If we believers in Christ see the vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ, we will concentrate our whole being on this Christ, and He will fill and saturate us until to us to live is Christ; for us to be full-grown in Christ is to be filled and saturated with Christ. Amen!
This week we are diving deeper in our prayerful study and consideration of the matter of the good land being a land of pomegranates.
Pomegranates are not only healthy for us to eat, but in the spiritual realm, they give us the impression of the fullness of life and of the abundance and beauty of life.
When you see a pomegranate that is ripened and look at it with its seeds, wow, you see not just life but the abundance of life.
The Lord Jesus said that He came so that we may have life and may have it abundantly. He didn’t come just for us to have life but so that we may have life abundantly (John 10:10).
In other words, if we come to the Lord to enjoy and experience Him, we will not only receive life but abundant life, life abundantly, even abundance of life.
This is what the Lord also said in John 4 when He met the Samaritan woman at the well.
He was physically thirsty, but she was spiritually thirsty; the thirsty Savior met a thirsty sinner, and both were satisfied because the living water flowed.
The Lord Jesus didn’t just quench her thirst; He confessed her sins for her, causing an opening in her being, and then gave her to drink the living water by His living words.
She not only drank and was satisfied; there was a fountain that sprang up in her to the extent that she went and told all the people of that city about Jesus.
The water that the Lord gives us is not just for us to have our thirst quenched; if we drink and eat the Lord, there will be a fountain springing up into eternal life from the innermost part of our being.
We think that we are thirsty for this or that, but our real thirst is for Christ Himself.
We think we’re hungry for this or that thing that the world has to offer, but our hunger is actually for Christ.
When we eat Him and drink Him, when we enjoy Him and experience Him, there’s an abundance of life.
And this life is flowing in our being and through us, not only quenching our thirst but being abundant to us and through us.
When we meet others, there’s living water flowing. And there’s the beauty of life about us.
When others look at us, when they meet us, they sense the sweetness of Christ.
It’s not our natural sweetness but the sweetness and beauty of Christ that is manifested through us as we enjoy and experience Christ as the reality of the pomegranate.
See the Vision of the All-inclusiveness of Christ and Concentrate our Being on Him to be Filled and Saturated with Him
The book of Colossians presents us with a vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ; if we see this vision, we will focus our whole being on Him (Col. 1:12; 2:9, 16-17; 3:10-11).
We will no longer focus on the self but on Christ.
Many times we focus on ourselves, on our needs, on what we want to do or need to do, and on the needs of those around us.
But when we see the vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ, wow, we will drop everything else and we will concentrate our whole being on this Christ!
He is all-inclusive and vast. He fills all things, He is the reality of all the positive things, and He is everything to God and to man.
When we see a vision of the extensiveness and all-inclusiveness of Christ, our whole being will be drawn to Him, we will concentrate only on Him, and we will allow Him to fill and saturate us.
We will no longer need things of Judaism, Gnosticism, mysticism, or asceticism; we will only want Christ.
We will not do anything to improve ourselves or perfect ourselves but we will focus on the unsearchably rich Christ.
Our whole being will be occupied with Him, with this vast, unsearchably rich, extensive Christ.
As we do this, as we enjoy the Lord little by little and day by day, He will make His home in our heart through faith (Eph. 3:17).
Then we, being rooted and grounded in love, will be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what is the breath, the length, the height, and the depth, that is, the universal dimensions of Christ (v. 18).
The result is that we will be filled unto all the fullness of God (v. 19).
Our whole being will be occupied with the vast Christ, and the unsearchably rich and extensive Christ will become our inner constitution.
Then, to us will be to live will be the Christ who takes possession of us and fills and occupies us with Himself (Phil. 1:20-21).
We have to admit that many times we live in ourselves and for ourselves, for we are so occupied with our problems, our needs, and the things related to us.
But when we see the vision of the all-inclusiveness of Christ, wow, our whole being will be concentrated on Him, and He will fill us and saturate us.
We do not become Christ-like by thinking about Him or merely by reading the Bible and memorizing many verses in the Bible.
We live Christ and express Him by first seeing the vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ and being attracted by Him to be possessed by Him and occupied with Him.
Then, gradually, this all-inclusive and extensive Christ will occupy our attention and will replace every element of our natural human life.
He will work Himself into us, dispense Himself into every part of our being, and slowly replace our natural element with Himself.
Our natural kindness will be replaced with Him as our kindness, and our natural humility will be replaced with Christ who is our humility.
Our natural love toward our parents, our spouse, and all men will be replaced with Christ as the reality of our love.
At best, our natural virtues are like polished copper, but the Lord as the reality of our virtues is real gold.
We need to enjoy Him and partake of His riches, even allow Him to fill us and saturate us with Himself, so that He may occupy our whole being, reconstitute us with Himself, and fill us with what He is.
