We believers in Christ have been reborn crucified and we are dying to live; we were crucified with Christ and now it is no longer us who live but Christ who lives in us by the stripping of the natural man and the renewing of the new man.
We need to have a proper view of the Christian life; as believers in Christ, we are not merely men but God-men, that is, we have the divine life and the divine nature in us besides our human life and our human nature.
This is the reason that so many mysterious yet wonderful things happen to us, and this is the reason we can understand the things of God and enjoy what God is and has done for us.
Through regeneration we have received another life, the divine life; on one hand, we were put to death and were buried in the waters of death when we were baptised, and on the other hand, we were resurrected with Christ to live in newness of life, a life in the spirit.
Therefore, we should not waste our time trying to improve the natural man; we should simply turn to our spirit and live a life in the spirit, for it is in the spirit that we can enjoy, realize, and experience all that God in Christ as the Spirit is, has, and has done.
May we all have a heavenly vision of the Christian life to realize that the real Christian life is a life in the mingled spirit, not in the self-effort to improve ourselves or make ourselves better and more likeable to God or to man.
Our Christian life is an effortless and spontaneous life, for it is a living by the divine life in our spirit.
When we live in the mingled spirit – the divine Spirit mingled with our human spirit – we live the real Christian life; when we still try to please God or fulfil His word in ourselves, we do not really live a Christian life.
Our daily life should be a life of turning to the Lord, exercising our spirit, and taking Christ as our life and everything so that we may be put aside and Christ would live in us; this is not an “exchanged life” in which we disappear and only Christ is here, but it is a life in the organic union with the Lord.
We have been organically joined to the Lord at the time of our regeneration and baptism; we were cut off from the old man and we were connected, grafted into, and organically joined to Christ to take Him as the source and supply for our daily living.
May we turn to Him, enjoy Him, take Him as our life and person, and learn to live in the mingled spirit to live a real Christian life, a life in the spirit!
Whatever we are, whatever we have, and whatever we do toward God should be in our spirit; we need to be perfected and built up to be persons in the spirit, those who die to live and who live a crucified life so that Christ may live in us.
As we are Consumed and Stripped through Sufferings, we Rejoice in the Lord because we gain God and Christ is Expressed through us
If we were to compare Job’s experience in the Old Testament and Paul’s experience in the New Testament we see quite a great difference between the attitude each one of them had toward suffering.
Job’s experience of God’s consuming and stripping in the Old Testament was far behind that of Paul in the New Testament (1 Tim. 1:16).
Job was complaining, arguing, and defending his self-righteousness, trying to take God to court and argue with Him to get an explanation of why all these things happened to him, such a perfect, upright, and righteous person.
Paul, however, realized that sufferings were a portion allotted to him for him to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of Christ’s resurrection so that he may live Christ and magnify Christ, whether through life or through death.
God’s consuming is to exhaust us, and God’s stripping is to tear down and take away the totality of our natural integrity (our natural perfection and uprightness in our character) that replaces our living out Christ to express Christ (Phil. 1:19-20; 3:4-9).
When we are experiencing pleasant, sweet, and good times, our natural perfection and integrity may work, or so it seems; however, when sufferings come, when tragedy comes, that’s the time that the perfection and uprightness will be tested because God has a way to exhaust us and consume us.
God’s purpose is more than to expose our natural man with its natural integrity and perfection; He wants to strip those things away, for they don’t belong in God’s kingdom.
Anything that our natural man can do and achieve is not part of God’s kingdom and don’t belong to it; they are not Christ, they will not make it in the church, and they don’t belong in the New Jerusalem.
Therefore, they need to be torn down and taken away. All that our natural man can do and achieve, including its perfection, integrity, and self-righteousness, is just a replacement of Christ and the living out of Christ, which is the real righteousness in the eyes of God.
Paul said that he didn’t want to have his own righteousness which is out of the law but the righteousness which is out of God and based on faith in Jesus Christ.
Instead of insisting on our own righteousness, we need to be found in Christ, not having our own righteousness but the righteousness which is out of God and based on the faith in Jesus Christ.
Christ Himself as our faith is also our genuine righteousness; we need to live in this organic union with Him so that He may be lived out in us to be our righteousness.
Job did not understand that; rather, day by day and hour by hour he was unhappily being consumed, but Paul was rejoicing and encouraging us to rejoice in the Lord, even though he was in prison suffering for the Lord.
In the New Testament, God’s consuming and stripping become pleasant things; from the day that we are saved, we are under God’s consuming and stripping, but at the same time we’re filled with the joy of the Lord, and we rejoice in the Lord, for He is our supply, our life, and our everything.
From the day that Paul was converted, he was a person under God’s consuming and stripping as a prisoner in the Lord, but he was at the same time filled with joy and rejoicing (Acts 9:15-16; 2 Cor, 4:16; Phil. 1:19-21a; Eph. 3:1; 4:1; Phil. 1:4, 18, 25; 2:2, 17-18, 28-29; 3:1; 4:1, 4).
Paul was in an actual prison, but he considered himself as a prisoner of the Lord, even a prisoner in the Lord; he realized that he was suffering for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the gospel, and he accepted the Lord’s stripping and consuming.
Yet he still encouraged us to rejoice in the Lord, and his earnest expectation was that Christ would be magnified in his body, whether through life or through death.
How mysterious this is, yet how wonderful!
Brother Watchman Nee was twenty years in prison, and in the last days of his life, he wrote a letter to his relatives, in which he said something to the effect of, Don’t worry about me, I have kept my joy.
