Will you please turn to Psalm 16? We will read just one verse, verse 11.
Thou wilt show me the path of life:
In Thy presence is fulness of joy;
In Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
—Psalm 16:11
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee for the privilege that Thou hast given to us, that we may meet together again in Thy precious name. We do thank Thee for Thy presence with us, and we just want to open our hearts to Thee.
We pray that Thy word will be given to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, that it will become living and operative in our lives. We want to give this time and ourselves to Thee, and pray that Thy will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
As I mentioned last morning, the Lord seemed to put in my heart this matter of going back to the basics. I feel that this is an hour in which we should re-examine, as it were, our foundation of faith.
Nothing is more fundamental than this matter of eternal life. I believe, brothers and sisters, we are all familiar with eternal life. Not only are we familiar with the term, but, thank God, by His grace we all have the experience of eternal life.
He that hath the Son hath the life;
He that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
—1 John 5:12
Thank God, He has given us His beloved Son, and by His mercy and grace, we have all received and believed in Him. So we have been given eternal life.
But I think we need to understand that eternal life is not only the gift of God. Eternal life, as we find in 1 Timothy 6, is also a calling. All who have received eternal life have a calling in it.
What are we called for? What is that calling? When God gives us eternal life—the life of His beloved Son—He has a reason behind it. He has a purpose for it. The purpose is that, with that life in us, we may be conformed to the image of His beloved Son.
Unless we are faithful to our calling, we will miss the very purpose of God in giving us eternal life. Eternal life is not only a calling; it is a confession. It is our testimony. It is the commandment of God that we should, by the grace of God, enter into the fullness of that calling.
Now this morning, we would like to go a step further, and it is on the path of life. I believe we all are familiar with Psalm 16. It is a psalm of David, and there in verse 11 he said, “Thou wilt show me the path of life.”
In other words, life has a path. Life has a way. God will not only give us life, but He will also make known to us the path of life.
Now, if we follow the path of life, then what will happen? He says, “In Thy presence is fulness of joy.” Brothers and sisters, if we follow the path of life and walk accordingly, then we will see the smiling face of our Lord Jesus. Our Lord will be happy about it, and we will come into the joy of His smiling face. We will see His approval.
And not only that: “In Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Not only in life will we see His face, but we will also experience His authority and power, because that is what the right hand represents.
I remember when I was back in China. At one time I was working in a company, and on my desk I wrote these words: “Let me see Thy smiling face.” This is the longing of my heart. We who are the Lord’s, we want to see His face.
But what kind of face do we expect to see? Is it His smiling face, or is it not? This should be the desire of our hearts.
If we follow the path of life, we will experience the authority and power of God. We will be able to serve Him, not with our own strength or our own wisdom, but with His power—the power of the Holy Spirit. This will not only please God; it will also give us great pleasure.
So, dear brothers and sisters, thank God for giving us His life. We have already mentioned that His life given to us is not a thing; it is a Person.
He that hath the Son hath the life;
He that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
—1 John 5:12
So it is a Person. Think of that. What mercy God has bestowed upon us! We thank God for eternal life, but oftentimes we take it as a thing.
When God gives us eternal life, He is giving Himself to us. He is giving His beloved Son to us, and all things are in His Son. He gives everything without withholding anything from us.
Think also that this life—this Christ—dwells in our new spirit. He is within you and within me. Not only so, but we find that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of life, is also there.
We have already mentioned that the Holy Spirit who dwells in us has a special commission. His mission is to see to it that the life of Christ in us will grow properly, mature, and be conformed to the image of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, He has given us everything for life, for the growth of life, to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives. There is one thing that seems to me to be of extreme importance: we need to know the path of life.
Every life has a nature, and its nature is its law. If you follow your nature and the law of your nature, you are healthy, normal, and growing. But if you disobey the law of life and walk contrary to it, then, of course, you will suffer, and eventually there is death.
I remember when I was in kindergarten age, we read in a storybook a story. There was a mother hen, and without her knowing it, people put a duck egg there. The mother hen brooded upon the eggs, thinking that they would be her children.
Sure enough, the little things came out, and she mothered them. One day, she happened to lead them near a lake, and suddenly these little ones jumped into the lake. The mother hen cried and cried and called them to come back, but they enjoyed the water so much.
Why? Because they were ducks; they were not chickens. So, brothers and sisters, you find that every life has its own nature. If that nature is followed, there is peace, there is joy, and there is enjoyment.
Do you know that you have a divine life in you? You have a life that is heavenly, spiritual, and holy. This life also has its law.
