Christ should have preeminence in our tripartite being and in our spiritual experiences; He as the all-inclusive, extensive One needs to have preeminence in our being in all things.
He came into us to be our life, and He is infusing Himself into us to be the very loving essence with which we love Him.
In ourselves we have no love for the Lord, but when we look to Him, when we enjoy Him in His word, He infuses His loving essence into us and generates within us the love with which we love Him.
Christ must have preeminence in our love; we may have some love toward Him and toward others, but our love is not that much. We need to spend time with the Lord, allow Him to love us, and learn to love Him.
Even us brothers, we need to learn to contact the Lord in an affectionate way, loving the Lord and being loved by Him, so that we may respond to His love.
We love the Lord because He first loved us, and we love others because the Lord puts love in us. Our love toward the Lord is a response to His love toward us; His love is the source, and our love is the receiver.
Praise the Lord, the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), and with this love we love the Lord and we also love others!
God dispenses Himself as the Spirit into us, and His divine attribute of love comes along with His life to cause us to have genuine love.
What we have by birth is a form of love – we have the human virtue of love, which is a “glove love” – it looks like love but it is not full of reality.
When we have Christ dispensed into us as the Spirit, we are filled with His love; we can then love God, love one another, love the church, love the saints, and love the people who are not that lovable.
Our love for the Lord must be absolute; He wants us to love Him with all our heart, and He wants to be the center of our heart.
On one hand we need to follow the Lord by taking up our cross, denying the self, and losing the soul life; on the other hand, when we see this all-inclusive, extensive Christ, we love Him, and we are infused with His love.
In this way Christ becomes preeminent in our love, and we give Him the first place in our love.
When we give Christ the first place in our love, we will love Him first; we will not hate others but rather we will love them with Christ as our love, and we will give the Lord the highest and best love.
We will value Christ above our job, our business, our family, our livelihood, and our relationships. What a Christ we have!
Christ should have the Preeminence in our Tripartite Being, for He is our very Life
God willed to make known to us what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
Christ has become not only our Savior and Lord, but our very life; when Christ our life is manifested, we will also be manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4).
As our life, Christ must become everything to us in our daily living; He should have the preeminence in our tripartite being.
The Christ who indwells us is not a small or limited Christ – He’s the image of the invisible God, the embodiment of the fullness of God, and the focal point of God’s economy.
He is bigger and wider than the universe, He fills all things, and He dwells in us, waiting for the opportunity to spread Himself throughout our being, so that we may live Him out.
May we learn to give Him all the room in our being, for Christ lives in us and dwells in us to be our hope of glory.
He wants to be the first not only in our personal universe but also in our tripartite being; this means that Christ should have preeminence in our body, in our soul, and in our spirit.
The God of peace wants to sanctify us wholly, and that our spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thes. 5:23). Christ wants to sanctify us by saturating and permeating all the three parts of our being with Himself.
He is both objective and subjective to us; we worship the enthroned Christ in the heavens, but we experience, enjoy, and partake of the indwelling Christ in our spirit, and we are one with Him in a very subjective way (1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 3:17).
On one hand Christ is on the throne administrating the universe to accomplish His economy; as such a One, we worship Him. On the other hand, Christ indwells us and is one spirit with us, and as such a One, we experience, enjoy, and partake of Him.
He is so big that the universe exists in Him; the ever-expanding universe which is too big for our mind to comprehend is much smaller than Christ, and this One is our portion!
When we see the all-inclusive Christ and realise how vast, immense, and all-inclusive He is, we will realize that no problem is too great for Him but rather, He is the reality of all the positive things.
The reason we still desire good things apart from Christ is that we didn’t see that He is the reality of all the positive things; we may think we need this or that thing, but the only thing we need is Christ, the all-inclusive and extensive One.
We need to be infused, saturated, and permeated with the all-inclusive, extensive, and preeminent Christ until in our experience He is everything to us (see Col. 2:16-17; 3:4, 10-11).
Because this One is our life, all that He has and has attained and obtained has become subjective to us; universally, Christ is extensive, but in our experience, He is our life, our being (Rom. 8:34, 10).
The all-inclusive, extensive Christ who is greater than the universe and in whom all the fullness is pleased to dwell – this One dwells in us to become subjective to us, and He wants to be preeminent in our tripartite being.
The content and constituent of our being should only be the all-inclusive, extensive Christ. We should allow Christ to fill our entire being and replace every aspect of our natural life with Himself.
May we see a revelation of this all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and may we allow Him to fill our entire being until He replaces every aspect of our natural life with Himself!
Our human will needs to match the divine will; this doesn’t happen too often, so when we see the divine will and we are one with the Lord, we need to ask Him to do in us whatever He wants to do in order to accomplish His purpose.
