Abiding in the Lord to Enjoy His Life: CHAPTER ONE ABIDING IN THE LORD AND ENJOYING HIS LIFE

CHAPTER ONE

ABIDING IN THE LORD AND ENJOYING HIS LIFE

Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:1-3; 2:27-28; John 15:4-5

FOUR MYSTERIOUS MATTERS

Let us first consider the main points of the Scripture verses cited in this message. In the first passage, 1 John 1:1-3, are three very precious verses. They are precious because they refer to four mysterious matters, all of which are divine. These four divine, mysterious matters are 1) the Word of life, 2) the life having been manifested, 3) the eternal life being reported to the believers, and 4) the believers having fellowship with the apostles and the apostles’ fellowship being the fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. The life here is the divine, eternal life, which is a mystery. Then this eternal life produces another mystery, that is, the mystery of the fellowship of the divine life. Therefore, the mysterious fellowship of the eternal life is the subject of this Epistle of John.

THE WORD OF LIFE

At the very beginning of John’s Epistle, he speaks of “the Word of life.” This means that when we hear “the Word of life,” we obtain eternal life and never die. “The Word of life” refers to the Lord of grace who is God incarnated to be a man called Jesus, whom men could approach and upon whose bosom His disciples even reclined. The four Gospels tell us that of all the times He met with people, there was not even one time when they had a so-called worship service. The Bible never says that this incarnated God displayed His power by sitting in the highest place, telling people to worship Him, but instead it says that every time He met with people, He was informal. We may all have the religious concept that whenever we come into a meeting we should be very quiet. If someone shouts, “Hallelujah,” we may think he is out of order. However, the Psalms tell us that we should shout loudly and joyfully to the Lord: “Make a joyful noise to Jehovah, all the earth” (100:1). To make a noise is to speak not in a normal voice but to shout loudly. When we come to the meetings every Lord’s Day, we should not keep religious rituals and perform orderly ceremonies. We have to realize that we are coming to the Lord of grace to hear and enjoy the Word of life, so we should not feel restrained and remain quiet; we all should shout praises together.

In 1954 I held a conference in Hong Kong. A Western missionary from the Brethren who was teaching in Japan had contacted the brothers. He was attracted by the brothers and therefore came to the conference. Afterward he said, “I really admire this conference. But there was one thing I did not agree with. In your meetings the prayer after the singing of hymns is too loud and noisy.” I said, “Brother, shouting is truly in the Bible. Please look at the record where the children of Israel rebuilt the temple after their return from captivity, when the foundation of the temple was laid. All the people shouted with a great shout and the noise was heard far off.” Moreover, the book of Isaiah says, “Cry out and give a ringing shout, / O inhabitant of Zion,” and “With a voice of shouting declare” (12:6; 48:20). The New Testament also says that when the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time, riding on a donkey, “the crowds who went before Him and those who followed cried out, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! And…all the city was stirred” (Matt. 21:9-10). The religious people such as the chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees held these things in disdain. They were indignant about what they saw, and said, “Do you hear what these are saying?” (vv. 15-16). The Lord answered and said, “I tell you, If these shall be silent, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). This is the mystery of the Word of life.

ABIDING IN THE LORD BEING THE SUBJECT OF JOHN’S WRITINGS

The second passage is 1 John 2:27-28. Verse 27a says, “The anointing which you have received from Him abides in you.” The word for abide here and the word for abide in John 15:4 are the same Greek word. The emphasis of these two verses is that we must abide in the Lord by the teaching of the anointing so that when the Lord is manifested we may have boldness and not be put to shame.

The third passage is John 15:4-5. These two verses contain two main points, which are really two sides of one important point: the believers need to abide in the Lord, and the Lord will also abide in the believers. This is our general subject: “Abiding in the Lord to Enjoy His Life,” and it is also the subject of John’s writings. John wrote the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the book of Revelation. In his Gospel and Epistles, he particularly used the word abide. The Chinese Union Version of the Bible is one of the best translations, but regretfully the word abide is not properly translated in the Gospel of John, and it is correct in only a few places in 1 John. Due to this kind of carelessness in translation, it is unavoidable that much of the true meaning of this word is lost. For example, in John 15, by rendering “abiding in the Lord” as “always being in the Lord,” the translators altered the meaning of the entire verse. We thank the Lord that by His mercy and by our own experience we were gradually enlightened by Him to see that this is not a matter of “always being in” but a matter of actually “abiding in.”

