In this message I am burdened to share with you the two main aspects of the Lord’s recovery today. As you are preparing to do a work among the young people, you must know what the Lord’s recovery is. Today, we should not follow degraded Christianity. In order to avoid this danger, we must know where we stand and what our commission is. In brief, the two main items in the Lord’s recovery today are the recovery of the experience of Christ and the recovery of the proper practice of the church life. In other words, the Lord’s recovery today is simply the recovery of Christ and the church. When we speak of recovery, however, we do not mean recovery in a doctrinal way. We are not interested in teaching about these things but in practicing them. We are in the practical recovery of the experiences of Christ and of the proper practice of the church life. We are not concerned with so many doctrinal points, but with the adequate and full experience and practice.
Many of us were in Christianity for years, but, apart from salvation, we heard little about the experience of Christ as life in a subjective way. There were no such terms as “the enjoyment of Christ” and the very common term “the experience of Christ.” We never even entertained the thought of such things. Rather, we were told, correctly, that Christ died on the cross, that He resurrected from the dead, that He ascended to the heavens, and that He is now sitting at the right hand of God. However, whatever we were taught concerning Christ was altogether in the realm of the mind. Christ was preached as the Savior, and many believed in Him, and were, in a sense, saved. But Christ was still in the heavens and we were still on earth. At the most, we had been saved through His name. Although there is nothing wrong with this, there is a tremendous lack. For years, I was never told that the very Christ in whom I had believed was dwelling in my spirit. But the fourteenth chapter of John says clearly, strongly, and emphatically that Christ, our Savior, is in us. In John 15 He Himself said, “Abide in Me and I in you.” When I first heard that Christ was abiding in me and I in Him, I could not comprehend it, and I exercised my little mind to try to figure it out, asking how Christ could abide in me and I in Him. I immediately examined whether I was in Him or not, but I simply could not figure it out. Nevertheless, the main emphasis in nearly all the Epistles is that this wonderful Christ is in us.
For years, I was unable to answer the question of how Christ could be in me and I in Him. But one day the Lord opened my eyes and I saw that after His resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Today, Christ is not only sitting at the right hand of God in the heavens; as the life-giving Spirit, He also dwells in our spirit. Second Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit.” If the Lord Jesus were not the Spirit, how could He be with our spirit? Even if we did not have the clear word of 2 Corinthians 3:17—“Now the Lord is that Spirit”—we would be able to conclude that the Lord must be the Spirit from the fact that He is now with our spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says something even more definite: “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” According to your experience, do you realize that you are actually one spirit with the Lord?
Ephesians 3:16-21 reveals that Christ is making His home in our heart (Gk.). How marvelous it is that we can experience Christ to this extent! When I was in Christianity, I heard nothing about experiencing Christ in this way. Gradually, through the help of some books, I came to know that Christ abides in me as my life, my righteousness, my holiness, and my sanctification, and I began to experience Him in a subjective way. But it was not until after many years of reading, study, and experience that I saw from Ephesians 3 that Christ is not only my life, but also that He makes His home in my heart.
Christ’s making His home in our heart is His taking full possession of our inner being. Our heart is a composition of our mind, will, emotion, and conscience. As Christ makes His home in our heart, He saturates our entire inner being and possesses it. This is a great thing. Our mind, will, emotion, and conscience become the dwelling place of Christ. Eventually, according to the New Testament, as far as our inner being is concerned, Christ will become one with us. We all must experience Christ to such an extent that we are one with Him, not only in our spirit, but also in our whole heart—in our mind, will, emotion, and conscience. This must not be a mere doctrine to us; it must be our experience.
Let me relate a pitiful story of something that happened just several weeks ago. One night after a meeting two teenagers came to the front of the meeting hall to deal with me. They said, “You teach that Christ became the firstborn Son of God. Haven’t you read John 3:16, which says that He is the only begotten Son? Why do you say that He became the firstborn Son? Also Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” How pitiful! This is typical of the situation in Christianity today. These boys have a little knowledge of the Bible and think they know something.
Others condemn us for saying that Christ has changed and that God has been processed. They claim that God and Christ could never change. What about the incarnation? Before the incarnation, the Son of God was God. He only had divinity, having nothing of humanity. He did not have flesh, blood, and bones. But by incarnation He put on human nature, becoming a man of blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14). After He became flesh and lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years, He died on the cross, shed His blood, and was buried. Three days later, He was resurrected. He had had the form of the flesh, but after His resurrection this form was changed into that of the Spirit. Was not this a change? Those in Christianity only care for their little knowledge, not for experience. But a little knowledge is dangerous. In the Lord’s recovery we are not fighting for terminology or doctrines. Why do we say that our God has been processed? I realize that, theologically speaking, it may sound strange to say that God has been processed. But according to the truth, God has been processed. He was God, He became flesh, He was crucified on the cross, died, and was buried. Was that not a process? If it was not, then what was it? Through the process of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit, not only with the divine nature but also with the human nature.
At this point it is well to quote some excerpts from Andrew Murray’s masterpiece, The Spirit of Christ. These quotations are taken from chapter five, entitled, “The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus”:
We know how the Son, who had from eternity been with the Father, entered upon a new stage of existence when He became flesh. When He returned to Heaven, He was still the same only-begotten Son of God, and yet not altogether the same. For He was now also, as Son of Man, the first-begotten from the dead, clothed with that glorified humanity which He had perfected and sanctified for Himself. And just so the Spirit of God as poured out at Pentecost was indeed something new....When poured out at Pentecost, He came as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the Incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of the life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus....Christ came not only to deliver man from the law and its curse, but to bring human nature again into the fellowship of the Divine life, to make us partakers of the Divine nature....In His own person, having become flesh, He had to sanctify the flesh, and make it a meet and willing receptacle for the indwelling of the Spirit of God....From His nature, as it was glorified in the resurrection and ascension, His Spirit came forth as the Spirit of His human life, glorified into the union with the Divine, to make us partakers of all that He had personally wrought out and acquired, of Himself and His glorified life....And in virtue of His having perfected in Himself a new holy human nature on our behalf, He could now communicate what previously had no existence— a life at once human and Divine. From henceforth the Spirit just as He was the personal Divine life, could also become the personal life of men....And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man—most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the spirit of man.
By this we can see that at least one other brother has seen this matter.