Please turn to the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2. We will read the first ten verses. I will read it in English, and my brother will read it in Chinese.
And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins,
wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:
but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved),
and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus:
that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus:
for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
Please turn also to Galatians, chapter 4, verses 4 and 5.
But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Please turn to the book of Job, chapter 19, verse 25.
But as for me I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and at last He will stand up upon the earth.
Father, we do want to thank Thee because we can meet together in Thy name. We remember Thy promise to us: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.”
We thank Thee for Thy presence with us. In Thy presence is fullness of joy, and pleasures for evermore. We do rejoice in Thy presence, and we open our hearts to Thee, O Lord.
Do speak to us, and transform and conform us. We commit this time into Thy own hands and trust Thy Holy Spirit to do His work, to the praise of Thy glory. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, it is really nice to see all of you. Thank God for His faithfulness, that He has kept us through these times. These are difficult times, and the Lord has brought us through. So, with hearts of thankfulness, we meet together this morning.
The burden that the Lord has put in my heart is very simple: our fourfold relationship with Christ.
Now, we know life is expressed in relationship, and life is judged by relationship. As soon as we are born into this world, we find ourselves in relationships. We have our father and mother, and if it is a big family, we have our brothers and sisters. So we grow up with relationships.
As we grow up a little more, we begin to go to school. We have our friends and schoolmates, and we have our teachers. So our relationships begin to broaden.
As we grow still more, perhaps we graduate from college and have our own family. Then we have the relationship of husband and wife, and then we have children. So we have the relationship of parents and children. When we go into society to work, we have colleagues and other people. Life is full of relationships.
Even though we are born as individuals, we cannot live independently of everything, because our life is surrounded by relationships. If our relationships are good, we will be considered good. But if we do not have good relationships, then we will be considered bad. Everything is based upon relationship.
Of course, if we really go to the basics, we find that even before we have any relationship with man, there is a relationship with God. God is our Maker. He is the One who created us. So our primary relationship is with God.
But unfortunately, when we are born into this world and begin to grow up, we do not have any relationship with God. We do not even know that there is a God, even though one day we will be judged by God, because He is the One who made us. Yet we are totally ignorant of it.
Our lives seem to be comprised only of earthly relationships, and our attention is all upon earthly relationships. Even among Christians today, we find that Christian counseling is very prevalent. There are counselors counseling us about marriage and about other relationships.
But, brothers and sisters, I have a feeling, and the feeling is simply this: unless our relationship with God is right, all the other relationships cannot be right. Our attention should be upon our relationship with God instead of focusing merely upon our relationship with men.
Our vertical relationship is the basis of our horizontal relationships.
So I have the burden this time to share with you, dear brothers and sisters, especially concerning our relationship with Christ. We would like to approach it from four directions:
You can see that these relationships become closer and dearer. If our relationship with God is right, our horizontal relationships will be adjusted. This is what we will share together this time.
I do hope that we will all be in prayer, that by the grace of God we will enter into the right relationship with Christ.
God is our Maker, so our basic relationship should be with God. But unfortunately, we find that we did not know Him. This is because our forefathers sinned.
I believe, brothers and sisters, you are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve. They were put in the Garden of Eden, which was a garden of pleasure. God planted all kinds of trees in the garden, including fruit trees for the food of their bodies.
God not only gave us a physical body, but He also provided for the needs of this physical body. In the midst of the garden there was the tree of life. This tree of life represents God’s own life.
Even though we were created as men, with all the possibility of receiving Him as our life, we did not yet have His own life. But it was His intention that we should have His life. Though we were created as men, His purpose for us was that we should be His children, that we might arrive at the ultimate purpose of God.
We may say that the tree of life is food for our spirit. God wants every one of us to be spiritual, because He is Spirit, that we may have fellowship with Him and be like Him. That is the purpose of God for us. How glorious, how marvelous, is that purpose!
But by the side of the tree of life there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Some people say that this was a bad tree. But actually, it was not a bad tree; it was a good tree. Indeed, it was better than the fruit trees, because the fruit trees were food for the body, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was food for the soul.
So it was a higher tree. But compared with the tree of life, we find that if you develop in the knowledge of good and evil without having the life of God, it condemns you. If you know what is good and cannot do it, and if you know what is evil and do it, you will be condemned by it.
So you need to have life. Then you are able to do what is good and resist what is evil. God put these trees before man for man to choose.
Why was it so? Because God created man according to His image. He is the supreme free will, and He created man with a free will. What is free will if there is no choice? So God put before man a choice: How do you want to live your life?
