed out that in His salvation God does not want us to do anything or to be anything. Instead, He wants to do everything for us and to be everything to us. This is indicated by the fact that after God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, He changed their diet. When God’s people were in Egypt, they had an Egyptian diet and ate the Egyptian meat, fish, onions, cucumbers, leeks, and garlic. This caused them to become Egyptian in their constitution. They were a composition of the Egyptian food they had eaten. But in Exodus 16 God provided manna for the children of Israel to eat. Their diet was to be changed from Egyptian food to heavenly food. Manna is a type of Christ as our life supply. If we eat Christ as typified by manna, we shall be constituted of Christ. In this way, our constitution will be changed, and our flesh will be dealt with genuinely and thoroughly.
We should not think that in ourselves we can be a proper husband or wife. However, the One who has come to live in us is able. This One is Christ, our hope of glory.
In chapter three Paul goes on to tell us that we are with Christ in God. First, Christ is in us, but eventually we are with Christ in God. Furthermore, according to 3:4, the Christ who dwells in us is our life. Inwardly we have Christ as our life, and outwardly we have God as our realm and sphere. Sometimes I have the sense when traveling in a car that actually I am traveling in God. He is the realm in which we live and walk. The Christ who dwells in us is life, but the God in whom we are hidden with Christ is the realm of our living. We should be able to testify that we are living not on earth nor even just in heaven, but in God.
In ourselves it is not possible for us to be in God. We can only be hidden in God with Christ. Many have been helped to see that through Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, God has been wrought into us. But not as many see clearly that we have also been brought into God. Since God is in us and we are in Him, there is two-way traffic between God and us. On the one hand, Colossians tells us that Christ is in us. This indicates that God has been wrought into us. Because Christ is in us, God has been wrought into us. But in chapter three we are told that we are with Christ in God. This indicates that we have been brought into God. Therefore, God is now in us as our life, and we are in God as the realm of our living.
We should praise the Lord not only that the Triune God is in us, but also that we are in the Triune God. Christ came by incarnation to bring God into us, and He went back to God by crucifixion and resurrection to bring us into God. Concerning this two-way traffic, we should not be restricted by the natural concept. It is crucial for us to see that Christ came both to work God into us and to bring us into God.
Since we have been brought into God and are hidden with Christ in God, God should be the realm of our living. If we live and walk in God, we shall be heavenly. However, in the book of Colossians, Paul does not speak of heaven, and he does not use the word heavenly. Instead, he mentions the things above. We need to seek the things which are above and set our mind on them.