What is the law of the life of Christ in us? You find it in Romans 8:2: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
—Romans 8:2
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the life of Christ. We have Christ’s life in us, and the Holy Spirit dwells in our spirit to see to it that this Christ-life will follow its law. If the law of the Spirit of life is followed, then it will set us free from the law of sin and of death.
We need to say something more. When God created man in Genesis 2, we are told that God took the red earth and formed it into a body. Then God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the Bible says that man became a living soul.
When man was created, he was given a life. But that life was not the life of God Himself. That life was an animal life, a human life. With that breathed life in the soul, man became a living soul. So we have a created life, a human life.
Why did God give us such a life? Because He created us in His own image, according to His likeness. The created life He gave us is enough for us to live and to be alive on earth, but He knew that that life was not sufficient to fulfill His purpose with us.
So He put man in the garden of Eden, and there He had the tree of life planted in the midst of the garden. I believe that anything placed in the midst of many things should attract your attention.
God’s purpose was that He put the tree of life in the midst of the garden so that man might eat the fruit of the tree of life. If man should eat the fruit of the tree of life, then, other than that created animal life within us, we would receive a divine life—the life of God Himself.
It is only with that life of God in us that we are able to fulfill the commission God has for man. But unfortunately, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit instead of taking the fruit of the tree of life, having the life of God in them, and living a dependent life upon God to fulfill God’s eternal purpose.
They ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, that is not a bad tree. I often feel that God would never plant a bad tree in the garden of Eden. All the trees in the garden were good for food.
God had made provision for our physical needs, and then He had the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there. Why was it so? Because the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is food for our soul. It is not a bad tree.
But God knew that without His life in us, having knowledge would mean death to us. So He forbade us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Unfortunately, our forefathers preferred to be independent of God, to make themselves god, to think that they knew good and evil.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
—Genesis 2:17
Adam and Eve lived hundreds and hundreds of years physically. They begot sons and daughters. So what died on the day that they ate the forbidden tree? Their spirit—the human spirit—was dead.
Because God is Spirit, you can only communicate with God through your spirit. You cannot touch God with your body. You cannot contact God with your mind or with your soul. You can only fellowship with God through your spirit.
But because of their sin, their spirit was dead. This does not mean that the organ was no longer there. The spirit as an organ was still there, but, may I put it this way, it was in a coma. It was dead.
Death in Scripture means separation from the proper environment of communication. The proper environment of our spirit is God. When death comes to our spirit, the communication is lost, even though the spirit is still there as an organ.
So you find that people can communicate with evil spirits, but they cannot communicate with God, who is Spirit. What is left in life for man? What life have we inherited from our forefathers?
The life we inherited from them is the fallen soul-life. That created life which animated us and made us living is now a fallen life. We are still living in this world, but unfortunately, if we live by our fallen soul-life—the life Scripture sometimes calls the flesh—then that life also has its law.
If you live in that life, you are under that law, and that law is the law of sin and of death.
In Romans 8, we are told that if we walk according to the flesh, we will die; if we walk according to the Spirit, we will have life and peace.
To those who are not in the Lord, the only life they know is the Adamic life, the fallen life. That is the only life we knew before. While we are living on this earth, no matter how long we live, we are under the law of sin and of death.
Before we believed in the Lord, we were under that law. We could not help but sin, and we could not live forever. We had to die because we were under that law. We lived by that life and had to be subject to that law.
If we walk according to the flesh, we are at enmity with God. We cannot obey Him, and we refuse to obey Him.
Brothers and sisters, that explains why, after we believe in the Lord Jesus, we find in our experience that we are as if we are a double person. Within us there are two lives.
There is the life of God—Christ—in our spirit. But there is the Adamic life, the fallen sinful self, in our soul. So oftentimes, after you believe in the Lord Jesus, you experience a civil war, as if there are two people fighting against each other.
You find that in Romans 7. Paul had the same experience. He found that what he wanted to do, he could not do; but what he did not want to do, he did.
Is it not our experience after we believe in the Lord Jesus? This is an experience you do not have before you believe in the Lord Jesus. You may even think, “Before I believed in the Lord Jesus, I lived naturally and happily. I could do whatever I wanted.”
But after I believe in the Lord Jesus—my, what a life it is! I find civil war going on all the time, and there is more failure than success. Why? Because old Adam is old and well experienced, while the life of Christ in you is new, like a baby. It is as if it is not strong enough to overcome that Adamic life.
During the Reformation in the sixteenth century, Philip Melanchthon, the theologian of the Reformation, said, “I find that old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”
Do you find the tyranny of your flesh in your life? Martin Luther said, “I am not afraid of the pope, the cardinals, or the kings; but I am afraid of the pope within me.” It is self.
