Five Aspects of Gaining Christ that He might Gain us in our Experience of Christ

We want to be those who are gaining Christ that He may gain us in our experience of Christ.

As believers in Christ, we gain Christ that He might gain us (Phil. 3:12) in many different aspects; we need to experience Christ day by day so that we may gain Christ and He may gain us.

The apostle Paul is a very good pattern to us in the matter of enjoying, experiencing, and gaining Christ.

He did not only preach the gospel and teach the truth; he experienced Christ and laid forth his life and experience as a pattern for us to follow.

He imitated the Lord and he told us to imitate him so that we may walk even as the Lord walked.

In the book of Philippians, a book on the experience of Christ, we see the pattern of Paul in taking Christ as everything.

He took Christ as his life and as his everything.

We need to learn from Paul to take Christ as our living. He is not only our life within but also our living without.

We need to take Christ as our expression; we need to let Christ be expressed, manifested and magnified through us.

The result of our enjoyment and experience of Christ as life and everything to us is that we magnify Christ.

We need to take the mind of Christ as our mind. Christ had a particular mind, and He wants His mind to be in us.

We need to be found in Christ, having the righteousness of Christ as our righteousness; this means that He needs to live in us as our lived-out righteousness.

May we be saved from any effort to improve ourselves or perfect ourselves so that we may have our own righteousness!

May we be brought into the enjoyment and experience of Christ to the extent that Christ lives in us to be our righteousness.

One thing we should do: forgetting what is behind and stretching forward, we should take Christ as our goal.

Nothing on this earth should be our goal.

Only Christ is our goal. And Christ is also our virtues; we need to take Him as our virtues day by day. He is our power; He empowers us to live and do all things.

May we learn in all situations and circumstances to do all things in Christ, who empowers us. He is our secret; we need to learn the secret of being content in all things.

When Christ is our goal, our secret, and our power, we will be content in all things. We will also eagerly await His coming, having Christ as our expectation.

There is nothing here on earth that is our hope and expectation; a better job, a nicer car, or a larger house is not what we expect.

We take Christ as our expectation, for Christ in us is the hope of glory.

May we all learn from the apostle Paul to take Christ as everything in our daily experience for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

Five Aspects of Gaining Christ that He might Gain us in our Experience of Christ

In Phil. 3:12 Paul said that he wanted to gain Christ so that Christ may gain him; Christ gained us, now we want to gain Him.

He drew us with chords of a man and with bands of love, and He gained us; now we are believers in Christ who love Him and pursue Him.

But this is not the end; now we live a life of pursuing Christ and gaining Christ so that He may gain us in our experience of Christ.

According to our experience and according to the word of God, there are at least five wonderful aspects of gaining Christ that He might gain us.

Gaining Christ causes us to have a Sense of God’s Presence

First of all, gaining Christ causes us to have a sense of God’s presence (Exo. 33:11-14).

The presence of God is the pneumatic Christ, that is, Christ as the Spirit who is now mingled with our spirit (John 20:22).

When we experience Christ as life, we are gaining Christ so that He may gain us; the result is that we have the presence of God.

After reading and praying over the word of God, we sense that we are in God’s presence, we are in God, and we are mingled with Him as one.

It’s as if God is the realm in which we are; we can sense Him but we can’t see Him, and we can feel His presence but we can’t touch Him physically.

We should be afraid of losing the presence of the Lord; His presence is everything to us (2 Cor. 2:10; Eph. 4:30; 1 Thes. 5:19).

When we remain in the Lord’s presence, He enlivens us and keeps us in His presence; we may have felt we are dead and in darkness, but the Lord’s presence is full of light and life (Hosea 6:2).

The reality of the third day is the person, the presence, of the resurrected Christ with the reality of revival (Hab. 3:2).

When we are in the Lord’s presence, we are gaining Christ so that He may gain us, and we are in a revived state, full of life.

We have the sense that we live in the Lord’s presence.