We were not the first ones to see the truth concerning abiding in the Lord; there have been many saints who pursued the Lord throughout the ages who all saw this truth and wrote many books about it, the most famous of which is Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ. Although many saints throughout the ages have seen the matter of abiding in the Lord, according to what we have read and to our knowledge of the truth in the Bible, we can say that there has not yet been a book written which covers the matter of “abiding in the Lord and enjoying His life.” Even the word enjoy is seldom used in the spiritual books that have been written throughout the ages.

EATING, DRINKING, AND ENJOYING THE LORD

Some people may say that the New Testament does not use the word enjoy. But the Bible does speak of eating and drinking. Anything related to eating and drinking must be a matter of enjoyment. The Lord Himself said, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes into Me shall by no means ever thirst” (John 6:35). He also said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me,…out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water” (7:37-38). In addition, the apostle Paul said that the Israelites who followed Moses in the wilderness, “all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink” (1 Cor. 10:3-4). Then in the book of Revelation written by John, the Lord Jesus promised, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life” (2:7). He also said, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give of the hidden manna” (v. 17). These verses cover the matters of eating and drinking, which are certainly matters for enjoyment.

The whole Bible ends with a promise concerning eating: “Blessed are those who wash their robes”—that is, those who wash their conduct in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus— “that they may have right to the tree of life” (22:14). The entire Bible also ends with a call concerning drinking: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come!….And let him who is thirsty come; let him who wills take the water of life freely” (v. 17). Therefore, although the New Testament does not use the word enjoy, the fact of enjoyment is there. Likewise, the Bible does not use the expression the Triune God, but the fact of the Triune God is there. When we baptize people into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we immerse them into the Triune God. Likewise, when we eat and drink the Lord, we enjoy Him.

Sorry to say, the natural human mind does not have the concept of eating the Lord as the tree of life and drinking Him as the water of life. Even we ourselves had to pass through many years of experience and needed the Lord’s leading before we could have the boldness to speak this kind of truth. Before 1958 we rarely used the terms enjoying the Lord and eating and drinking the Lord. It was not until the spring of 1958 when we had a series of more than forty conference meetings over a period of a little more than a month that we spoke of eating, drinking, and enjoying the Lord. From that time onward we have been speaking about enjoyment. The more we spoke, the more the Bible was opened to us on this point, until we saw that the entire Bible is about eating the Lord, drinking the Lord, and enjoying the Lord.

Genesis tells us from the outset that after God created man, the first thing He did was not to give man the Ten Commandments or to say to man, “Adam, you must worship Me and not forget your source. In addition, I am a proper God who is righteous, moral, holy, and full of light, so you must also behave accordingly and not disobey.” This kind of concept is a product that evolved from human culture; it was not God’s revelation to man. After God created man, the first thing He did was to bring man to the tree of life and say to him, “Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). Here God made a covenant with man, and this covenant was about the matter of eating. In other words, eating is the most important matter related to man’s existence; if man eats the right things, he will live longer, but if he eats the wrong things, he will jeopardize his health and invite death. For this reason, after God finished creating man, He immediately spoke to man about the matter of eating. However, because Eve saw that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was good for food, she was tempted and ate wrongfully. This resulted in the fall of man.

After man fell, God came to save him and again brought in the matter of eating. Exodus shows us that the children of Israel not only received God’s redemption through the blood of the lamb, but they were also strengthened to leave Egypt by eating the flesh of the lamb and the unleavened bread. Then after they were delivered, they went into the wilderness and ate manna every day until they entered the land of Canaan. After entering Canaan, there was still the matter of eating. God wanted them to go up to Jerusalem three times a year for the feasts, bringing the best tenth of their produce from the land to eat, drink, and enjoy before God (Deut. 14:22-23). Thus, we see that the entire Bible speaks of the matter of eating, but regrettably most Christians overlook this point.