Have you come to this point: to see that it is impossible for you to live a Christian life by your Adamic life? Have you come to such desperation as the Apostle Paul cried out:
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
—Romans 7:24
You cannot deliver yourself, because that is yourself. Who can deliver you?
Brothers and sisters, in our Christian experience, we have to come to a point where we become desperate of ourselves, when we come to see that in us—that is, in our flesh—there is no good thing.
It is only when you come to that point that deliverance is near. Immediately after the Apostle Paul cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” the following verse says, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
He began to receive a revelation, a light. The revelation is that when Christ Jesus died on the cross, He not only bore our sins in His body and paid the penalty for them, so that when we believe in the Lord Jesus our sins are judged and forgiven and we are justified before God.
But more than that, we discover that when Christ Jesus died on the cross, He took the old man with Him. When He was crucified, that old man was crucified in Him and with Him.
The old man is the collective term: Adam. The personal, individual term is flesh. We all have our flesh. Even though our flesh is different in each one of us, we have inherited those Adamic elements from our forefathers.
Our Lord Jesus, as the Bible says, is the last Adam. So when the last Adam was crucified, the Adamic race was terminated. Romans 6:6 is a matter of knowing. We must know what God has already done in Christ Jesus on Calvary’s cross.
We cannot crucify ourselves. You know, it is strange: you can do something to your life, but you cannot crucify yourself. Is it possible? Spiritually speaking, it is the same thing. We try to crucify ourselves, but we cannot do it.
Thank God, He has done it in Christ Jesus. That is the reason He put you and me in Christ Jesus. If we are in Christ Jesus, then our old man was crucified.
This body of death was made of no effect. This does not mean that it is gone. No, the body is still there. But it means that this old body of ours has been disemployed and unemployed.
This body was employed by our soul-life to sin, but now it is disemployed and unemployed. We are no longer serving sin anymore, and, thank God, we are being re-employed by a new Manager.
The Bible says we should reckon ourselves as dead unto sin and as alive unto God. In other words, it is a matter of faith.
What is faith? Faith is not looking within yourselves. Faith is like an anchor that you throw out into the depths. In other words, faith is throwing out your anchor to Christ.
Whatever He has done on Calvary’s cross, He said, “It is finished.” Faith just takes it as it is. So you reckon yourselves as dead unto sin in Christ Jesus, and as alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Then you yield your body to righteousness unto holiness.
So, dear brothers and sisters, thank God for His full salvation. He has not only forgiven our sins; He has also taken our old man, our flesh, and put it on Calvary’s cross.
With that kind of revelation and faith, we will experience that we are no longer under the law of sin and of death. We are now under the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
As human beings, so far as our body is concerned, it is subject to the law of gravitation. Everything physical, if you drop it, no matter where you are, will go down because there is a law of gravitation in the center of the earth.
But today we fly airplanes because there is a higher law. With that higher law, the lower law is overcome, and we are able to fly up into the air.
We are altogether in another realm. When we are in Adam, we are under the law of that earthly life—sin and death. There is no exception. But thank God, we are in Christ Jesus. We are all seated with Him in the heavenlies.
We are altogether in another realm. We are under another law, a higher law. Brothers and sisters, the life that we live today is the life of Christ, and because of that we are under a higher law: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
If it is by that law we live, then we live a heavenly, spiritual, holy life. This is what Christian life really is.
We thank God because He not only gave us Christ to be our life—the Bible says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory”—but at the same time He gave us the Holy Spirit.
As Romans tells us, if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you are not His. But thank God, we have the Spirit of Christ in us. The Spirit of Christ in us is the energy, the power, the Agent, the Manager, to see to it that the law of that higher life—the life of Christ—may become operative in each and every one of us.
When this happens, then we will be living a real Christian life: a victorious life, a life that will glorify God.
Probably we will ask this question: so far as the truth is concerned, we understand it. We understand that today we are not supposed to live by our old Adamic self-life, because with that we can never live a Christian life.
We are supposed to live a higher life—a heavenly, spiritual, holy life, like Christ. We know that. We also know that Christ has already made every provision for us on the cross.
Our flesh has been crucified with Christ, with its passions and lusts. We are not obligated to live according to the flesh. We are obligated to live according to the Spirit and let the law of the Spirit of life work daily in us until we are conformed to the glory of God.
But now the question is: how? Everything is there, and you are supposed to be in that realm, but how does it operate? We need to know the way of life so that we can walk in it.
We want now to move to the experiential side. But all the way, we need to remember the truth side, the objective side, because without the truth in Christ Jesus, you will have no real Christian experience. It is based on what Christ has done.
