The Resurrected Christ as the Life-giving Spirit is the Grace of God for our Enjoyment

We need to experience and enjoy the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit to be the grace of God to us until we can say like Paul, By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain. Amen!

God supplies the Spirit of grace bountifully, and we need to receive the Spirit of grace continually.

Day by day we need to come to the Lord in our spirit, touch the throne of grace, and receive mercy and find grace for timely help (Heb. 4:16).

A very simple way for us to receive grace is to call on the name of the Lord.

When we call on the name of the Lord, He is rich to us (Rom. 10:12-13); His riches are being dispensed into us to be grace to us for our enjoyment whenever we call on His name.

The Lord Jesus is a real and living Person, and He lives within us; when we call on His name from deep within, we spontaneously exercise our spirit.

Hallelujah, in our spirit we are one spirit with the Lord, and we can call on His name to receive, enjoy, and experience grace!

The more we open to Him and call on His name, the more we enjoy Him as grace.

Our spirit and the Spirit of God are crucial for the fulfilment of God’s economy, for it is as the Spirit that He does everything and it is in our spirit that we receive, enjoy, and partake of what He is.

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truthfulness; for us to contact God, we need to exercise our spirit, and for us to worship God, our spirit is vital.

We may not know how to exercise our spirit, but whenever we call on the name of the Lord, we spontaneously exercise our spirit.

May we be those who call on His name throughout the day to breathe Him in, be inwardly supplied with His riches, and enjoy His grace.

When we call on the name of the Lord, the negative things within us are being defeated and the element of Christ is infused into us.

We may have problems with our temper, or we may not like a particular person or situation.

The way to deal with this is not to try our best to bear things and grit our teeth as we go through things; rather, we need to call on the name of the Lord and get together with those who call on Him out of a pure heart.

Amen, we want to be those who are pure in heart and call on the name of the Lord to enjoy all His riches. It is by calling on His name that we receive the spiritual element of Christ and our temper is subdued.

May we call on His name and pray to contact Him until we can say like Paul, By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain!

The Resurrected Christ as the Life-giving Spirit is the Grace of God for our Enjoyment

God called us into the fellowship of His Son; He called us to participate in and partake of His Son as grace (1 Cor. 1:9).

The fellowship of Christ, the enjoyment of Christ, and the partaking of Christ are grace.

What is grace? According to 1 Cor. 15:10 and the context of this chapter, grace is the resurrected Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit (v. 45) to bring the processed Triune God in resurrection into our being to be our life, our life supply, and our everything so that we may live in resurrection.

God wants to become our life and life supply; He wants to be our everything so that we would be with Him where He is, living one spirit with Him.

For this, the Triune God went through a process and was consummated to be the life-giving Spirit.

Apart from being processed to be the life-giving Spirit, the grace of God could not reach us and we could not participate in it.

But praise the Lord, the grace of God is the resurrected Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit for our enjoyment of Him and participation in Him.

The God we enjoy and know today is not only the God in creation; the God in creation is for our worship, but the God in resurrection is for our enjoyment.

God wants to be received and enjoyed by man, and He could do it because He went through a process to become receivable, enterable, and enjoyable.

The “unprocessed God” is not grace and could not be enjoyed by man, but the Triune God in resurrection can be received and enjoyed by us.

The Jewish people know how to worship God only as their Creator, but we today can enjoy our Triune God as the life-giving Spirit, for God is in resurrection for our enjoyment.

The fact that God is in resurrection today involves the process of incarnation, human living, and crucifixion; God went through a process of becoming flesh, living thirty-three and a half years on earth, and going through six hours of crucifixion.

Then, He went into Hades, took a tour of the realm of death, defeated death, and came forth in resurrection; now He is the God not only of creation but also of resurrection. Amazing!

Today Christ is in resurrection as the life-giving Spirit, the consummation of the processed Triune God, to be grace to us for our enjoyment.

Through His death, He terminated all negative things and in His resurrection He germinated us with the divine life to bring us into the new creation.

When we enjoy the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit to be grace to us for our enjoyment, the negative, old, natural things in us are being terminated and we are germinated with the divine life.

Our enjoyment of Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the grace of God, is for us to not live a natural life but a life in resurrection, a life in newness of life and a life as members of Christ.

By our enjoyment of Christ as the life-giving Spirit, we can enjoy the grace of God, and we can declare like Paul, by the grace of God I am what I am….and I labor more abundantly, but not I but the grace of God. Hallelujah!

As we enjoy the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit, we live in resurrection, and we not only express Christ but also walk in newness of life and serve God, yet not us but the grace of God which is with us.

May we advance and grow in our enjoyment of Christ as grace until it is no longer us who live but Christ, and it is no longer us who labor but the grace of Christ which is with us.

