God’s will is that the all-inclusive, extensive Christ be our portion, our life, our constituent, and our peace; we should estimate and evaluate everything according to this all-inclusive, extensive Christ.
Furthermore, we need to be infused, saturated, and permeated with the all-inclusive, extensive Christ until in our experience He is everything to us. Amen!
If we read the book of Colossians with the glasses of God’s economy on, we will see that God’s will in His economy is to work the wonderful, all-inclusive, extensive Christ into our being to be our life and everything, so that we may become the corporate expression of the Triune God (Col. 1:27; 3:4, 10-11).
He knows where we are, what we go through, how we feel, and what we really need, so in His economy He arranges all things for Christ to be wrought into our being for the building up of the church.
So we do well to not only understand and know this, but even more to pray short prayers again and again, to cooperate with Him.
When we were regenerated we were connected to Him organically; we were grafted as branches in the vine, and Christ as the vine knows what we need, He supplies us with what we require, and we simply need to be open to Him and receive His divine dispensing.
The center of God’s economy is the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and God’s dispensing is altogether related to Christ and focused on Him.
God wants to dispense all that He is in Christ into us; for this, He came into us, and He is waiting for our cooperation in prayer, our willingness to allow Him to work Himself into us. Amen!
God’s Christ, as He is unveiled in the book of Colossians, is both all-inclusive and extensive; He is the centrality and universality of God’s economy, for He is both the center and the circumference of God’s economy.
Now God wants to work His Christ into us so that He may be our everything; He wants to work Christ into every part of our being so that Christ may be filled with Christ, saturated with Christ, and constituted with Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
Oh, may we cooperate with God in prayer day by day and even moment by moment so that we may have this all-inclusive, extensive Christ be our portion, our life, and our constituent, and we would evaluate and estimate everything according to Him!
God’s Will for us is that we Know Christ, Enjoy Christ, and have Christ as our Life and Person
The will of God – the great and eternal will of God – is that the all-inclusive, extensive Christ be our portion, our life, our constituent, and our peace (see Col. 1:9, 12; 3:4, 10-11, 15).
In Col. 1:19 God’s will refers to Christ; the will of God is profound in relation to our knowing, experiencing, and living in the all-inclusive, extensive Christ.
It all starts with our knowing of Christ by having a revelation of who He is. We need to know Christ and even more, we need to reject having an old knowledge of Christ, that is, not rely upon any knowledge of the past, but be open to Him to have a fresh revelation of Christ.
We need to be poor in spirit to see the kingdom of God, to see Christ; as we are approaching the all-inclusive, extensive Christ revealed in Colossians, we need to be poor in spirit, humble and empty.
May we yearn even for some crumbs of this Christ, a portion of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ as our food, desiring to experience Him, enjoy Him, and partake of Him for the Body life, for the church as the Body of Christ.
God’s will for us is that we would know Christ, experience Christ, enjoy Christ, be saturated with Christ, and have Christ become our life and person (Col. 3:4, 10-11; Eph. 3:16-17).
God wants His all-inclusive, extensive Christ to be revealed in us so that we would know Him in a subjective way; when we have a revelation of Christ, we will enter into the experience of Him and we will enjoy Him.
The more we open to the Lord in our daily life and allow Him to saturate us and mingle Himself with us, the more we have Christ as our life and person.
God’s will is that we, the believers in Christ who have the all-inclusive and extensive Christ living in them, would walk in Him (Col. 2:6-7).
To walk in Christ is to live, act, behave, and have our being with all our activities in Him. If we try to do this in and of ourselves, if we try to improve our behavior and act in a certain way, we will fall into the trap of self-improvement.
But when we see Christ and experience Him, we will enjoy Him, gain Him, and be saturated with Him, and we will begin to walk and live this out; then, we will live, act, behave in Him, and have our being in Him.
As we walk in Christ, we will be rooted in Him to have downward growth and be built up to have upward growth; first we need to send roots deep down in Christ and absorb Him, and then there will be an upward growth.
Our growth should be downward first – our roots must go down deep, so that no matter how difficult the environment is, our roots are so deep that they reach the river of water of life to absorb the living water!
When we send down the roots in Christ, nothing will shake us or dry us up, for we have a strong downward growth.
We shouldn’t be quick to have results and measurable growth; we should not seek to have quick and outward growth but rather have the hidden life, the depth of roots into Christ as the soil.
We need to have personal, hidden, and spiritual time with the Father, having deep experiences that the Lord may not even want us to speak of, so that we may have a proper upward growth with a strong, unshakeable, solid, stable growth downward.