Lord Jesus, we want to gain Christ so that He may gain us day by day. Bring us into Your presence and keep us here. We love to be one with You, in You and filled with You. We treasure Your presence, dear Lord. We do not want to lose Your presence, for Your presence is everything to us. Cause us to rise and be enlivened from any kind of death and darkness, and keep us in Your presence.

Gaining Christ causes us to Feel Bright and Clear Inwardly

The issue of our gaining Christ for Christ to gain us is that we feel bright and clear inwardly (Rev. 22:1; John 1:4; 8:12; Ezek. 1:22, 26).

We can testify to this from our daily experience of Christ.

When we contact the Lord and pray-read His word, we feel there’s a clear sky between us and Him, and He is on the throne above us.

All the darkness, murkiness, and death are gone; we are now filled with life and light.

This is because Christ is life, and this life is the light of men (John 1:14).

When we gain Christ that He may gain us, He as life and light infuses us with what He is.

Before we came to the Lord to contact Him, we may have sensed darkness and death within; the more we pray-read the word of God, the more we are shining within.

This is a proof that we have gained Christ.

When we gain Christ, we feel bright and clear inwardly.

We may not be so clear concerning what to do, where to go, and what to speak in a particular situation, but when we come to the Lord to gain Him, we will feel bright and clear inwardly.

Lord Jesus, we come to Your word to pray-read the word and be filled with You. Shine in us, Lord, and infuse us with Yourself as life. How we love to come to You to gain Christ so that Christ may gain us! We love to be clear, bright, and full of life inwardly as we come to Your word. Amen, Lord, may any darkness be dispelled and any death be removed from our being as we gain Christ that Christ may gain us!

Gaining Christ causes us to be Inwardly Supplied with Christ as Food and Drink

When we gain Christ so that He may gain us, when we experience Christ as our life day by day, we will feel inwardly supplied with Christ.

We will take Him as our spiritual food and spiritual drink, and we will be inwardly supplied with what He is as our life and life supply (1 Cor. 10:3-4; John 6:57; 4:10, 14, 24; 1 Cor. 12:3b, 13).

We can all testify to this from our experience.

When we come to the Lord in His word, when we come to the meetings of the church, we feel inwardly supplied with Christ.

We feel as if we had a good meal of delicious spiritual food and drink, for Christ is our supply to nourish us inwardly.

When we’re inwardly not supplied or malnourished, we need to come to the Lord to gain Him, for only He satisfies and supplies.

The sense of life within us gives us the feeling that we are empty, malnourished, and dissatisfied whenever we are not actively gaining Christ so that He may gain us.

May we come to eat the Lord time and time again, throughout the day, to be inwardly supplied with Himas our food and drink!

Lord Jesus, we take You as our living water and living bread to eat and drink of You so that we may live because of You. Amen, Lord, we give ourselves to You to gain Christ today and be inwardly supplied with Christ as our food and drink. You are our spiritual food. You are our spiritual drink. We come to You in Your word to eat and drink of You so that You may be our inward life and life supply. Hallelujah, when we eat Jesus in the word, we are satisfied and supplied!

Gaining Christ causes us to Grow in Life and be Transformed into His Image

When we gain Christ so that He may gain us, we grow in life and are transformed into His image (Col. 2:19; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 12:2).

To gain Christ is actually to have more of the element of God added to us, which results in our growth in life.

Day by day, as we contact the Lord and enjoy Him both personally and with the saints, there must be some growth in life.

Christ must increase in us, and we must decrease.

Furthermore, as Christ grows in us, we are inwardly transformed.

Maybe we used to have an improper attitude toward our parents and siblings, and no amount of outward correction or rebuking would fix that.

But as we grow in life, our attitude is adjusted, and we become proper in this matter.

As we grow in life, we are more and more restricted from doing things, speaking things, and going places, because the life of the Lord within us gives us a sense not to do something, not to speak something, and not to go somewhere.