When this takes place, we will live Christ, and for us to live will be the Christ who takes possession of us and fills and occupies us with Himself.
The more we enjoy Christ, the more He replaces our natural life with Himself, and we will be able to declare that to us to live is Christ, because this Christ who inwardly reconstitutes us and replaces us becomes our reality.
Lord Jesus, grant us to see the vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ. Enlighten the eyes of our heart to see Christ with all His riches, even to see the all-inclusive and extensive Christ as our God-allotted portion. Oh, what a Christ we have! We concentrate our whole being on You, Lord, for You are the all-inclusive One who is our portion and our everything. Fill us. Saturate us. Saturate our whole being with yourself. May our being be occupied with the vast and unsearchably rich Christ! May this all-inclusive Christ make His home deep down in our being until we are filled with the fullness of God. Oh Lord, saturate us and fill us with Yourself. Keep us enjoying You until we are inwardly replaced by Christ and occupied with the all-inclusive Christ. Oh Lord, may we be filled and saturated with Christ until to us to live is the Christ who takes possession of us and fills us with Himself! Fill us, Lord Jesus, and live in us today!
To be Full-Grown in Christ is to be Filled and Saturated with Christ by Enjoying and Experiencing Him
We need to grow in life unto maturity until we are full-grown in Christ.
To be full-grown in Christ is to be filled, saturated, and permeated with Christ (Col. 1:18).
For us to be full-grown in Christ is for us to be filled and saturated with Christ.
We remain ourselves but there’s a different constitution, a different intrinsic element in us that lives and is expressed.
We believers in Christ are in the process of being inwardly replaced and reconstituted with the Christ that we enjoy and experience until we are fully conformed to His glorious image and become the same as He is.
Day by day we are in the process of enjoying the Lord and growing in life unto maturity until we are full-grown in Christ, that is, until we are filled and saturated with the Christ that we enjoy and experience.
Our daily living is slowly becoming Christ living in us.
When our spouse gives us a hard time, we are learning to turn to our spirit and remain in the organic union with the Lord, not defending ourselves or vindicating ourselves but simply letting Christ live in us.
This is what we are learning to do: to let Christ live in us. It sounds so easy, but in practicality, it is not that easy.
We are so used to living in and by ourselves.
But we have been crucified with Christ and He now lives in us; the life which we live in the flesh we need to live in faith, by faith, and this faith is the organic union with the Lord in spirit (Gal. 2:20).
When we believed into Christ, we were grafted into Him. We were a branch from a wild olive tree which was grafted into Christ as the cultivated olive tree (Rom. 11:17).
First, we were cut off from our old source through repentance, faith, and baptism, and then we were joined to Christ in spirit, and we were even bound together with Him to be one with Him to enjoy all his riches.
Through this process of grafting, we are now joined to the Lord as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), and we daily receive the divine dispensing.
The divine life juice is flowing into our being day by day as we remain open to the Lord, and we are daily being filled and saturated with Christ.
We can now say, For me to live is Christ, for we are in Christ, Christ is in us, and He is saturating and permeating us with Himself.
We need to daily remain in the organic union with the Lord, in the intimate touch and fellowship with Him, until we have every part of our being saturated and occupied with Him (Eph. 3:17; Gal. 4:19).
Our spirit is one with the Lord, and Christ as life is in our spirit.
![I am crucified with Christ; and [it is] no longer I [who] live, but [it is] Christ [who] lives in me; and the [life] which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the [faith] of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Gal. 2:20 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, May be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are And to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God. Eph. 3:17-19 My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you. Gal. 4:19](https://i0.wp.com/www.agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/I-am-crucified-with-Christ-and-it-is-no-longer-I-who-live-but-it-is-Christ-who-lives-in-me-1-683x1024.jpg?resize=400%2C600&ssl=1 "I am crucified with Christ; and [it is] no longer I [who] live, but [it is] Christ [who] lives in me; and the [life] which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the [faith] of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Gal. 2:20 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, May be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are And to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God. Eph. 3:17-19 My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you. Gal. 4:19")
How about our emotion, mind, and will?
Are we filled and saturated with Christ in our emotions, in our way of thinking, in the way we love, and in our decisions?
Does Christ make His home in our heart to the extent that we are filled unto all the fullness of God? Is our will strong yet pliable, submissive to God?
Is our emotion fervent toward the Lord and cold toward the world?
We need to learn to open to the Lord and enjoy Him day by day so that we may be filled and saturated with Christ and are therefore full-grown in Christ, having every part of our being saturated with Christ.
This is the growth in life and the maturity in life, the issue of our experiencing the Christ revealed in the Epistle to the Colossians (Col. 2:9, 19; 3:4, 10-11).
