This is why the teachings concerning marriage life do not work so well. Regardless of what kind of teaching we have, we still hold on to our own person. Real love means to take another one as your person. If you do love your wife, yet you would not take her as your person, your love is not genuine. Rather, it is a selfish love. If you love your husband in a genuine way, you will take him as your person. Then there is no problem. The same thing is true in God’s economy. It is not a matter of teaching. The Lord’s intention is to work Himself into us, not only as our life, but also as our person. If we were just a box, and the living Lord came into us to be our person, that would be easy. A box has no person. But we are living boxes, and so many of us do have a strong person. Some of us are strong in the mind, others are strong in the emotion, and others are strong in the will. Therefore, the Lord has some difficulty. But we must realize that the Lord will never give up His own person. We must be the ones who give up. The Lord has no intention to have us live as a person. We should simply be the vessel that contains Him. But the problem is that God created some living vessels. This is why in the very beginning of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus said that if we are going to follow Him we must deny ourselves. This means to deny our person. To follow Jesus means to take Him as your person. In order to do this, surely we must deny our own person. If all the followers of Christ would deny themselves, there would be no need of so many pages in the New Testament. It would be so simple. Then we could really say that it is no more I, but Christ who lives in me. He lives; we do not live. The “I” has been terminated. Now it is not only another life, but another person who lives in us.
Another verse which we mentioned in the last chapter was Ephesians 3:17. Here we see that Christ desires to make His home in our heart. Many times when I am a guest in someone’s house, they tell me to make myself at home. But regardless of how strongly they say this, deep within I know that that is not my home. My home is the place where I have the full right and the full freedom to do whatever I like. If I am told where to put my suitcase and where to put my towels, that is not my home. A home is a place where a person is absolutely free. In my home I have the freedom to fulfill all my desires. That means that I am the real person of that home. If I do not have the freedom to do whatever I like in that house, it means that I am not the dweller in that home. Christ must have His full liberty and the full right to do whatever He likes. Then our heart will be His home. This means that we will no longer be the dweller, but the dwelling place. He will be the dweller to make His home in us. If He is the person as the dweller in us, then we have to lose whatever we are. We are just the home. The home has no idea, no concept, no emotion, no will, no desire; it is all up to the dweller of the home. This is why whenever there is a wedding, the wife must be covered. In marriage, there should only be one person. Galatians 2:20 and Ephesians 3:17 present strongly the point that Christ has to be our person. In a sense, simply to take Christ as our life is not so adequate. The real meaning is to take Christ as our person. When He is our person, then surely it will be easy for Him to be our life.
Now we can understand what Paul means when he says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). This is to take Christ as our person by denying our natural mind and taking His mind. When we take someone else’s mind as our mind, we certainly take him as our person. If we really mean to take Christ as our person, we must know how to deny our mind and to have our mind fully replaced by the mind of Christ. It does not mean that we do not need our mind or use our mind, but that the mind of Christ replaces our mind.
In 2 Corinthians 10:1, Paul says, “Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.” This means that Paul besought the early Christians not in his own person; he besought them in the person of Christ. The meekness and gentleness of Christ had to become his. This is God’s economy; this is not religion. This is not a teaching, a philosophy, or any kind of instruction or regulation; it is a living, complete, practical, available, and present person. When we take Him as our person, His meekness and His gentleness becomes ours. This was the real living of Paul the Apostle.
This is also seen in 2 Corinthians 11:10. “As the truth of Christ is in me.” It was not the falsehood, but the truth of Christ which was in Paul. This means that Christ the Person was in him. It does not mean that Paul imitated the honesty, faithfulness, and truthfulness of Christ. No, instead Paul took the faithful, honest, sincere, and truthful Christ as his person. Therefore, this Person’s truthfulness becomes Paul’s; so he could say that the truth of Christ was in him.