Many Christians admit that the problem in reading the Bible is that it is relatively easy to find the peripheral things but not very easy to find the central matter. This may be compared to contacting a person; it is hard to perceive the life within him even though it is easy to touch his physical members. We all know that without the physical members it is impossible for the life within to exist. Nevertheless, as far as man is concerned, the physical members are merely the external things; only the life within him is his center. Likewise, the Bible has its spirit, its life, its center. Like a man, the Bible needs a structure with many “members.” It has to cover many different matters because without them there is no place in which to put its life and its spirit. The Bible refers to many matters, but these things are not its life, its spirit. Rather, they are a place in which its life, its spirit, may be deposited. Because of this, when a person comes to read the Bible, it is easy for him to find the superficial things, the external things, but not easy to find the spirit within.
Let us use the Gospels as an example. Many things are written in the Gospels, but actually these four books speak about only this one thing: At His predetermined time, the triune, eternal God, the Creator of all things, entered into the created man to be mingled and united with man; then He lived on earth, and finally He entered into death and came out in resurrection to become a wonderful Spirit. Whatever we need has been accomplished in this Spirit and is included in this Spirit. Today, this wonderful Spirit is like breath; He is very rich and exceedingly available. This is the essence, the spirit, the life, of the Gospels.
Nevertheless, I say again, when you read the four Gospels, you cannot easily discover their essence. You can find many stories in the Gospels, but you cannot easily detect the spirit contained in them. This may be compared to the way a person can be contacted: your ears, hair, eyebrows, hands, and feet can easily be touched, but your life cannot be touched. This is our problem in reading the Bible. Many saints throughout the centuries interpreted the Gospels, but they only talked about the external, superficial things. They did not touch the spirit within.
If we put the four Gospels together and read them with a bird’s-eye view in a quiet spirit, then we will see that the life, the essence, the kernel, of these four books is to show us that the Triune God who is in eternity actually entered into the created man to be mingled with man as one, lived the human life, went into death, and in resurrection became the Spirit. Therefore, after His resurrection, He breathed into His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Please consider again, what do the four Gospels talk about? They do not talk mainly about healing or casting out of demons, nor do they only admonish us to enter into the kingdom of the heavens, nor do they talk about how to have our sins forgiven or how to be born again. I trust that you know what I mean when I say that they do not talk mainly about these things. What then do they talk about? They tell us that one day the Triune God who is in eternity, the Creator of all things, entered into man, lived on this earth, went into death, and became a wonderful Spirit. In this wonderful Spirit there are God, man, redemption, life, holiness, power, light, and love. This Spirit has everything. Therefore, at the end of the Gospels, we are told about a breath. The Triune God has passed through all the processes and has accomplished everything. Today He is breath.
When Christians read the Gospels, most of them see only that the great God, the Lord of glory, was incarnated to be our Savior, that He shed His precious blood to make atonement for our sins, and that after His death and resurrection, He ascended into the heavens and sat down at the right hand of God. We cannot say that this is wrong, but you must realize that this is not the center or the conclusion of the Gospels. The four Gospels conclude neither with Mark nor with Luke but with John. The Gospel of John does not conclude with ascension. Instead, it concludes with the breathing of a breath for the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit. It was not the Lord ascending to the throne; instead, it was the Lord becoming a breath being breathed into men.
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