We will deal with sins and mistakes, we will apologise and ask for forgiveness, and we will have a definite feeling concerning sin and failures.

We will also seek to consecrate ourselves to the Lord more, feeling that our consecration is too low and shallow.

There’s no way to determine a standard for consecration; the criterion of consecration depends on our level of life.

The more we grow in life, the more thorough our consecration is.

On the positive side, gaining Christ causes us to grow in life so that Christ may grow in us.

On the negative side, gaining Christ causes us to deal with many things, repent, ask for forgiveness, be limited, and renew our consecration.

May we remain in the process of eating and drinking the Lord so that we may gain Christ for Him to gain us day by day!

Lord Jesus, we want to experience Christ so that He may grow in us day by day. May Christ increase in our being, and may we decrease. Amen, Lord, grow in us. May Your life grow in us a little more today. Transform us from within. Conform us to Your image. We say Amen to what Your light exposes, and we confess our sins and wrongdoings. Lord Jesus, we want to deal with sins and mistakes so that life may grow in us. We consecrate ourselves to You afresh today. Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to gain Christ so that Christ may gain us in our experience of Christ!

Gaining Christ causes us to have Vitality and to Take Action

One of the most wonderful aspects of gaining Christ is that we have vitality and take action (Dan. 11:32b; Acts 1:8; 5:20; 13:1-4; 1 Cor. 14:31; cf. Ezek. 3:1-3; Psa. 68:11-13, 19).

This doesn’t mean that we burn with some strange fire or being stirred in our natural zeal, but that we are vitalized.

The result of gaining Christ is not that we strive in our natural man to do something for God.

Rather, we have a spontaneous vitality, we take action, and we are able to function in the meetings of the church because we have gained something of Christ.

When we experience the life of Christ within us, we will sense that Christ is not dead or a doctrine; rather, He is living, active, and full of life.

And we will be vitalized by this living One within us.

When we experience Christ as life and therefore gain Christ, there will surely be some activities of life in us.

We will sing, enjoy the Lord, and praise Him.

The life of Christ in us is moving, living, and active, and whenever we touch the Lord, we are being vitalized and motivated to take action.

This is our experience many times.

We may “drag our bones to the meeting” but, after a few minutes of being under the divine dispensing, we are vitalized in our spirit, soul, and body, to the extent that we are filled with the Lord and we praise Him, sing to Him, and speak for Him.

Christ is the most living, vigorous, and vital One; we just need to gain Christ, and we will be made just like Him in our organic union with Him.

Lord Jesus, we want to enjoy and experience You as life so that Your life may vitalize us and cause us to take action. Hallelujah for the vital divine life in us. Praise the Lord, we can gain Christ and we can be vitalized, be full of life, and be active in the Lord and with the Lord! Amen, Lord, we want to gain You today. We exercise our spirit to contact You and gain more of You. We want to gain Christ so that Christ may gain us in our experience of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Minoru Chen in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1967, vol. 1, pp. 65-68, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing, Experiencing, and Enjoying Christ as Revealed in Philippians (2023 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 1, entitled, Taking Christ as our Everything to Gain Him by Denying our Self and Turning to our Spirit.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Lord, Thy life abundant, / Flowing, rich and free, / Constantly refreshes / And empowers me. / Death by life is swallowed, / Weakness is made strong, / All my bonds are broken, / Gloom is turned to song. (Hymns #841 stanza 4)
  – God hath us regenerated / In our spirit with His life; / But He must transform us further- / In our soul by His own life. / Spreading outward from our spirit / Doth the Lord transform our soul, / By the inward parts renewing, / Till within His full control. (Hymns #750 stanzas 2-3)
  – Christ to me is so subjective, / Life imparting all the way; / As the Spirit He revives me / And refreshes day by day. / Christ to me is so subjective, / All my being He transforms; / By the mind and will renewing / To His image He conforms. (Hymns #537 stanzas 2-3)