Do you want to live by the life of God? That would be a dependent life, but it would be the life that grows into glory. Or do you want to live by yourself, improve yourself, increase your own knowledge, and live an independent life? If you want to do that, you are able to do that, but that choice will bring you to death.
Unfortunately, our forefathers made the wrong choice. They rejected God as their life. They wanted to develop their soul-life, to be independent of God, and to be gods themselves. So they fell into sin.
Brothers and sisters, that is also true of us. All who come out of Adam inherit the life of Adam. When we were born, our spirit was dead toward God. We did not know God.
You find Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, tells us of our past—how we lived before we were saved. From the viewpoint of man, we may have been considered good or bad; but before the sight of God, this was how we lived.
And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins.
Before we believed in the Lord Jesus, we offended God and committed sin against God.
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.
God wanted us to have His glory, but instead of glory, we entered into shame.
How did we walk in this world? Paul says that we once walked “according to the course of this world.” The word course here speaks of the current or fashion of this world. The world has its fashions. Wherever there is a new fashion, the whole world follows it. We all want to be fashionable.
But behind the fashion of this world there is an evil force:
According to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.
The world is organized by Satan, the adversary of God, to oppose God. So, when we follow the world, unknowingly we are under the tyranny of Satan, because he is behind the world.
As for ourselves, we may think we are merely living according to our flesh—what the flesh wants and what we think with our minds. But actually, we were children of wrath. That was our former situation.
Brothers and sisters, sometimes we do not realize from what depths God has delivered us. Out of the depths, He has raised us up to heaven.
From Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 through 10, we find what God has done.
But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.
He has mercy upon us. God is a merciful God. Because of His great love, wherewith He loved us, He loves us even though we resisted Him, offended Him, and became His enemies. Yet He still loved us. He wanted to redeem us.
So He delivered us out of death. With Christ, He raised us up out of death, and He made us sit together with Christ in the heavenly places. That is the fullness of our redemption.
But how did God do it? We were lost in sin and transgression. We had lost our souls. We had no hope and no God. But God, in His mercy and great love, made a provision for us.
Could God simply say, “Well, I have pity upon you. I forget everything. You are all right now”? No, God could not do that. He would deny His own nature. He cannot do anything unrighteous. He had to judge sin.
God could not send an angel to save us, because an angel is a different order of being. Neither could He find anyone on earth able to be our redeemer, because we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.
There is only one way that God could save us: He had to save us through a man. God cannot merely say, “I forgive you; that is it,” because that would be denying Himself. He could not use even a higher order of being, an angel, because angels are different from us.
The only way was for man to be our kinsman-redeemer. We needed another One who was near to us, who was one of us. That is the only One who would be able to be our Redeemer.
The price of redeeming a soul is so high that no one can pay it. You cannot pay the price yourself. That is why all religions seek to do something good. Man is conscious of his sin, so he tries to do good works.
But all the good works we have done are like fig leaves to cover our nakedness. You remember what Adam and Eve did after they sinned against God. They discovered that they were naked, so they used fig leaves to sew aprons to cover themselves.
But when the weather came, the wind blew, and those fig leaves could not cover their nakedness. All religion is like that. No religion can deliver us. We need a Kinsman-Redeemer.
In the Bible, we are told of the case of a man who became poor. He had to sell all his property, and even sell himself to become a slave.
Leviticus 25:25 tells us that when a man becomes poor, the nearest of his kinsmen has the right to redeem him out of his debt. This is what God is doing.
We are under debt. We have, as it were, sold ourselves. One day, as I was reading Isaiah chapter 50, verse 1, I found that God asks a question:
Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away?
or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you?
Behold, for your iniquities ye have sold yourselves,
and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
Here you find the reason why we have been sold. It is not that God has sold us. It is our own sin that has sold us.
Who is our creditor? Perhaps you think our creditor is Satan. No. Who is our creditor? God Himself is our creditor, because we have sinned against Him—against His righteousness and against His holiness.
When we sold ourselves to sin, we offended God. But God Himself, our Creditor, became our Kinsman-Redeemer. Is that not wonderful? We sinned against Him, and He, in turn, came and paid all the debt for us.
He was willing to send His beloved Son into this world to become a man. This is the reason for the incarnation. Why should the Son of God, the beloved Son of God, become a man and come to this earth? Because He wanted to be our Kinsman-Redeemer.
For His great love toward us, God condescended Himself. He lowered Himself, as it were, from the position of God to the position of a man. That is incarnation—the love of God.
When Christ came into this world, He became a perfect man. He had a human spirit, a human soul, and a human body. He is a perfect man, even though He is also perfect God.