Lord Jesus, we want to see You, gain You, enjoy You, and experience You! We want to enjoy and experience the all-inclusive, extensive Christ for the Body, the new man, and the bride of Christ! Saturate us more today for the church, the Body of Christ. May our roots go down deep into the soil in our personal, hidden, and spiritual time with the Lord so that we may have a solid downward growth that will result in a proper outward growth! Amen, Lord Jesus, may Your will be done – may we know Christ, experience Christ, enjoy Christ, be saturated with Christ, and have Christ become our life and person!
We should Estimate and Evaluate everything according to the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ
As we spend time with the Lord, enjoy Him, have a revelation of Him, and experience Him, our value system will change; we will then estimate and evaluate everything according to this Christ.
When we hear the news, when we hear what’s going on with our leaders and their decision, when we hear what the mainstream media says, and when we see what’s happening in society today, we will evaluate this not according to the principle of right or wrong but according to Christ.
We need to consider all things according to Christ and pray that the Lord will bring about a situation in line with the will of God and with His purpose concerning Christ.
This involves a radical change in our being, for right now we have two trees growing in us – the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life.
When we live by the tree of knowledge we measure things by right or wrong, good or bad, yes or no; when we live by the tree of life we measure things by Christ and His life.
The Lord needs to apply the axe to the root of the tree of knowledge in our being, so that we may discern all things by Christ as life and not by right or wrong.
We may hear of a certain situation or someone may tell us something, and we discern there’s death, so we exercise our spirit to eliminate it.
May we pray that the Lord would give us the experiences and the light we need so that the axe would be laid at the root of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so that this tree would be uprooted as Christ becomes our everything; then, we will estimate and evaluate everything according to the all-inclusive, extensive Christ – He will be our unique criteria.
Christ is the governing principle of all genuine wisdom and knowledge, the reality of all genuine teaching, and the only measure of all concepts acceptable to God.
In Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden; all the wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, and we need to let Him be our center.
Right now it is our mind, our concepts, our disposition, our inclination, and our bias that are our standard, but Christ needs to become our standard, for in Him are all genuine wisdom and knowledge.
It is only when we have a clear view of the place of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ in God’s economy that we will be able to see through delusion and deception.
When we have a clear view of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, we will discern all things, and we will estimate and evaluate everything according to Him.
We will refer all things to the righteous God and we will choose to enjoy the Lord. This will revolutionise the way we relate to people and the way we view the world situation.
We will take Christ as the standard, for He knows all things, and the wisdom and knowledge are in Him and not in us. Amen!
May we allow the Lord as the all-inclusive, extensive Christ to infuse, saturate, and permeate us with Himself until in our experience He is everything to us; then, we can honestly say that He’s not just a doctrine to us but that He is everything in our experience.
The all-inclusive, extensive Christ is in us, but we need to see Him, know Him, be filled with Him, be saturated with Him, and be absolutely one with Him.
We should allow the all-inclusive, extensive Christ to fill our whole being and replace our culture with Himself.
The more we enjoy Christ and allow Him to replace our natural life and culture with Himself, the more we will be able to declare that for us to live is Christ!
To use to live will be the Christ who takes full possession of us, occupies us, and fills us with Himself.
The all-inclusive, extensive Christ desires to replace every element of our natural life and culture with Himself so that we may be the one new man as His corporate expression; this is the message of the book of Colossians (Col. 3:10-11).
Lord Jesus, we take You as the unique standard to estimate and evaluate all things. In You is the governing principle of all genuine wisdom and knowledge, the reality of all genuine teaching, and the only measure of all concepts acceptable to God! May the axe be laid at the root of the tree of the tree of knowledge in us to be uprooted from our being. Grant us to see a clear view of the place of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ in God’s economy so that we may see through any delusion and deception! Amen, Lord Jesus, we open to You to be infused, saturated, and permeated with the all-inclusive, extensive Christ until in our experience He is everything to us!
Read this article in the Romanian language / citiți acest articol și în limba română la următorul link, Voia lui Dumnezeu este să-L cunoaștem și să-L savurăm pe Cristos, estimând totul conform Lui.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Colossians, msgs. 32, 34-36, 39, 21, 26, 28-29, 49 (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 1 on the topic of, The Will of God concerning the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Christ is all-inclusive, / All-inheriting; / Firstborn of creation, / First in everything; / Son of God effulgent, / Bright, extensive, vast, / Christ, High Priest and Builder, / Is the First and Last. (Song on, The Central Line in the Bible)
– Take time to absorb Him, to gain the supply, / That we may be watered and nourished thereby; / The deeper the roots spread, the deeper the flow, / And richer and higher within us He’ll grow. (Song on, Take time to absorb Him)
– How all-inclusive, Lord, Thou art; / Of God we are in Thee- / The portion God prepared for us, / Our all in all to be. / Thou art to us God’s wisdom true, / We all are saved through Thee; / Thou art God’s only way to save, / Thou art our only plea. (Hymns #197)
