MISSING THE MARK
Concerning this matter of the power of Christ’s resurrection, as in so many other matters, many Christians are missing the mark. When I was a child, the principal of the Southern Baptist elementary school I attended taught me to celebrate Easter by coloring eggs. Later, after I was saved and had begun to love the Lord, I was told to celebrate Easter by attending a sunrise service. Although Christianity may teach people to color Easter eggs or have sunrise services, it does not teach them concerning the power of Christ’s resurrection. If we know the power of His resurrection, every meeting of the church will be a resurrection meeting and every day will be a resurrection day.
NOT IMITATION, BUT DISPENSATION
How glad I am to have two lives, the human life and the divine life! I was born of man to be a son of man. But I have also been born of God to be a son of God. Thus, I have a dual status, the status of a son of man and the status of a son of God. Although all real Christians have two lives, only the divine life can express God. Our natural human life is pitiful and cannot possibly express Him. Most of the sermons preached in the so-called churches teach people to use their human life to imitate the divine life. This is like teaching a monkey to act like a human being. Even if monkeys could act like humans, such behavior would not be genuine, but an imitation. Likewise, it is useless to teach people to imitate the divine life. In the Lord’s recovery, we are not teaching people to do this. The goal of this ministry is not imitation, but dispensation. Our goal is to dispense something divine into you so that you may live by the divine life, the only life that can express God.
DECIDING TO BE CRUCIFIED
The one good aspect of the human life is that it is capable of making a decision whether or not to put the human life aside and to place it under the death of the cross. God cannot make this decision for us. We need to make it ourselves. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, God did not decide for Him that He should be crucified. As a human being, He Himself decided to put Himself daily under the cross. It is the same with us today. We need to decide whether or not we shall be crucified. We need to realize that we are good only to be crucified. If we are willing for this, we shall make a strong decision in favor of it. We shall say, "Brothers, if you want to crucify me, it is all right. I want to be crucified, terminated, placed under death." When we are willing for this and are placed into death, the crucified life will become the base for the resurrection life to rise up. Thus, by being crucified, we shall come to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. But if we are not crucified, we cannot know the power of His resurrection. There is only one way for us to know the power of His resurrection, and that is to live a crucified life.
Often, brothers and sisters have told me about the problems they have in married life. Some have said, "Brother Lee, I have prayed about the situation, but the Lord has not answered my prayer. In fact, the more I pray, the worse the situation becomes. The situation is always the opposite of what I ask for in prayer." The reason for this is that so many brothers and sisters are not willing to be crucified. There is not always the need to pray so much. The Lord Jesus did not always pray as much as you do, but He was always willing to be crucified. He did not pray to the heavenly Father regarding the difficulties in His family, asking the Father to change His mother’s disposition so that she would not be so troublesome to Him. Instead of praying like this, He was willing to be crucified, to put Himself under the death of the cross. Furthermore, although Peter caused the Lord Jesus considerable difficulty, the Lord did not send him away. Instead, He always put Himself under the death of the cross. Not only with Peter, but with all the disciples, the Lord Jesus continually put Himself aside. For example, the last time the Lord Jesus told His disciples that He was about to be crucified, none of them had an ear to hear this (Matt. 20:17-20). Immediately after the Lord spoke this word, they began to discuss among themselves who would be the greatest. If we had been the Lord Jesus, we would have rebuked them harshly for paying no attention to the word regarding crucifixion. But because the Lord Jesus was living a crucified life, He did not speak to them in this way.
(The Experience of Christ, Chapter 15, by Witness Lee)
