TAKING CHRIST BY INHALING HIM
The book of Deuteronomy surely manifests God and exposes us. This book manifests God as a God who is loving in His heart, righteous in His hand, and faithful in His mouth. Furthermore, this book manifests God as the One who blesses us through His eyes. This is the God manifested in Deuteronomy. As we read this book today, we need to realize that it concerns not only the people of Israel but also concerns us. This book exposes us, for it is a photograph of the kind of person we are. The more we are exposed, the more we will realize that we are a hopeless case, that we are nothing and can do nothing, and that it is impossible to fulfill the requirements of the holy, righteous, and faithful God.
After we have been exposed in this way, what should we do? Where can we go for help? Our help is in Christ as the word. In Deuteronomy expressions such as law, commandments, statutes, ordinances, and judgments are synonyms of Christ. Out of God’s mouth have proceeded the law, the commandments, the statutes, the ordinances, and the judgments, and all of these are Christ. Christ is our law and our commandments; He is our statutes, our ordinances, and our judgments. We should simply take Him, keep Him, and hold fast to Him. If we do this, we will enjoy Him.
Where is the Christ whom we should take, keep, hold fast, and enjoy? He is in the Bible, for He is God’s unique word. The law, the commandments, the statutes, the ordinances, the judgments—all these are God’s word. This is proved by Psalm 119, which clearly indicates that these expressions are different terms for God’s word. They have all been spoken by God and thus are things which have proceeded out of God’s mouth (Deut. 8:3). Now we need to see that the words which proceed out of the mouth of God are Christ. Christ is the totality, the aggregate, of God’s word. This is the reason that He is even called the Word (John 1:1, 14). In the beginning was the Word, the Word was God, the Word was incarnated, and this incarnated Word is Jesus Christ.
God’s word has been written down in the Bible. Do you know what the Bible is? The Bible is the embodiment of Christ. Christ is every word, phrase, clause, and sentence. "All Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Tim. 3:16a). Therefore, we may say that the Bible is something exhaled by God. Now we need to inhale what God has exhaled. When we inhale the word of God and it enters into our being, this inhaled word becomes the Spirit. When we exhale what we have inhaled of the Bible by speaking it to others, it is the word. When others inhale this word, it becomes the Spirit to them. It is by the Christ as the word which we inhale that we can fulfill God’s requirements.
(Life-Study of Deuteronomy, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
