Another category of distractions includes culture, religion, ethics, morality, and character-improving. Character-improving seems to be quite good. Although it is good, it is nevertheless a problem, for if you try to improve your character, this character-improving will distract you from enjoying Christ. This means that you pay your attention to your character rather than to Christ. Therefore, character-improving is also a distraction from Christ.
We may also be distracted by trying to do good. I do not mean that we do not need to do good, but trying to do good distracts us from Christ. Trying to be spiritual, scriptural, holy, and victorious also distracts us from Christ. While we are trying to be these things, we are distracted. This means that we should not be people of culture, religion, ethics, or morality. Neither should we be people of character-improving, doing good, or trying to be spiritual, scriptural, holy, and victorious. We should only be people of Christ! Our entire being—our thought, our consideration, our feeling, our every part—must be filled and saturated with Christ and we should only care for experiencing Christ. I do not mean that we should be wild, evil, or careless. I mean that we should not be occupied by any good thing other than Christ, nor should we care for anything other than the experience of Christ. This is not my teaching. This is the very thing that I have quoted from the New Testament. After studying the New Testament for many years I eventually realized that it requires us to drop all things other than Christ Himself and to remain in Christ because Christ is much higher and better than all culture, religion, ethics, morality, and character-improving. He is the most excellent among all things for us to apprehend and experience. Do not stay in anything other than Christ, no matter how good it may be. Do not remain in even the best thing, but rather remain in Christ all the time.
In Message Five of the Life-study of 1 John we pointed out that, because we have received the divine life, we have been brought into the divine fellowship. This divine fellowship is just the flow of the divine life. With electricity there is a current which supplies all the electrical appliances. Every appliance should remain in the electrical current to receive the supply of electricity. Within us there is a current of the divine life. In order for us to enjoy Christ and experience Him, we must remain in this current of the divine life. When we remain in the current of the divine life, we touch God as the source. This is fully taught by John in his first Epistle. First John tells us that the Apostles preached, or ministered, the divine life to us (1 John 1:2-3). After we receive this divine life, we are in the divine fellowship. We should remain in this fellowship to touch God and enjoy Him as the very source of grace and truth. In this fellowship we realize that God is love and that God is light (1 John 4:8, 16; 1:5-7). The divine love is the source of grace, and the divine light is the source of truth. It is when we are touching the source that we enjoy Christ. We enjoy God as love and light in Christ, and this results in our enjoyment of Christ as grace and truth.
This is the secret of experiencing Christ. In 2 Corinthians 13:14 Paul says, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." This is to enjoy the Triune God by remaining in the divine fellowship that we may touch the Triune God as the source. When we touch the Triune God as the source, as love and light, we enjoy the riches of Christ as grace and truth, and we experience Christ in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit as the transmission. This is the enjoyment of grace and truth. In this enjoyment we realize that the source is God's love and God's light. All of this can be fully proven by our own experiences.