How is this transfusion accomplished? God, as the heavenly electricity, comes to His chosen ones. For example, God came to Abraham by appearing to him. If we study Genesis 11 through 24, including the record in Acts 7, we find that God appeared to Abraham several times. Acts 7:2 says that the God of glory appeared to Abraham. It is sure that Abraham was attracted by the appearing of the God of glory. To be attracted simply means that God transfused Himself into Abraham without his realizing it or being conscious of it. This is similar to the radium treatment practiced in modern medicine. The patient is placed under the X-ray, unconscious of the beams that are penetrating him. God is the strongest radium. If we sit under Him for an hour, He will transfuse Himself into us. This transfusion will cause infusion, saturation, and permeation.
In any proper gospel preaching there should be such a transfusion, the transfusion of Christ into people. How can Christ be transfused into us? It is by the preaching of the gospel. Whenever we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in a normal way, there will be an appearing of the living Christ, and this appearing will transfuse Christ into people.
I can confirm this by my own experience. Although I was born in China and learned the teachings of Confucius, Confucius had no attraction for me. Christianity as a religion did not appeal to me either. When I was nineteen years old, the Lord sent a young sister to my town to preach the gospel. I was curious to see her. As I sat in the meeting place and heard her singing and speaking, the glory of God appeared, and I was attracted. No one had to convince me to believe. As I listened to her, God transfused Himself into me, and this transfusion overwhelmed and conquered me, causing a very positive reaction. Coming out of the meeting hall and walking along the road, I lifted up my eyes to the heavens and said, “God, You know I am an ambitious young man. But, even if the people promise me the whole world to be my empire, I would refuse it. I want to take You. From this day onward I want to serve You. I would like to be a poor preacher going from village to village, telling people how good Jesus is.” In this way the living Jesus was transfused into my being. Immediately I reacted to God, and God reacted back to me. My reaction to God was my believing in Him. That was my faith. God’s reaction back to me was to justify me, to give His righteousness with peace and joy to me. The righteousness of God reacted to me, and from that time on I had that righteousness. Christ was made the righteousness of God to me. Thus I had peace and joy, and I was filled with hope. I had been justified by God. God had called me out of everything other than Himself.
Once Christ has transfused Himself into you, you can never escape; you must believe in Him. I am familiar with many cases that occurred under my own gospel preaching. Some people said, “I simply don’t know what happened to me. After I listened to that preacher the first time and came home, I said that I didn’t want anything to do with Christ, that I did not like Jesus. But something got into me. I tried to cast it away, but I couldn’t do it. Although I don’t want to go back, something within me urges me to go hear him again and again.” What is this? This is the effect of the transfusing of Christ into people. Out of this transfusion a reaction comes—believing in Jesus by the faith of Jesus.
God appeared to Abraham again and again. Many of us have held the wrong concept about Abraham, the concept that he was a giant in faith. When I heard this as a young Christian, I was frightened, thinking to myself, “Forget about that. I can never be a giant of faith.” Later, as I considered the history of Abraham, I realized that he was not the giant of faith. The only giant of faith is God Himself. God, as the giant of faith, transfused Himself into him. After Abraham had spent time in God’s presence, He could not help believing in Him, because he had been transfused with God. Thus, Abraham was attracted to God and reacted to Him in believing. His reaction was his believing. Suppose a poor man visited Abraham and said, “Abraham, I know you don’t have a child. Next year I will enable you to have a child born of your wife.” Abraham would have driven such a man away from him, telling him not to talk nonsense. Who actually appeared to Abraham? The God of glory. The incident in Genesis 15 was not God’s first appearing to him. Several other appearings preceded it.
The first appearing was that recorded in Acts 7. Two more appearings are found in Genesis 12: in the first of these (vv. 1-3) God told Abraham to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house; in the second one (vv. 7-8) God promised Abraham to give the land to his seed. After this, Abraham, who had little experience in believing, fell into Egypt. God’s fourth appearing to Abraham was in Genesis 13:14-17, when He told Abraham to lift up his eyes and look in every direction at the land. Therefore, the appearing of God in Genesis 15:1-7 was the fifth; it was nothing new to Abraham. God had appeared to Abraham repeatedly, and Abraham had experienced the riches of God’s appearing, coming to have confidence in them. During the first four appearings, God’s element had been transfused and infused into Abraham’s being. When God appeared to Abraham, He did not leave suddenly. He stayed with Abraham for a length of time. How long did God remain with Abraham in Genesis 18? He stayed with him for about half a day, conversing with him for hours as with an intimate friend. Throughout that whole visitation Abraham was infused with God. During the fifth appearing (Gen. 15) God told Abraham that the number of his seed would be like the stars of heaven. As a result of the fifth appearing, Abraham had experienced such a rich infusion of God that he believed. “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3; Gen. 15:6).
Abraham’s faith did not come from his natural ability and it did not originate with himself. His believing in God was a reaction to the heavenly radium, a response to the divine infusion. Figuratively speaking, Abraham’s believing was simply God working like radium within him. What is the proper faith? Genuine faith is the working of God within us. This is why God counted Abraham’s faith as righteousness. It seemed that God was saying, “This faith is something of Me. It corresponds to Me. This is Abraham’s righteousness before Me.” What was that righteousness? It was the righteousness of God.