The Christ whom we experience is not as low as the Christ preached in today’s Christianity. In the Lord’s recovery we do experience a different Christ. Years ago, someone in Hong Kong condemned me, saying that I preach another Christ. I wrote a rebuttal saying that Christ certainly is different. For instance, in the Gospel of John Christ is the Lamb (John 1:29), but in Revelation He is the Lion (Rev. 5:5). Is the Lion the same as the Lamb? Certainly not. Furthermore, with respect to the burnt offering, a type of Christ, in Leviticus chapter one, Christ is firstly likened to a bullock, then to a goat, and lastly to a turtledove. Are all these the same? It would be ridiculous to say that they are. In Himself, Christ is not different, but in our experience He is different. In Christianity, people mainly experience Christ as their Savior. They know little more concerning Him.
According to Leviticus, some may experience Christ just as a little turtledove. Others, however, may experience Him as a goat, and still others experience Christ as a huge bullock like the apostle Paul did. What is Christ in your experience—a pigeon, a goat, or a bullock? Only the poor people offered a pigeon as a burnt offering to God. That is good, but it is poor. Likewise, it is good for you to experience Christ as a pigeon, but it is rather poor. Thousands of Christians have only received Christ as their Savior. Some others have progressed to experience Christ as their life. Gradually, I have discovered that Christ is everything to me. He is not only my Savior, my Redeemer, my Lord, my God and my life—He is my everything. Even just in the book of 1 Corinthians we see that Christ is power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, the deep things of God, the foundation, the passover, the Head, the Body, the rock, the food, the drink, the second man, the last Adam, the firstfruits, and the life-giving Spirit. Oh, Christ is everything! Later, I began to see that this all-inclusive Christ is making His home in me. Now, I not only take Him as my life and as my person, but I give myself to Him as His dwelling. We in the Lord’s recovery must experience Christ to such an extent that He can make His home in our hearts. As you contact other young people on the campuses, you must be those who live by Christ and experience Him day by day. You must take Him as your life, as your person, and as the One who dwells in your whole being.
How can we experience Christ? Although experiencing Him may sound mysterious, it is actually very practical, as practical as electricity. If you would experience Him as the One making His home in your heart, you must pray to see the vision that Christ today is the Spirit. Most Christians, not knowing their human spirit, and Christ as the life-giving Spirit, only care for doctrine. They do not know that today our Christ is everything. Christ is the all-inclusive One. He is God, the Creator, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Lord, the light, the life, etc. I simply do not have the adequate utterance to express all that Christ is. Christ is wonderful. He is God and He became a man, bringing God into humanity. Eventually, He also brought humanity into God. This does not mean that He made man God. Rather, it means that He brought humanity into divinity. Today, He is the God-man. Recently, some have opposed the use of the term God-man. But in the selections we have quoted from Andrew Murray, we see that he also used this term. In Christ is the real God and the real man. Today, He is the all-inclusive Spirit. From my experience I know that this is so. Thus, I am strong to proclaim, not in a doctrinal way, but in an experiential way, that the very Christ in whom we believe is everything to us. Christ is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, our love, our patience, our endurance. How can He be everything to us? By His being the all-inclusive Spirit.
In the history of the church various well-known writers have commented on the matter of Christ as the Spirit. It is helpful to include here some quotations from their writings. In his Commentary on the Holy Scriptures John Peter Lange makes this comment on 2 Corinthians 3:17:
“But the Lord,” to whom their heart thus turns, “is the Spirit.” Many artificial explanations had been given of this verse. Without noticing those attempts which have been in direct contradiction to the meaning of the words and the scope of the context, we find here such an identification of Christ and the Holy Spirit, that the Lord to whom the heart turns, is in no practical respect different from the Holy Spirit received in conversion. The fellowship of Christ into which it entered, when it turned to the Lord, was in truth the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Christ is virtually the Spirit, inasmuch as He communicates Himself in conversion, and at other times by means of the Spirit; the Holy Spirit is His spirit; the animating principle of the Lord’s indwelling and influence in the hearts of believers is this Holy Spirit...But such a virtual identification of Christ and the Spirit can have reference only to Christ in His state of exaltation (comp. 1 Cor. 15:45).
Augustus H. Strong has this to say in his Systematic Theology:
The Scripture representations of this intercommunion [among the Father, Son, and Spirit] prevent us from conceiving of the distinctions called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as involving separation between them. This intercommunion also explains the designation of Christ as “the Spirit,” and of the Spirit as “the Spirit of Christ,” as First Corinthians 15:45: “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit,” Second Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit.”
In the same place Strong quotes another writer as saying,
“The personality of the Holy Trinity are not separable individuals. Each involves the others; the coming of each is the coming of the others. Thus the coming of the Spirit must have involved the coming of the Son.”
In his book entitled The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, Henry Barclay Swete says this:
The Spirit in its working was found to be in effect the equivalent of Jesus Christ...where the possession of the Spirit of Christ is clearly regarded as tantamount to an indwelling of Christ Himself... “the Lord, the Spirit.” (i.e. Christ in the power of His glorified Life) are viewed as being in practice the same. Men who lived within a short space of time after the Ministry, the Ascension, and the Pentecost realized that where the Spirit was, and what the Spirit wrought was wrought in fact by Christ. Even in the word spoken by His Spirit through the prophets they recognized the voice of Christ. Through the Spirit of Christ, through whom the glorified Lord comes to His Church and sees as with eyes of flame and works and speaks, is neither the human spirit of Christ, nor the pre-existent Logos who was made flesh, yet it is so absolutely one in will and thought with the Divine-Human Christ that Christ is still in the Spirit present and at work on earth, dwelling in men and revealing Himself to them after a manner more expedient for them than if He were still visibly in their midst. Whether this equivalence is due to the perfect interpenetration of the Lord’s glorified humanity by the Spirit, or to His oneness with the Spirit in the mystery of the Divine Life, neither St. John nor any of the New Testament writers has taught us; the question did not lie within their scope, and possibly does not lie within the grasp of the human mind. The Spirit alone searches the depths of God, and where the Spirit is silent as to their contents it is hazardous and indeed vain to speculate.