LIVING BY CHRIST AS THE LIFE SUPPLY
We need to be those living by Christ as the life supply (John 6:57b-58). The most important thing in living in a home is eating. In the home nothing is as crucial as food. If we are going to live in the Divine Trinity, to abide in the Divine Trinity as our home, we must enjoy Christ as our food. We need to live by Christ as our life supply. He is our food. He is eatable because He is now in resurrection. Because of His crucifixion, our redemption has been completed. Now Christ is good for us to eat. After accomplishing death and resurrection, He became perfected for us to eat Him. Because He is living in resurrection, He is good for us to eat organically.
After His resurrection the Lord trained His disciples to live by Him as their life supply. In John 21 we see the resurrected Christ moving and living with the believers. In this chapter Peter took the lead to go fishing, and the other disciples followed him because they did not have anything to eat. The resurrected Christ as the disciples’ life supply had been breathed into them, but Peter took the lead to go away from this life supply. This life supply was inside of the disciples, not in the sea. They should not have gone to the sea. Instead they should have remained in their spirit. They became distracted from the life supply in them. Even though they fished through the entire night, they caught nothing. Then what was caught by their fishing? In a sense we can say that they "caught Jesus." They were disappointed to the uttermost that they did not catch one fish. All of a sudden, Jesus came. His coming indicated to them that He was their life supply.
The Lord Jesus was training them to realize where the life supply is. The life supply is not in the world, in the sea, but within us. The very Spirit breathed into our being is the life supply. We do not need to "go fishing." We do not need to go to any other source to get our life supply. The only source of our life supply is in our spirit. This supply is the very pneumatic Christ, who is today the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit. John 20 and 21 reveal that the pneumatic Christ came into His disciples to dwell there as the life supply. We should not be distracted from this source to anyone or anything else. Day by day we need to live by the resurrected Christ as the life supply. This is what it means to live, to abide, to have our living, to have our being, in the Divine Trinity.
After this fellowship, we may still wonder what it means to live in resurrection. This is very hard to explain. The only thing I can say to explain this is from the negative side. Whenever we are in ourselves, we realize that we are not in resurrection. Whenever we do or say something in a natural way, we know that what we do or say is not in resurrection. As long as we are natural, that is altogether not in resurrection. To be in resurrection is to reject ourselves, our natural man, our natural way, and our old man.
In 1932 a small church was raised up by the Lord in my hometown of Chefoo. Brother Nee heard the good news that a church was raised up in northern China. That was the start of the recovery in northern China, so he was happy. In the spring of 1932, he came to stay with us and he was my guest. During that time he related an illustration to me which I will never forget. He spoke of the difference between putting a little rock or a living seed into the earth. If we plant the rock in the earth and wait for many years, nothing will come out. If we plant a seed, such as a grain of wheat, something will eventually come out. He asked me why nothing will happen with the buried rock, whereas something will happen with the buried seed. Of course, I responded by saying that this is because there is no life in the rock, whereas there is life in the seed. Then he came to his point. He said, "Brother, we are not a piece of rock. We are a seed. The more we reject ourselves, our flesh, our old man, and the more we become nothing, the more the life within us will rise up."
We are not unbelieving Gentiles, who are like pieces of dead rock. We are regenerated believers. We were regenerated in Christ’s resurrection. Now we are living seeds. Within us there is something of resurrection. Within us is the resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, when we reject ourselves, our natural man, our old man, this gives the indwelling, pneumatic Christ the opportunity to grow within us. I received so much help when Brother Nee gave me that simple illustration fifty-five years ago. For fifty-five years I have been enjoying and experiencing the help from that illustration. I am always reminded of what it is to live in the resurrection life. To live in the resurrection life is to deny ourselves, to reject our old man, and to despise the natural way. When we do this, we are immediately in resurrection. This resurrection is a living person.
On another occasion, Brother Nee gave a message telling us that the reality and essence of resurrection is the Spirit. Resurrection is the Spirit. This Spirit is not merely the Spirit of God as He was in Genesis 1, brooding on the face of the waters. Resurrection is the person of the Spirit of Jesus Christ after Jesus’ resurrection. This living person is the reality and the essence of resurrection. To live in resurrection is to live and to walk, not by ourselves but by this Spirit. Where is this Spirit? He is right now in our spirit (Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 6:17). Thus, whenever we turn to our spirit, we meet the reality of the resurrection, which is a living person, the life-giving Spirit as the pneumatic Christ.
(Living In and With the Divine Trinity, Chapter 9, by Witness Lee)