May we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
This maturity will issue in the Body of Christ, the corporate expression of Christ by a group of perfected and built-up God-men who live Christ and express the One who is filling and saturating them with Himself.
May we all grow in life unto maturity little by little, day by day, until the Lord will gain a full-grown man, the Body of Christ, as an organism to express Him.
Lord Jesus, we want to arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ! Grow in us a little more today. Keep us open to Your divine dispensing so that we may be filled and saturated with Christ. Amen, Lord, fill us with Yourself. Saturate our mind, emotion, and will with Your element. Make Your home in our heart until we are filled unto all the fullness of God. We allow You, Lord, to occupy, saturate, and fill every part of our inner being with Yourself. May we be so full of Christ and so saturated with Christ that we can declare, To me to live is Christ! Amen, Lord! Gain the growth in life unto maturity in us and in all the saints! Gain a group of people who are filled and saturated with Christ to live Christ for the corporate expression of God! Amen, Lord, gain the Body of Christ, Your corporate expression on the earth!
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 James Lee in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Colossians, msg. 49, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Laboring on the All-inclusive Christ Typified by the Good land for the Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, for the Reality and the Manifestation of the Kingdom, and for the Bride to make Herself Ready for the Lord’s Coming (2023 Winter Training), week 9, entitled, A Land of Pomegranates.
- Similar articles on this topic:
– Living Christ as the Constituent of the New Man, via, Living to Him.
– The Ministry of the Spirit, via, Shepherding Words.
– The expression of Christ being the expression of God, a portion from, Christ in His Excellency, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee.
– “Christ in you the hope of glory” – the believers’ union with Christ as revealed in Colossians, article by David Yoon in, Affirmation and Critique.
– Christ sanctifying the church by cleansing her, a portion from, Life-Study of Ephesians, Chapter 54.
– Full salvation! Full salvation, a hymn via, Hymnal.net.
– The issue of God’s economy – the church, a portion from, The Revelation of the Mystery, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee.
– New Jerusalem, a City Saturated with Christ, article via, New Jerusalem blog.
– Saturated with God, a portion via, Life Messages, Vol. 2 (#42-75), Chapter 19, by Witness Lee. - Hymns on this topic:
– Lord, transform us to Thine image / In emotion, mind, and will; / Saturate us with Thy Spirit, / All our being wholly fill. / 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 and chorus)
– Jesus Lord, I’m captured by Thy beauty, / All my heart to Thee I open wide; / Now set free from all religious duty, / Only let me in Thyself abide. / As I’m gazing here upon Thy glory, / Fill my heart with radiancy divine; / Saturate me, Lord, I now implore Thee, / Mingle now Thy Spirit, Lord, with mine. (Hymns #1159 stanza 1)
– Only Christ, our Person, must remain; / From our aims, our goals we must refrain, / Till the church be only Christ Himself / Built up as the one new man, / Thus fulfilling God’s great plan of— / Mingling fully with the human race / To obtain a proper dwelling place, / ’Stablishing His kingdom’s rule and grace; / Over all the earth. / Not Himself just individually, / But the church together corporately, / Taking Christ as all in all, to be / The full-grown, perfect man. (Hymns #1180 stanza 2)
About aGodMan
Life-study of Colossians, 2nd edition, pp. 423-424, by Witness Lee
If we see the vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ, we will concentrate our whole being on this Christ, and He will fill and saturate us! Amen!
Our being will be occupied with the vast, unsearchably rich, extensive Christ, and He will live in us, for He will take possession of us, fill us, and occupy us with Himself.
This is to be full-grown in Christ: to be filled, saturated, and permeated with Christ.
Ameeeen. Oooh Lord Jesus….
Amen, Lord!
Enlighten our seeing with the all-inclusive Christ and occupy and possess our being with Him today!
Aaaaameeen!
Amen dear brother, may we see the vision of the all-inclusiveness and extensiveness of Christ, concentrate our whole being on Christ!
We need a vision of the extensiveness of Christ.
Christ is gold; He far surpasses in value anything we possess by nature.
For us, to live should be the Christ who has taken full possession of us, and who occupies us & fills us with Himself.
To be full-grown in Christ is to be filled & saturated with Him. This grafting is not easy to practice.
Every day, we must continually come back to Jesus and allow Him to live in us.
Aamen!
Yes Lord we want to be filled with the vast, unsearchable richness of Yourself.
Praise the Lord! 😃🙌🙋🏼🙏
https://youtu.be/uNIJqOfgJJg?si=8DhK7mZjqwmPqRy8
If we are to be delivered from the self, our natural, human life, we need to concentrate on something better – the All-Inclusive, extensive Christ!
We need a vision of such a one, to be strengthened into our inner man that this Christ would make His home in our hearts through faith.