But we would like to enter into and find out the way of life. How is it that this life of Christ in us works?
To put it in a simple way, I think that is what 1 John is all about. John the Apostle wrote the Gospel according to John, and in John 20:31 he concluded, as it were, by saying that he wrote these things in order that we may see that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that if we believe in Him, we will have eternal life.
But when you turn to the first epistle of John, why did he write this letter? Before he concluded that letter, in 1 John 5:13, he said, “I have written these things to you who believe in the Lord Jesus, that you may know that you have eternal life.”
In other words, 1 John is written to show us how we know that we have eternal life. What will we experience, and through such experience, how are we assured that we have eternal life?
To me, 1 John is the simplest way to explain the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Law is according to nature. Every life has its nature, and every nature has its law.
If you follow the law, you walk according to the nature, and then you grow properly and healthily. If you do not follow the law and do things contrary to the nature of that life, you will find frustration, defeat, and death.
Now we want to ask: what is the nature of God’s life? What is the nature of the life of Christ?
To me, I feel that in 1 John we are told three things about God, about His nature. Number one, in 1 John 1:5, he says, “God is light.”
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
—1 John 1:5
We know that the word of God is a lamp unto our feet, but here it is not referring to God’s word. It is referring to God Himself. God is light.
That is to say, the life that you now have is Christ; it is God’s own life. What is the nature of that life in you? Light. What is light for? Light is to enlighten you.
After you believe in the Lord Jesus, I believe we all have that experience. Many things, especially spiritual things, we were totally ignorant of. But after you believe in the Lord Jesus, you begin to receive light from God.
It is not from outside; it is from within. God is light. When He shines upon you and you believe in the Lord Jesus, His life is in you. With that life, there is light already.
Formerly you walked in darkness. You did not even know that you were in sin. You did not know that Christ Jesus was your Savior. But then His life shone upon you, and when His light shone upon you, it did not merely shine upon you; it entered into you.
Christ is revealed in you. When He comes in, what do you have now? You have light in you. Formerly you were all darkness, and you walked in darkness without realizing it. But now, thank God, He shines upon you, His life enters into you, and there is light within you.
This light within you enables you to cry out, “Abba, Father,” to God. You are now in the light, but you are supposed to walk in the light. Since you have the light, you have to walk according to that light—not an outward light, but an inward light, the light of life.
You are supposed to walk according to the light of life. But may I use an illustration? The light within you is only one candlelight. That is the beginning.
Thank God, you know something spiritual now. You know Christ, you know God, you know His salvation, you know something. After you know something, of course you walk in that light. But as you walk in it, strangely, you find that light begins to grow within you.
That nature of life begins to grow within you, and you begin to see something more—something more that you have never known before and never realized before. The Spirit of God begins to enlighten you in the things of God.
When we come to spiritual things, humanly speaking, it is absolutely impossible. Only when God enlightens us, only when that life within us shines, do we begin to see something more.
In 1 John 1:7, he says:
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light,
We have fellowship one with another,
And the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
—1 John 1:7
Now you have the light of life in you. You need to walk according to that light. If you walk in that light as God is in the light, God is, if I may say, like a hundred candlelights, because He is light. He lives in the light, and you are just walking in the light you have—perhaps only one candlelight.
But thank God, you are saved, and you walk accordingly. God begins to show you something more in the spiritual realm.
Sometimes I think, how can God communicate with us? He is light. Even if we have His life within us and have a little light within us, compared with God it is almost darkness.
But thank God, because the nature is the same, even though He is perfect and we are so imperfect, He is able to condescend Himself and walk with us. You remember when our Lord Jesus was on earth: His disciples just could not understand Him. Yet we find our Lord Jesus condescended Himself and fellowshipped with His disciples. He is doing the same thing with us.
We have light in us, but as a matter of fact there is still more darkness in us than light. God is all light, and He is able to fellowship with us. What happens with that fellowship?
The blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. How does that happen? Have not our sins already been forgiven and cleansed? How is it that, if we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all our sins?
When you walk in the light as God is in the light, you begin to see something more in the spiritual realm. Things that you did not consider sin now become sinful to you.
When that happens, thank God, the blood of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, cleanses you from all your sins. We are discovering darkness all the time, and as we discover our darkness, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.
You may have one candlelight, but as you walk on, you begin to have three candlelights, and you see more darkness—more that is of the flesh, natural, earthly, and devilish. Thank God, because you have fellowship with Him, His blood cleanses you from all your sins. That is the way we grow.
You find in the same section that we grow from little children to young men and then to fathers. That section concludes in 1 John 2:27.
