Question: Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ completely.” How and in what attitude should we bear one another’s burdens, and what is the law of Christ and its fulfillment?
Answer: Suppose you were to ask a peach tree that bears peaches, “Please tell me what it means to bear peaches.” If the tree could speak, it might answer you, “I do not understand how to bear peaches, but I do understand how to live by receiving many kinds of supply from the soil, from the water, from the wind and the air, and from the sunshine. As long as I live by all these things, I will spontaneously bear peaches.” The verse concerning bearing one another’s burdens is in the sixth chapter of Galatians, not in the first chapter. In the first chapter Christ is revealed in us (vv. 15-16), in the second chapter Christ is living in us (v. 20), in the third chapter Christ is our clothing (v. 27), in the fourth chapter Christ is formed in us (v. 19), and in the fifth chapter we are not separated from Christ (vv. 4-6). If this is our condition, we will surely bear the fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-23 speaks of fruit, not of fruits. What is mentioned in these verses should not be considered nine kinds of fruit, but one kind of fruit with nine aspects. The first aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is love, and the last aspect is self-control. Toward others we must always have love, and in dealing with ourselves, we must always have self-control. These are the aspects of Christ as life, and they are an overflow of the Christ whom we have experienced. When we experience and enjoy Christ, He will flow Himself out; this outflow is the fruit. Christ is the fountain of the flow of life. If we abide in Him and allow Him to abide in us, there will be an outflow of life from within us, which is the fruit of the Spirit, with love as the first aspect.
The law of Christ in chapter 6 is the law of love, which is substantiated by the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). The law of love enables us to bear one another’s burdens. Then at the end of the book the apostle tells us that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is what matters (Gal. 6:15). Human morality and human immorality, human good and human evil, do not mean anything. None of these things avails, but a new creation is what matters. A new creation is a person who is mingled with Christ, a person who has Christ revealed in him, Christ living in him, Christ covering him as his clothing, Christ being formed in him, and Christ being a fountain of life within him. To repeat, neither doing good nor doing evil avails before God. These things are nothing. What is needed is a new creation, which comes into being through our being mingled with Christ. This is the right position and condition for us to have.
Question: How can we abide in Christ?
Answer: In order to abide in Christ, at least once we need to see that we are in Christ. This is a fact. We are persons who have been put into Christ by God (1 Cor. 1:30). Thus, we are in Christ. To abide in Christ simply means to not go outside of Christ but to keep ourselves in Christ. There is no need for us to strive to be in Christ, because we are already in Him. For example, to abide in a house means to remain in that house and to not leave it. We need a revelation to see that we are in Christ. In the New Testament there is a very small phrase of just two words, but it is the most important phrase in the universe. This phrase is “in Christ.” We must have a definite seeing that we are persons who are in Christ. We must keep ourselves in Christ, remaining in Him and not going out of Him.
Question: Does the Lord put certain individuals aside for a time so that He can work again in their lives?
Answer: It is not good to analyze too much, but there is a principle that we need to see. If our intention is genuinely for the Lord and we are doing too much, the Lord will come in to stop us from our doing. God’s eternal purpose is to have Christ wrought into us, but our concept is always to do something for God. We forget that we are vessels whose purpose is not to do something but to contain something. This is the problem today. We have pointed out that many Christians simply do not care about the things of God; they love the world, having no heart for God and no desire to seek the Lord’s mind or the Lord’s business. There are a good number of seeking Christians, yet among them the concept of doing something for God is very strong. They do not know that they were made to be vessels and were regenerated for the purpose of containing Christ.
There is no need for us to do things for God. He can do everything. God needs us to cooperate with Him as living vessels. We need to allow God to fill us. On the day that we see this, our whole Christian concept will change, our whole being will be revolutionized, and our work and activity will be absolutely in another realm, that is, in Christ Himself. We will stop all our activity, and day by day we will say, “Lord, I am here and I am open. I am nothing but an empty vessel. I thank You that I was made in such a way to contain You. I can do nothing, Lord, yet I can contain You. Come in, fill me, and saturate my whole being with Yourself.” This is the right condition and position for us to be a living Christian. If there is never a day in our whole life in which we see this, we will be pitiful and miserable persons. The sooner we see this, the better. Before he saw this, the apostle Paul was active in Judaism, in doing and in working. One day the Lord knocked him down to the ground, and he saw a heavenly vision. His whole being was stopped from doing. This is why he wrote of God revealing His Son in him, of Christ living in him, of his putting on Christ as his clothing, of Christ being formed in him, of his not being separated from Christ but keeping himself in Christ, and of Christ flowing out of him to bear the fruit of the Spirit.
This is the divine concept, and when we see this, we will be delivered from doing and working. We will realize that we are nothing but an empty vessel to contain Christ. It is not easy for the young people to see this, because young people are very active. For the older generation it is even more difficult because too many things already occupy them.
Question: How does a person get out of the religious “rat race” of always going around in a circle as in a cage?
Answer: We can escape such a situation only by revelation. Before he was saved, Saul was very active. One day, on the road to Damascus, the Lord met him, and he was knocked down before the Lord. He was stopped. The revelation stops us, and this stopping is a deliverance that rescues us from our human effort and doing and brings us into the line of the divine will. From that time forward, we are on the right track.
Question: It seems that Paul was still very active after he became a Christian. Is this not true?
Answer: After Paul received the revelation, there is no doubt that he acted, moved, and worked, but the motive, the initiation, and the source were not himself but Christ. Christ was energizing him all the time, just like a motor in a car (Phil. 4:13). Paul’s activity was an issue of his cooperation with Christ. Seemingly, he was walking and working, but actually, it was Christ doing these things in Paul. Twice Paul said that it was not he but Christ. In Galatians 2:20 he said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” and in 1 Corinthians 15:10 he said, “I labored...yet not I but the grace of God which is with me.” The grace of God came through Christ (John 1:17). This grace is God in Christ enjoyed and experienced by us. It seems that Paul was saying, “It is not I, Paul, who labor much, even more than all the other apostles; it is God in Christ experienced by me as grace. The grace of God works in me so that I can labor as I do.” We need a revelation to see that God’s intention is to work Christ into us as our everything and to work Christ through us and out of us. We need to be in this stream, in this line, and on this track. All of our daily walk, living, working, service, and activity must be an issue, an outflow, of the divine life. This is something absolutely different from human effort.