ABIDING IN THE LORD AND ENJOYING HIS LIFE

Eating is an enjoyment, and abiding is also an enjoyment. The purpose of our speaking about abiding in the Lord at this time is that we may enjoy the Lord’s life. There is a hymn in Chinese that says, “Abiding in the Lord, His fatness to enjoy; / Abiding in the Lord, His light will brightly shine.” This is wonderful!

Before we speak of the Lord’s life, we must mention the Lord’s redemption. The Bible reveals that God has an economy in this universe. The Greek word for economy is oikonomia which means a household administration, so it is also an arrangement. Paul’s use of the word implies that God established an economy, that is, a plan, an arrangement, to have a great enterprise. Salvation is God’s universal economy applied to us. God’s salvation is that He wants to work Himself into us.

God is a God of purpose. According to His eternal purpose, He has a plan; this plan is His economy. In His economy God created the heavens and the earth and then created man in such a way that He could work Himself into man in order to produce an entity of dual nature, human and divine, to express Himself. When this economy reaches us, it becomes our salvation. This is the central revelation of the entire Bible, especially of the New Testament. The center of the entire New Testament is the revelation to us of God’s eternal economy.

For the accomplishment of His economy, God especially created a spirit in us that He might dispense Himself, the Triune God, into us to be our life, so that we could be one with Him and become a dual-natured entity, an entity with both humanity and divinity, for His expression. This concept does not exist in religion, philosophy, or ethical teachings. In the history of the human race, whether with Confucius in the East, the philosophers in the West, or the religionists throughout the ages, no one has spoken of this. This concept is found only in the Bible. But even in the Old Testament, this view is mysteriously hidden in types and prophecies. It is only in the New Testament, especially in the writings of the apostle Paul, that the word economy is used emphatically to reveal to us God’s plan and purpose.

A CONTRAST BETWEEN RELIGION AND GOD’S SALVATION

The natural human concepts, especially those of the Chinese who have been steeped in and influenced by the ethical and moral teachings of Confucius and Mencius, are full of the idea of human ethics. The so-called human ethics are those principles that distinguish us from beasts, principles that are normal and natural according to human nature.

In addition, people have been influenced by society and philosophy in general. Thus, there is not a trace of the concept of God’s economy in our minds. Even when we believe in the Lord, we may think that we have joined a religion. When I was in elementary school, I had a class on religion which taught that “religion regulates man’s heart.” A deeper saying is that “religion teaches according to its beliefs.” This kind of concept is within us, even if we do not speak it.

Many of us were not clear when we believed in the Lord, and we did not know what we were doing when we believed. But as to another matter we were clear: We knew we were miserable sinners without the Lord and without rest, and as soon as we believed and prayed, we immediately had joy and peace; our burden of sin was rolled away, and our misery disappeared. We thank the Lord for this. But after believing in the Lord, even though we may not have said it aloud, within us we had the concept that we were believing in a religion, and in our living we practiced a religion, which means that we practiced “regulating our heart.” For example, before we believed in the Lord, even though we may not have committed great crimes, we still liked to take the easy way out or take advantage of others; then after believing in the Lord, we felt in our heart that we had believed in a religion, so we should not do anything bad. This is to practice “regulating our heart.” When some children get baptized, their parents tell them, “You used to speak evilly to people, but now that you are baptized, you cannot do that anymore.” This is to control the hearts of your children. Sometimes we rebuke the brothers and sisters, saying, “You have been going regularly to the meetings; how could you still do such a thing?” This is religion which regulates the human heart; it is not God’s salvation.

The Lord’s salvation is not a matter of practicing a religion for the regulating of our heart. In our natural man, it is very easy for us to have a religious concept. The Bible says that wives should submit to their husbands and that husbands should love their wives. It is very easy for us to make such words religious practices for controlling our heart. However, this is absolutely not God’s salvation. God’s salvation is to dispense Himself into us as our life to become our salvation. For example, wherever I go, a number of people say that my ties are too plain. I reply, “I wear these not because I am under a religious restriction but because I abide in the Lord and He regulates me by His life.” Any practice that comes from human teaching or guidance belongs to religion, while any action that arises from the inner sense of life is an issue of God’s salvation.