Lord Jesus, we come to enjoy You as the resurrected Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit for our experience and enjoyment. We call on Your name with the exercise of our spirit and we turn our heart to You, dear Lord, to enjoy and partake of all Your riches in resurrection. Thank You for passing through the process of incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection to be the consummated Christ as the life-giving Spirit coming to us for our enjoyment and experience. Amen, Lord, we want to enjoy You as the grace of God so that we may be brought into resurrection to live in resurrection and do everything by the grace of God. May it be no longer us who live but Christ who lives in us. May it be not us who labor but the grace of God which is with us. Keep us enjoying You today, Lord!

By the Grace of God, I am what I am, and His Grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain

If we put together 1 Cor. 15:10 and Gal. 2:20-21 we will see that Christ as grace has become everything to Paul, both his living and his labor, his work.

He could say, By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain. He also said, It is no longer us who live but it is Christ who lives in me…I do not nullify the grace of God.

What is the grace of God? Many think that we were originally fallen sinners, persons far away from God, even idol worshippers, but thank the Lord, by the grace of God, we have changed; today we believe in the Lord and we began to love the Lord.

This is not the full meaning of grace. What can be greater than grace? Grace is God coming to man; grace is God manifested in the flesh – grace is God in us, and we are what we are by the grace of God.

God’s grace is God manifested in us to be the eternal portion to us.

When the Triune God became flesh, this grace was manifested in His body; when Paul wrote these verses and declared that by the grace of God he was what he was, that was God’s grace manifested in Paul’s body.

This is a very high Christian experience of God’s grace, even an experience that reaches the peak. And the grace of God by which we live should not turn out to be in vain.

For example, if we buy some new clothes but we never wear them, the clothes are in vain; if we are before a rich meal but there’s no appetite for the food and we don’t eat, the rich meal is in vain.

Today the all-inclusive and extensive Christ is in us as the grace of God to be our all-sufficient supply; however, if we do not come before Him and do not enjoy Him, the grace of God to us will be in vain. This is not a small thing.

If we consider our daily living, how much time do we spend turning to this grace to enjoy the grace of God in the dispensing of God? If we don’t contact the Lord the whole day, then that day the grace of God is in vain to us.

If we don’t turn to God to enjoy Him as our grace, our day is wasted and in vain, and His grace unto us is in vain. Oh, Lord Jesus!

May we have the same attitude as Paul did in Philippians 3, forgetting the things which are behind us and stretching forward to the things which are before, we want to pursue Christ, gain Christ, and live by His grace.

When we see the supreme preciousness of Christ as grace to us, we will consider all other things besides Him as refuse, and we will forget the things behind us and stretch forward to the things which are before to pursue toward the goal.

May the grace of God unto us not turn out to be in vain; may we not nullify the grace of God which is with us.

Rather, may we enjoy the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit day by day until it is no longer us but the grace who labors, and it is no longer us but Christ who lives in us.

The grace of God is with us; the grace is with our spirit, waiting for us to turn to our spirit, live in spirit, and remain in spirit.

When we live in spirit and remain in our mingled spirit, the grace of God unto us is not in vain but rather, we can labor more abundantly, yet not us but the grace of God which is with us.

Grace is the Triune God becoming life and everything to us (John 1:17; Gal. 2:21); it is by this grace that Saul of Tarsus – the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15-16), became the foremost apostle, even laboring more abundantly than all the apostles.

Paul’s ministry and living by this grace are an undeniable testimony to Christ’s resurrection (2 Cor. 1:12; 12:9). Amen, may we open to the Lord and experience Him as our grace to such an extent today.

Lord Jesus, we forget the things which are behind and stretch forward to enjoy the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the grace of God! Amen, Lord, we pursue toward the goal of gaining Christ and experiencing the grace of God, and we count all other things as loss and refuse on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. May the grace of God become everything to us until we can declare like Paul, I am what I am by the grace of God. Amen, Lord, may Your grace unto us not turn out to be in vain. Make us those who enjoy the grace of God with our spirit. May the grace of God become everything to us until we labor by the grace of God and live by the grace of God!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers on this message, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament (pp. 3173-3175), by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Grace of God in the Economy of God (2022 International Chinese-speaking Conference), week 2, entitled, Experiencing the Grace of God in the Economy of God.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – By the grace of God I am what I am; / And His grace unto me did not turn out to be / In vain, but on the contrary, / I labored more abundantly. / Grace is not only something given by God, / But it is God Himself coming to us; / Grace is not only something given by God, / But it is God Himself doing things for us. (Song on, By the grace of God I am what I am)
  – Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace! / The Christ who’s all within me lives. / With Him I have been crucified; / This glorious fact to me He gives. / Now it’s no longer I that live, / But Christ the Lord within me lives. (Hymns #499)
  – No longer is our life / A thing unused or vain; / To us e’en here to live is Christ, / To us to die is gain. / Our life is hid with Christ, / With Christ in God above, / Upward our heart would go to Him, / Whom, seeing not, we love. / He liveth, and we live! / His life for us prevails; / His fulness fills our mighty void, / His strength for us avails. (Hymns #459)