When we come not only to the Proverbs but to any book of the Bible, especially Ephesians, the most spiritual book, we must be persons who are right. In reading the Bible, a right person is one who loves Christ, pursues after Him, and lives a life of denying himself and of being conformed to the death of Christ. This means that, on the negative side, we must deny the self, having all aspects of our being crucified, including our self, our natural man, our old man, our character, and whatever we have from birth. We have to put all these things on the cross. In other words, we must experience the cross of Christ, which has crucified us in every way.
God's salvation, however, does not have only a negative aspect—termination. After termination there is a positive aspect—germination. After death there is resurrection. Death terminates and resurrection germinates. The human life, the fallen, rotten, corrupted life that has become satanic, must be terminated. In resurrection Christ dispenses the divine life which was released through His death. In the last step of His death, He released the divine life out from His humanity, and in resurrection He dispensed this released divine life into us through regeneration. This is germination. Now we have a new beginning with a new life and a new person. This new life is a life of both divinity and humanity. This is wonderful.
As lovers of Christ, we need to realize that, on the negative side, we are finished, terminated. Nevertheless, on the positive side we have the processed and consummated Triune God to replace us as a new life. Therefore, we should live by this life every day. We have been crucified. Now we should be able to say with Paul in Galatians that it is no longer I who live, but another "I," Christ Himself as our person, lives in us and we live with Him. We should live such a person by the power of resurrection and by the bountiful supply of the all-inclusive Spirit of Jesus Christ.
When we are such persons, we can come to the Bible not merely by exercising our mentality but mainly by exercising our spirit. Our spirit will control our mind. In our spirit there is the marvelous, wonderful, processed, all-inclusive, sevenfold-intensified, life-giving Spirit. We live with Him, and He lives with us. Now when we come to the Bible by exercising our spirit, letting the Spirit move in us, every word of the Bible, in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament, becomes spirit and life. Then our reading of any verse in the Bible will revive us. However, if we exercise only our mind, the words of the Bible will become death to us.
I can testify that after just a few minutes of fellowship with the Lord, I am fed, nourished, and stirred up. Then when I come to the Bible, every word becomes a gem. We all need to read the book of Proverbs in this way. Then every word of Proverbs will become spirit and life to us. Every word will be living and become a gem to strengthen our life of pursuing Christ for the fulfillment of God's economy in producing and building up the Body of Christ.
When I had a life-study on Proverbs in Taipei many years ago, I studied and classified all the detailed proverbs. There are at least seventy items, with many items containing several verses. These proverbs are the detailed precepts for man to live a proper human life. Each precept is a gem. Let us now begin to consider these precepts.