THE MANIFESTATION OF THE ETERNAL LIFE

The Lord’s salvation is that He dispenses Himself into us as our life. This is through the mysterious Word of life. First John says that this life which is the eternal life and which has been manifested today is Jesus Christ Himself. The eternal life is mysterious, abstract, and invisible and cannot be felt or touched by anyone, yet this life has been manifested, shown to, and seen by men. The word for seen indicates that something is not only looked at but also observed distinctly and investigated clearly in a thorough manner; it compares with the examination by a doctor to diagnose a patient’s condition. John says that the Lord Jesus, who is the Word of life and the inner life, was manifested, and John saw Him and even touched Him with his own hands. Both John and his brother James were ranked with the twelve disciples of the Lord Jesus, and their mother was Mary’s sister, so they were the Lord’s cousins in the flesh. For three and a half years they were with the Lord Jesus. They not only saw the Lord Jesus but also observed and touched Him. Touched indicates that this life was real and substantial to the apostles.

THE CONVEYING OF THE ETERNAL LIFE

When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He said, “I am the bread of life,” “I have come that they may have life,” and “I am…the life” (John 6:35; 10:10; 14:6). John said that the Lord Jesus is this life and that he saw, handled, and was made sure of Him; then John reported this eternal life to us. He did not report merely by speaking and preaching about it, but he conveyed and transmitted it into us. It is just as the electricity in the electric plant; by our turning on the switch the electricity is conveyed into the lightbulbs to make them shine. The Lord Jesus is God incarnated to be a man of flesh and blood so that men could see and touch Him. We thank the Lord that He did not stay in the flesh; He went through the processes of death and resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) in order to transmit Himself into us. Every time we meet, we receive the transmission of this Spirit into us. This Spirit is the Lord Jesus and the eternal life.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE ETERNAL LIFE

The conveying of the Word of life brings in a fellowship, a flow. This may be compared to lightbulbs; if there is no electricity in them, they are not related to one another or in fellowship with the electric plant. But once the electricity is transmitted into the lightbulbs, the flow of electricity brings the lightbulbs into one electric current, which makes them shine and causes them to have fellowship with the electric plant. In other words, the flow of electricity causes the lightbulbs to have fellowship with one another and with the electric plant. Then, if the lightbulbs want to maintain their fellowship, they must abide in the electricity and not cut off the switch. When the lightbulbs abide in the electricity, they enjoy the electricity, and the electricity constantly transmits and supplies the lightbulbs, making them shine and function. If a lightbulb burns out, it cannot function properly because it is not abiding in the electricity; it should only be thrown into the garbage can. This is what the Lord Jesus said: “He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit;…If one does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is dried up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:5-6). When we abide in the Lord, we enjoy the Lord as our life. If the lightbulb abides in the electricity, it will shine by enjoying the source of power, and the owner will not throw it away. In the same way, if we want to shine and function, we must abide in the Lord and enjoy Him as our supply and source.

GOD’S SALVATION BEING FOR US TO ABIDE IN THE LORD AND ENJOY HIS LIFE

God’s goal in creating us was not for ethics or morality but for our containing Him. God desires to enter into us to be our life so that we can enjoy this life. How do we enjoy this life? It is by abiding in the Lord. Today the Lord as the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) abides in our spirit. Therefore, we need to abide in the Lord. This is not an outward matter of having a religion to regulate the human heart but an inward law of life. Whenever we are wrong, the inward life gives us a sense to remind us we are wrong. In this way we who abide in the Lord do not live a life of ethics and morality but instead live a life that is the Lord’s. Our living must be the expression of the Lord Himself. It is not that we are humble because the Bible teaches us to be humble; instead, we are humble because when we abide in the Lord and enjoy His life, we live Him out and He Himself becomes our humility, ethics, and morality of a higher standard. This kind of ethics and morality is of life and is the flowing out of life. It is not of religion, and it is not produced from ethical regulations.

Hymn #476 in our Chinese hymnal says, “Live in the light of life, fellowship with the Lord; / Gaze at the Lord’s dear face, follow the Spirit’s move; / Pathway of glory take, praising Him day by day; / Live in the light of life.” I hope that we can all experience abiding in the Lord and enjoying His life in this way until our living is transformed and we are blessed by the Lord’s grace.