He must fill us and occupy us and we must be saturated with Him that we may live Him and He would be magnified in us.
AMEN🕊️
*When Christ makes His home in our hearts, and when we are full of strength to apprehend with all the saints the dimensions of Christ and to know by experience His knowledge-surpassing love, we will be filled unto all the fullness of God, which is the church, the corporate expression of God for the fulfillment of His intention.
The fullness of God implies that the riches of all that God is have become His expression. When the riches of God are in God Himself, they are His riches. But when the riches of God are expressed, they become His fullness (John 1:16). All the fullness of God dwells in Christ (Col. 1:19; 2:9). Through His indwelling, Christ imparts the fullness of God into our being that we may be filled even unto the fullness of God to be the practical manifestation of the church, in which God may be glorified in His expression (v. 21).
Listen to the audio version of this article via,
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https://youtu.be/1u89EowjvVU
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5/21/24 A Land of Pomegranates (Week 9, Day 2)
In the book of Colossians, Christ is revealed as the extensive, all-inclusive One because the saints had been carried away with a cultural blend of Jewish religion and Greek philosophy. This mixture had become very prevailing in Asia Minor and had even invaded the church life and pervaded it. Thus, the revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ is given in order to deal with the problem of culture.
All-inclusive indicates all varied riches of Christ; extensive indicates the unlimitedness of the riches of Christ. A restaurant, for example, may offer all various kinds of food in a buffet, but they may run out of certain kinds of food. So, the foods may be all-inclusive, but they are not extensive.
In Colossians 2:16 and 17, Chrisr is presented as the body, the substance, of ALL the shadows, portrayed in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Christ is revealed as the reality of all the positive things in the universe. This makes Him extensive as well as all-inclusive.
The Colossians, although had already received Christ to be their everything, but they still held on to their Jewish religion, Greek philosophy, and culture. Like the Colossians, we need to see the vision of the wonderful Extensive, All-inclusive Christ, Who is already complete in Himself. Since we already have Him in our regenerated spirit, we need to drop everything, other than Christ because in Him, we no longer lack anything and His supply is limitless.
God’s intention is that we as His chosen people become saturated, permeated, filled, and clothed with Christ so that we may live Christ. God wants Christ to be our life and our living, to be everything to us in our daily walk. This is God’s eternal plan and His present economy. However, culture replaces Christ. In His creation of man, God intended to be everything to man: his life, joy, entertainment, provision, protection.
Paul’s intention in Colossians is to help the saints realize that there should not be any replacements for Christ. Rather, everything else must be replaced by Christ. Christ is in us as our life, and we need to walk in Him. If we have been rooted in Christ, and if we are being built up in Him, we shall walk in Him. We shall live, behave, and have our being in Him. This is to live Christ.
To live Christ is to have one living with Christ. This can be illustrated by the grafting of a branch from one tree into another tree. Through grafting, two lives become one. Hence, the process of grafting signifies our spiritual identification with Christ. We are identified with Christ, made one with Him, by being grafted into Him.
In Romans 11 Paul uses the example of branches from a wild olive tree grafted into a cultivated olive tree (Rom 11:17, 24). In order for grafting to take place, both trees must experience cutting. This cutting signifies the experience of being put to death. Apart from this cutting, grafting cannot take place.
In His crucifixion, Christ was cut, and He still bears the marks of this cutting. This means that within the being of the resurrected Christ, there is an opening into which we, the wild olive branches, can be grafted. However, if we would be grafted into Him, we also must be cut. Then we are joined to Him at the very place where both He and we have been cut. In a sense, the two cuts embrace each other. Through such an embrace, the grafting is accomplished, and the two trees become one.
When we remain grafted into Christ, He shall gradually flow our, fill us, and saturate us with Himself, in His life and nature. He shall eventually possess us, and make every room in our heart His Home. At this stage, we shall become full-grown in Christ, as mentioned by Paul in Ephesians 4:13b, which says, “… at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,”
To be a full-grown man is to have the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Full-grown man refers to the corporate Body of Christ. To have the fullness of Christ is to have the fullness of life and the abundance of life, as typfied by the pomegranate. In order for us to become the full-grown man is for us to have grown fully in the divine life and be built up into the Body of Christ to become His corporate expression.
Our seeing is our receiving and gaining. We need to see the vision of the wonderful, extensive, all-inclusive Christ.
Once we see this vision, our entire being will be attracted by this Christ and will be possessed by Christ and occupied, and replaced with Him.
Then the more we will be able to declare To me, to live is Christ. To us, to live will be the Christ who has taken full possession of us and who occupies us and fills us with Himself. Ameen!!!
[HWMR-Week 9 Day 2]
Amen, Lord, show us this vision. Bring us into the reality of You as the all-inclusive One.