EXPERIENCING ONENESS WITH THE LORD
Second Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” This Lord is the life-giving Spirit. When we pray and petition before the Lord, the Spirit comes into our spirit and dwells in us forever. Furthermore, He is waiting for us to love Him. He takes possession of us whenever we say, “Lord Jesus, I love You.” The more we love Him, the more we are possessed by Him. The last stanza of Hymns, #398 says, “O to be like Thee! While I am pleading / Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy love. / Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling, / Fit for a life which Thou wouldst approve.” That we live a life approved by the Lord means that we take the Lord’s mind as our mind, take the Lord’s emotion as our emotion, and take the Lord’s will as our will. We also take the Lord’s love, light, holiness, and righteousness as our love, light, holiness, and righteousness. The Lord and we, we and the Lord, are completely one. We are just the same as He is. For to us, to live is Christ.
The ancient sages in China taught that man is innately good. This is correct. What God created originally was good. He created us with the bright virtue, the innate goodness, which needs to be developed. However, without Christ in us, everything is still a shell devoid of reality. We are just like an empty glove. When the hand gets inside the glove, then the glove has content and reality. Furthermore, the glove and the hand become one; they are a perfect match. This illustrates the oneness between God and man. God and man, man and God, are completely satisfied. If man does not have God, neither God nor man is satisfied; this is the root of dissatisfaction in human life. When man has God, both God and man are satisfied; this is the source of true satisfaction in human life.
Hallelujah! Christ wants to become your mind, emotion, and will. He also wants to be your love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Even the more, He wants to be in you that which is true, dignified, righteous, pure, lovely, well spoken of, virtuous, and praiseworthy. Then, Christ can be expressed through your God-created human virtues.
TO LIVE BEING CHRIST
Every one of us possesses the God-created virtues, the inherent human virtues. But it is very difficult to express these virtues by ourselves, and even if we were able to, the expression would be neither complete nor perfect. We need to be filled by Christ. Our virtues should be vessels that are filled with Christ to manifest the very essence of Christ. This is the highest, perfect virtue. This is the righteousness of God which Paul referred to in Philippians 3:9. Formerly, he pursued the righteousness which he worked out by keeping the law; eventually what he pursued was the righteousness of God lived out through Christ in him. Formerly, he wanted the glove, but eventually he wanted the hand. The hand in the glove is the content and reality of the glove. Eventually, the hand and the glove are one, and the glove becomes the expression of the hand. We are the glove, and He, our beloved Lord, is the hand. Our heart is filled with His love, and our life is one with Him. Thus, for us to live is Christ.
Christ lives in us. He is our life, and we are His living; He is our content, and we are His expression. He and we, we and He, exactly match one another. He and we become one. This is the enjoyment of Christ, the living out of Christ. This is the experience of Christ’s indwelling.
(The Subjective Experience of the Indwelling Christ, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
