In this series of messages we shall deal with the experience of life. Here we do not intend to give mere messages and teachings. Rather, we will deal with practice, speaking much about the details of the experiences of the different stages of the Christian life. This will give us much help to learn the lessons of life for ourselves and at the same time to learn how to know people, discern people, and contact people. If we learn to know what stage and condition of life others are in-where they are, what they are, and what their needs are-we will know how to definitely help them to go on according to the experiences of the different stages of life.
According to the Scriptures, God’s intention is to be life to us in His Son, Christ the Lord, and through His Spirit. This is why the tree of life is presented at the very beginning of the Scriptures (Gen. 2:9). Right after God created man, He put him in front of the tree of life. Since that time, the issue related to man is how he deals with the tree of life. If he deals with the tree of life in the right way, he is right in the presence of God. Otherwise, he is wrong. At the end of the Scriptures, in Revelation 22, we again see the tree of life in the very center of the New Jerusalem (vv. 1-2). Throughout the Scriptures, such as in the Psalms, the Gospel of John, and the writings of the apostle Paul, it is clear that God’s intention is to make Christ life to us. At least one book, the Gospel of John, clearly tells us that Christ came that we may have life and may have it abundantly (10:10).
Christ came that we might have not only life but Himself as life. In today’s Christianity there is not much teaching about life. If someone comes among us, they may say that we are strange, day by day talking only about life. They may wonder why we do not talk about other things. This shows us that among Christians today there is not much real knowledge of life. To my awareness, there has been only one significant book concerning life in recent times, The Saving Life of Christ by Major Ian Thomas. I like this title. However, although I like the term saving life, I do not like the term of Christ. We cannot find the term the life of Christ in the New Testament, because Christ Himself is the life. We should differentiate between the life of Christ and Christ as life. It may be right to speak of the life of Christ, but people may understand that the life of Christ is one matter and Christ is another. This is a wrong understanding of the life of Christ. The life of Christ is nothing other than Christ Himself as our life (Col. 3:4).
How can we humans receive Christ as our life? Although we have this life, we may not be clear about regeneration as our spiritual birth. This means that we are in a very poor condition with a poor background. This shortage is a problem for our growth in life, and it means that we are not able to help others. We may have heard many messages in a general way, but we may not know how to put these matters into practice. Even though we have been regenerated and can talk about the gospel in a general way, we may not know the definite way to help people to be regenerated. Before I became clear about regeneration, I was in this same poor condition. I could talk with people about Christian teachings, but I did not know how to help people to be saved. Then one day after the Lord brought me through a crisis, I learned that it is easy to help people to be saved.
Many sisters are able not only to talk about cooking in a general way; they also know the definite way to take a certain amount of flour, sugar, and other items and cook them for a certain time to make a cake. I, on the other hand, can talk about cooking in a general way, but if you ask me to bake a cake, I do not know even how to turn on the fire. I know something in a general way, but I do not know it in a definite way. This is an illustration of the problem with Christians today. Someone may say that the way to be regenerated is to accept Christ or to receive Christ into our heart, but how do we receive Christ? This is like saying that the way to make a cake is to put it in the oven, but what do we put in the oven? Can we put a lump of flour into the oven and get a cake from it? General teachings are not adequate.
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