CHRIST OUR LIFE.

September, 2008


Excerpt from the book “The normal Christian life”, by Watchman Nee.

The Cross has been given to procure salvation for us.
The Spirit has been given to produce salvation in us.
Christ risen and ascended is the basis of our salvation.
Christ in our hearts by the Spirit is its power.

“I thank God through Jesus Christ!” That exclamation of the Apostle Paul is fundamentally the same in its import as his other words in Gal. 2:20 which we have taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ”.
We saw how prominent is the word “I” throughout Romans 7, culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am…….”
Then follows the shout of deliverance “Thank God……JESUS CHRIST’! and it is clear that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life of Christ alone.
We think of the Christian life as a “changed life”, but it is not that.
What God offers is an “exchanged life”, a substituted life, and Christ is our substitute within.
“I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me”.
This life is not something which we ourselves have to produce. It is Christ’s own life reproduced in us.

…………God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of his grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in packets, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we can take and work on as a kind of capital.
He has given only one gift to meet all our need: “His Son Jesus Christ”.
As I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need -- in my stead.
Remember the word in the first epistle of John: “God gave us eternal life, and this life is IN His Son. He that has the Son has the life, and he that has not the Son of God has not the life”. (I John 5:11, 12).
The life of God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the Son.
It is “eternal life IN Christ Jesus our Lord, (Rom.6:23).
Our relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.

It is a blessed thing to discover the difference between Christian graces and Christ; to know the difference between meekness and Christ, between patience and Christ, between love and Christ.
Remember again what is said in I Cor. 1:30:”Christ Jesus …….was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption”.
The common conception of sanctification is that every item of the life should be holy; but that is not holiness, it is the fruit of holiness. “Holiness IS Christ.
It is the Lord Jesus Christ being made over to us to be that.
So you can put anything there: love, humility, power, self-control. Today there is a call for patience: He is our patience! Tomorrow there may be a call for purity: He is our purity! He is the answer to every need.
That is why Paul speaks of the ”fruit of the Spirit” as one (Gal 5:22) and not of “fruits” as separate items.
God has given us His Holy Spirit, and when love is needed the fruit of the Spirit is love; when joy is needed the fruit of the Spirit is joy.
It is always true.
It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it be a hundred and one different things, God has always one sufficient answer, His Son Jesus Christ, and He is the answer to every human need.

How can we know more of Christ in this way? Only by way of an increasing awareness of need. Some are afraid to discover deficiency in themselves, and so they never grow.
Growth “in grace” is the only sense in which we can grow, and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us.
We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular circumstance.
Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of God’s supply.
Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered.
“Christ my life” is the secret of enlargement.

We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the two. Believe me, it is the difference between heaven and hell. It is not something to be talked about as a satisfying thought; it is stark reality.
“Lord, I cannot do it, therefore, I will no longer try to do it.”
This is the point most of us fall short of. “Lord, I cannot”; therefore I will take my hands off; from now on I will trust You for that.
We refuse to act; we depend on him to do so, and then we enter fully and joyfully into the action that He initiates.
It is not passivity, it is a most active life, trusting the Lord like that; drawing from Him, taking Him to be our very life, letting Him live his life in us as we go forth in His Name.

The Normal Christian Life.
By Watchman Nee.
Pages 125 – 128.

Reflections, Sept./’08.