We need to cooperate with the Lord in prayer by choosing His will to be done in us, for it is our deep desire to please Him and be one with Him.
Lord Jesus, have the preeminence in our tripartite being. Thank You for coming into us to be our life in a subjective way; we can now experience, enjoy, and partake of the indwelling Christ in our spirit! Hallelujah, we are joined to the Lord as one spirit, and the all-inclusive, extensive, preeminent Christ dwells in us! Amen, Lord Jesus, infuse us, saturate us, and permeate us with the all-inclusive, extensive, preeminent Christ until in our experience You become everything to us! May the content and constituent of our being only be the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and may this wonderful Christ fill our entire being until He replaces every aspect of our natural life with Himself!
Christ should have the Preeminence in our Spiritual Experiences – we are Organically One with Him
It is a big trap for a seeking believer to seek experiences; experiences are not meaningful at all unless they are the experience of Christ becoming our experience.
As believers in Christ, we need to let Christ have the preeminence not only in our tripartite being but also in our spiritual experiences.
We shouldn’t merely seek for spiritual experiences but rather, love the Lord, seek the Lord, and desire to experience Him; then, His experience becomes our experience, and this is a genuine spiritual experience.
The history of Christ is the experience of a Christian, and the experience of Christ is the history of the Christian (1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 6:3-5; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 2:5-6).
He has become everything to us, for we and Him are organically joined in spirit.
It is of God that we are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God – both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
We were baptized into Christ and into His death; we were buried with Him through baptism so that just as Christ was raised from the dead, so we may walk in newness of life, living in the likeness of His resurrection.
Hallelujah, we were crucified with Christ and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us; and the life which now we live in the flesh we live in faith, in the organic union with Christ for Him to live in us.
We were dead in sins and offenses, but God raised us up together with Christ and seated us together with Him in Christ Jesus!
Hallelujah, Christ’s history is our experience, and Christ’s experience is our history as believers in Christ!
The history of Christ becomes our experience and our spiritual history because we are in an organic union with the Lord.
In our organic union with Christ, whatever Christ passed through has become our history; simply by abiding in Him as the vine, His experiences become our history and our experiences today (John 15:1, 4-5).
In Colossians especially there are a number of phrases that point to our experience of Christ, and these give us a complete picture of the proper experience of Christ.
In Col. 1:27-28 we see that Christ is in us – the hope of glory, and we are to grow in Him until we are becoming full grown in Christ.
In Col. 2:6 we see that, even as we have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, we should walk in Him; on one hand we have received Him, on the other, we should walk in Him, having been rooted and being built up in Him.
In v. 8 we see that we should be according to Christ and not allow anyone to carry us off as spoil through his philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.
In v. 13 we see that God made us alive together with Christ, having forgiven all our offenses, and in vv. 19-20 we see that we hold Christ as the Head, out from whom all the Body grows with the growth of God.
Hallelujah, we have been joined to the Lord as one spirit, and He is the preeminent One in our spiritual experiences, for our genuine experiences are actually the experience of Christ!
Lord Jesus, we give You the preeminence in our tripartite being and in all our spiritual experiences. We do not want to seek any experience that is apart from You. Lord, may we experience You in what You are and what You have accomplished. Thank You for joining us with You as one spirit, for in this organic union what You are and have becomes ours! Hallelujah, we can experience Christ in His incarnation, human living, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension because we are in an organic union with Him!
Read this article in the Romanian language / citiți acest articol și în limba română la următorul link, Cristos ar trebui să aibă preeminență în ființa noastră tripartită și în experiențele noastre spirituale.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Colossians, pp. 443-444 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ (2019 Thanksgiving Conference), week 3 on the topic of, The All-inclusive, Extensive Christ Having the Preeminence in All Things.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Christ is the hope of glory, my very life is He, / He has regenerated and saturated me; / He comes to change my body by His subduing might / Like to His glorious body in glory bright! (Hymns #949)
– I am crucified with Christ, / And the cross hath set me free; / I have ris’n again with Christ, / And He lives and reigns in me… / This the story of the Master, / Thru the Cross, He reached the Throne, / And like Him our path to glory, / Ever leads through death alone. (Hymns #482)
– Oh, what a preeminent Christ! / I live for Your sake, not my own. / Your magnification comes forth / From life flowing out of Your throne. / Lord, You are the One seated there. / We all are enjoying Your reign. / The church is Your Kingdom on earth, / Upholding Your sanctified name! (Song on, Oh, What a Preeminent Christ)
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[…] articol este o traducere în limba română a articolului, Christ should have Preeminence in our Tripartite Being and in our Spiritual Experiences, inspirat din înviorarea de dimineață asupra, Cunoașterea și experimentarea Cristosului […]