GAINING CHRIST BY EATING HIM
Paul also desired to gain Christ, to obtain Him, to take possession of Him. The best way to take possession of something is to eat it. Dietitians say that we are what we eat. Therefore, by eating Christ, Christ gets into us and then comes out of us. When Christ comes into us, He is our life supply. But when He comes out of us, He is the righteousness which is of God by faith. When we eat Christ, He becomes the life supply within us. Then this Christ will live Himself out of us. When He does this, He becomes our living righteousness. This is the righteousness of God.
Furthermore, when we take Christ into us by eating Him, Christ becomes the resurrected One within us. In this resurrected One there is the power of resurrection that motivates us and energizes us. Because we are energized by resurrection power, we cannot be silent. Rather, we must be excited and even beside ourselves with joy. This is the power of resurrection. This is Christ, not in doctrine, but in our experience.
A PARTICULAR WAY TO EAT CHRIST
Although the food has been prepared and set on the table, we may not know how to eat. In Philippians 3 we see a very particular way to eat Christ. The best way to eat Him is by denying something. In order to eat Christ, we must deny everything, including ourselves, our mind, our cleverness, our knowledge, and all our good points. We must even deny yesterday’s experience of Christ. Paul said that he counted all things loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. This means that he denied everything. Because Christ was everything to him, he denied everything other than Christ.
A certain person may be humble, and another may be very bold. The humble one has been humble from birth. There is no need to teach him to be humble. He simply does not know that there is any such thing as pride. The bold one was born with the ability to release his spirit. It is natural for him to do so. However, for the humble one to release his spirit is difficult, and for the bold one to be humble is a killing to him. A third person may naturally be very intelligent. He was born that way. Humility, boldness, and intelligence are the heritage these persons have from birth. A fourth person may be very kind and gentle. One day all four may come to believe in the Lord Jesus and become partakers of Christ. Suppose a servant of the Lord visits them and tells them that our only destiny is to obtain Christ. In order to gain Christ, we must count all things loss. However, the humble brother may count all things loss except his humility. In principle, the same may be true of the bold brother, the intelligent brother, and the gentle brother. Because the humble brother has not counted his humility as loss for the sake of Christ, he will use his humility in the church life whenever an opportunity is presented. Although he is humble, there is nothing of Christ in his humility. He secretly treasures his humility and thus it replaces Christ. The same is true regarding natural boldness, natural intelligence, and natural gentleness. All these things are simply aspects of the flesh.
(The Experience of Christ, Chapter 8, by Witness Lee)
