THE BLESSING ON THOSE AROUND US
In Jesus all the nations are blessed, and through us as Christians, the people around us should also be blessed. But is this our real situation? God told Abraham that through Christ all the nations would be blessed. Thus, as a Christian, we should bring God’s blessing upon the people surrounding us. Many times, however, the people around us are not blessed but cursed. Is our wife or husband blessed through us, or cursed through us? This is the real problem. If we are feeding on the humanity of Jesus, surely we will bring God’s blessing to those around us.
In 1938, I was told a story concerning a sister who really loved the Lord. Her husband had accused us exceedingly because she, since she became a Christian, neglected her family. She was too busy “preaching Christ.” Her husband was not yet a Christian and was a professor in one of the largest universities in China. When I contacted some of the brothers and sisters about this sister, they all told me the same thing. The sister told them that now she was just for Jesus; she was not for her husband or her children. It was clear that this sister had never tasted the humanity of Christ. At that time I did not see the light of the enjoyment of Jesus’ humanity, so I told her that she needed to be balanced a little. She needed to be balanced like the fine flour. If today, however, the same problem were to come to me, I would tell them to go home and pray-read all the verses from Luke on the humanity of Jesus. Then they would know what they must do and what kind of wife or husband, mother or father they must be.
On the one hand, the Lord said to His mother that He was wholly for His heavenly Father. Yet on the other hand, He went down with His parents and subjected Himself to them (Luke 2:49-51). This is the humanity of the Lord Jesus. It is through this kind of humanity that the people around us can be blessed. I am afraid that the neighbors living around us are not blessed because we are like “angels.” We do not have the proper humanity. We all need to be human, but not human in a natural way. We need the humanity of Jesus. The more we behave like an angel, the more people around us will be cursed. But the more we live as proper human beings, the more people around us will be blessed.
In 1938 another sister in China also came to me asking, “What can I do with my husband? He will not believe in the Lord Jesus. I have prayed for him, and I have talked to him much about the Lord. But the more I have talked, the more he has gone away.” Then I discovered that she was very much like an angel, so I asked her to adjust herself a little and be an ordinary wife to her husband. I assured her that if she would be adjusted, her husband would be saved. Not long after that I received a letter from her telling that her husband had been saved.
God never entrusted His gospel of grace to the angels. Only human beings are qualified to preach the gospel. An angel could tell Cornelius to send for a man named Peter, but that angel was not able to speak a word about the gospel (Acts 10:3-5). Angels are not qualified to preach the gospel; only man is qualified. We must be human to preach the gospel, but we must not be human according to our natural self—that is devilish. We need another category of humanity, the humanity of Jesus. By His humanity we can bring the blessing of God upon all those around us. Wherever we are—in our offices, in our schools, on the campuses, in the neighborhoods, in our families—we can cause all of the people to be much blessed if we will take the humanity of Jesus. Then the gospel will be prevailing.
(Christ as the Reality, Chapter 8, by Witness Lee)