For twenty years he was being stripped and consumed, yet he maintained his joy; he received with joy what was happening to him because he knew what was going on, he had the heavenly vision, and he allowed God to work Himself into him for the sake of His glory and for the New Jerusalem.
May we be such ones like Paul who have such an uplifted view of God’s consuming and stripping which leads to a life of rejoicing in the Lord, for He is gained by us and He is expressed through us!
Lord Jesus, we open to You and we allow You to remove anything in us that replaces Christ. Have Your way in us and with us, Lord, to remove anything that the natural man has built up and has achieved, which is apart from You. We just want to remain in the organic union with You, dear Lord, and live a life by faith. We don’t insist or seek our own self-made righteousness; we want the righteousness of God which is based on faith in Christ. Amen, Lord, live in us today. Cause us to realize that You are stripping and consuming us to exhaust us and tear down and take away the totality of our natural integrity that replaces our living out Christ. Oh Lord, our desire is that You would be magnified in us as we gain Christ through all the things You are doing in us and around us. Fill us with joy and rejoicing, Lord, as we experience sufferings and difficulties, so that we may accept Your stripping and consuming of the natural man for Christ to be expressed through us!
We were Reborn Crucified and we are Dying to Live so that Christ may Live in us
When we were regenerated, we were crucified; we were reborn crucified and we are dying to live so that Christ may live in us. In John 3:5 the Lord Jesus said that, Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
The water refers to John’s ministry of termination through baptism, and the Spirit refers to the Lord’s ministry of germination by the Spirit of life.
We may have never realized this, but when we were born again, we were reborn crucified, for we gave ourselves to the Lord and to the members of His Body to be baptised, that is, to be terminated and buried.
When people came to John the Baptist, he put them in the water to bury them, to end them, and to terminate them; when we repent and are baptised, we realize we’re good for nothing except death, and we hand ourselves over to be buried.
According to Rom. 6:4 and Col. 2:12, in baptism we are buried together with Christ into His death; when we were raised from the water, we were resurrected with Christ, and we are in the Spirit.
Through the terminating of the water of death and the germinating Spirit of life, we are born spiritually.
The real meaning of being regenerated is to be reborn through termination and germination; every regenerated person is regenerated crucified.
And our daily living as Christians is dying to live; we were born dead (to the world, sin, and the natural man) and now we’re dying to live.
Paul realized that he was crucified with Christ and it is no longer he who lived but it was Christ who lived in him (Gal. 2:20).
Like Paul, we were reborn crucified for the purpose that, from that time, it would be no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.
We were reborn crucified to stay in death to our natural man, our soulish man, so that we may allow someone else, Christ, to live in us.
Every day we need to live a crucified life, realizing that we were put in the death of Christ as a mold, and we should not live in our natural man or in the flesh but rather, we should live in the organic union with the Lord, live by faith in Christ, so that Christ may live in us.
Our Christian life is a long life of dying; every day we die to live – we die to the self, to the flesh, to the old man, and to the world, so that we may live to Christ.
We were reborn crucified, and now we are dying to live (1 Cor. 15:31, 36; John 12:24; 2 Cor. 4:11). The proper meaning of bearing the cross is that we are dying to live (Matt. 16:24-26).
If we look at the life and experience of both Job and Paul, sufferings are our allotted portion by God, but our attitude shouldn’t be, Why are You doing this to me, Lord? Rather, we should realize that we were reborn crucified with Christ, and now we are dying to live so that Christ may live in us.
Our Christian life is a life of losing, a life of bearing the cross, a life of being stripped, a life of things being taken away rather than being given to us.
At the same time, the Christian life is a life of the addition of God’s element to our being, a life of gaining Christ, a life of having more of Christ being wrought into us, and a life of the addition of God’s nature and life into us to reconstitute us into a new being.
We are regenerated crucified and we are dying to live; this is for us to be conformed to the death of Christ so that Christ may live in us as we live in the organic union with Him.
Lord Jesus, cause us to realize that we were reborn crucified with Christ and we are daily dying to live. Hallelujah, we were regenerated crucified – we died to sin, the world, and the natural man! Praise the Lord, we are daily dying to ourselves and to the natural man so that we may live to God for Christ to be expressed through us! Amen, Lord Jesus, may our daily living be no longer us but Christ – yet we live in the organic union with Christ to express Christ! May we live one spirit with You today so that we may die to ourselves, to our natural man, and to the world, for Christ to live in us. Lord, may we accept the loss, the cross, the stripping and the consuming, so that more of God may be added to us and more of Christ would be wrought into us! Amen, Lord, reconstitute our inner being with Yourself until we become a new creation, a new man, even the New Jerusalem!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991-1992, vol. 2, “The Christian Life,” chs. 9, 12-14, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 3, Job’s Experience of God’s Consuming and Stripping in the Old Testament Being Far Behind That of Paul in the New Testament.
- Further reading on, Regenerated crucified and dying to live.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Crucified with Christ my Savior, / To the world and self and sin; / To the death-born life of Jesus / I am sweetly ent’ring in: / In His fellowship of suff’ring, / To His death conformed to be, / I am going with my Savior / All the way to Calvary. (Hymns #481)
– 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. / Oh! it is so sweet to die with Christ, / To the world, and self, and sin; / Oh! it is so sweet to live with Christ, / As He lives and reigns within. (Hymns #482)
– Oh, I’ll praise Thee, e’en if weeping / Mingle with my song. / Thine increasing sweetness calls forth / Grateful praises all day long. / Thou hast made Thyself more precious / Than all else to me: / Thou increase and I decrease, Lord- / This is now my only plea. (Hymns #626)
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