We have the anointing within us, and we know that the anointing simply means the Holy Spirit. He is the holy ointment. When He is working, it is like anointing; He is applying, as it were, oil upon our wounds.
The Holy Spirit is diligently working in us. He is there teaching us—teaching us what is of Christ, what is of life, what is not of Christ, and what is not of life. He teaches us in all things, not only in big things but also in small things.
When we have big issues, we start to pray. But in small things, we think we can do it. Yet when you are walking with God, even in small things He will enlighten you.
If you will listen to the Holy Spirit within you, you abide in Christ. That is the way we abide in Christ in our daily life. How do you know that today you are at home with Christ? Because you are following the teaching of the anointing.
The Holy Spirit who dwells in us is such a diligent Teacher. He will continually teach you. He will see to it that the life of Christ follows His nature according to His law, that it may grow into maturity.
In a sense, this is spiritual exercise in our lives. That is, the intuitive faculty of our spirit is being exercised. We begin to receive direct knowledge from the Holy Spirit.
If we exercise the intuitive faculty in our spirit, then we will grow into the holiness of God—separated unto God.
Then you find in 1 John 2:29 through 1 John 4:6 another nature of God, another nature of the Christ-life being mentioned. He says, “God is righteous.”
So far as God’s acts and actions are concerned, He is righteous. He does everything right.
Thank God, when we believe in the Lord Jesus, we become the righteousness of God. In other words, we testify that God is righteous in forgiving us and saving us.
Not only that, but Christ is our righteousness. We are clothed with Christ, as the prodigal son, when he returned to the father’s house, was clothed with the best robe.
Thank God, our sins are forgiven. We are clothed with Christ as our righteousness, and therefore we can stand before God justified.
But more than that, we are not only clothed with Christ. After we are justified, we need to walk righteously. This refers to our daily practical living.
This is not referring to our position. Our position is in Christ. We are considered righteous before God. But our condition is that we who have been justified need to walk daily and righteously.
Since we have this righteous life in us, if we walk according to the nature of that life, we ought to practice righteousness. That is what Scripture calls the righteousness of the saints.
The righteousness of the saints is our wedding garment. It is an embroidered garment. Through the patient work of the Holy Spirit, He is daily stitching Christ into us, so that when Christ returns, we will not only have the golden robe within us—Christ our righteousness—but we will also have the embroidered garment upon us as our wedding garment. This is the righteousness of the saints.
Now, how do we practice righteousness? Sometimes we do not even know what righteousness is. We may live ten years, twenty years, thirty years, or more, and think we know what is right before God and what is not right before God. How do we know?
Thank God, we have a cleansed conscience. Conscience is another faculty in our spirit, and our conscience has been cleansed by the blood of the Lord Jesus. Our conscience now takes God as its standard.
The Holy Spirit will work upon our conscience and show us what is right before God and what is not right before God.
The Apostle Paul could say, “I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offence toward God and men.” Brothers and sisters, we as Christians need our conscience most importantly.
If we lose our conscience, we lose our faith; it is shipwrecked. Thank God, the Holy Spirit will continually touch our conscience.
In 1 John, it says “heart,” because in the Old Testament the word “heart” often represents conscience. If our heart does not condemn us, then we have boldness toward God. Even though God is much greater than our conscience, thank God, we can have fellowship with Him.
So, dear brothers and sisters, this is the way: we have to follow what conscience tells us. Then we are living according to the nature of the new life and according to the law of the Spirit of life. That is the way we grow in Christ Jesus.
Finally, you find in the last section, he says, “God is love.”
If intuition is related to holiness, and conscience is related to righteousness, then love—communion—is related to glory.
God is love, and the Holy Spirit has shed abroad in our hearts the love of God. We do not have that love. Our human love, our natural love, is fallen love.
But since Christ came into our hearts, love has entered into us: the divine love. The Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts. Because that love is in us, that is how we can love God and love one another.
In this way of love, our spiritual life grows. The life of Christ in us will grow. The more we are communing with God and living in the presence of God, with unveiled face we will be changed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the way the law of the Spirit of life works in Christ Jesus. I believe that He has not only given us life, thank God; He has also shown us the way.
May the grace of God be upon every one of us, that we may walk in the path of life, see the smiling face of God, and serve Him according to His pleasure.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee. Thou hast not only given us life, but Thou hast shown us the way of life. We thank Thee for the Holy Spirit, who teaches us incessantly, that we may be conformed to the image of Thy beloved Son.
O dear Lord, we offer ourselves up to Thee and pray that Thou wilt, by Thy Holy Spirit, have a free way in our lives, that we may really be those who will glorify Thy name. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.