The Bible tells us that He, being equal with God, did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped. He emptied Himself of His glory, honor, and position. Of course, He could not empty Himself of His deity, because that is what He is.
Yet, while He was upon this earth, He took the form of a servant. The word form in Philippians chapter 2 speaks of His nature and character. He took the character of a servant and became obedient to His Father, even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
This is the way of salvation. God sent His own Son to become the Son of Man. A perfect man was able to pay the cost—the debt for all mankind. This is the Kinsman-Redeemer.
In the Bible there is a book called Ruth, and this tells us what a kinsman-redeemer really is. You remember the story. It is a beautiful story.
Elimelech and his family moved from Bethlehem in Judah to Moab because they were trying to avoid the famine. They should have stayed in the land and trusted God, knowing that the famine would be over. But instead, they fled to Moab.
The hand of God was upon that family. Elimelech died, and his two sons also died, leaving Naomi and her daughters-in-law. Then Naomi heard that there was food in Israel, so she wanted to go back.
Ruth clung to her mother-in-law and said:
Thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God.
So Ruth went back with Naomi and was faithful to her mother-in-law. But they had lost their property. They needed a kinsman-redeemer.
Thank God, there was a man called Boaz. He was a wealthy man. By providence, Ruth went to one of his fields to glean the leftovers. Finally, this man Boaz became the kinsman-redeemer.
He not only redeemed all the lost property; he also redeemed Ruth to be his wife. It is a beautiful story—only four chapters in the Old Testament. If you have never read it, read it.
The principle is wonderful. Boaz represents the Kinsman-Redeemer. He was willing to redeem not only the lost property but even the lost person.
Ruth, a Moabitess, could not enter into the congregation of Israel even to the tenth generation. But now she was received into the commonwealth, and even Christ came out of her. The Kinsman-Redeemer is a great truth in the Bible.
The Kinsman-Redeemer not only redeems us from our sins; it goes further than that. He redeems even our lost inheritance.
In God’s mind, when He created man, He not only wanted man to have His own life. He wanted us to share His glory. He wants us to be transformed and conformed to the image of His beloved Son. He redeems us that we may receive sonship.
When God places everything under the feet of His beloved Christ, we will be co-heirs with Christ. His redemption not only affects our spirit, that we may be like Christ; it also affects our soul, that it may be like Him; and it will even redeem our body, that our body may be changed into an incorruptible body.
Not only that, but we will be glorified with Christ. All the lost inheritance will be regained. All that Christ has is ours. Christ becomes our inheritance, and we become His inheritance. That is redemption. Thank God.
So, brothers and sisters, the first basic relationship with Christ is that He is our Kinsman-Redeemer. Having Christ as our Kinsman-Redeemer, what should be our response?
If you were drowning and someone came and rescued you, what would be your response to your rescuer? Surely gratitude would be in your heart. You would owe him your life.
Christ is our Kinsman-Redeemer. What should be our response? You find it in Romans chapter 12.
Romans is a book that gives us a panoramic picture of God’s redemption. From chapter 1 through chapter 11, we see how we were deep in sins, how Christ came as our Kinsman-Redeemer, how He shed His blood for us, and how by His blood our sins are forgiven and we are justified before God. We can stand before God.
We see how we were under the power of sin, and how He delivered us even from the power of sin, that we may live a holy life. Not only that, but how He will glorify us. Grace has been extended to us, and all the mercies of God have been showered upon us.
Then, in Romans chapter 12, the apostle says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.
Brothers and sisters, when we realize that Christ Jesus is our Kinsman-Redeemer, our reaction can only be one: the love of Christ constrains us, that we should live no longer for ourselves, but for Him who died for us.
The proper response of a Christian to his Kinsman-Redeemer is to present his body as a living sacrifice.
Why? Because we live through our bodies. Actually, our whole being must be given up as a living sacrifice.
We know that sacrifices are usually dead. When the Israelites received grace and favor from God and wanted to express their thanksgiving, they would go to their flock or herd, take a lamb or a goat, lead it to the temple, and tie it to the altar. That meant they wanted to give it to God as thanksgiving.
Then the priest would slaughter it, place the whole thing upon the altar, and the fire would burn it until it was reduced to ashes. That was in Old Testament times.
But in New Testament times, we are no longer in type; we are in antitype—the reality. It is not that we give something to God out of our property. God says, “I want you.” So we give ourselves to God.
But it is a living sacrifice. Every day is a sacrifice. That is to say, you live every day for God. We do not live for ourselves any longer; we live for Him. He is our life, and we live for Him. That is consecration.
You know, brothers and sisters, we often do not have a real understanding of what consecration is. Let me tell my own story.
When I was saved, I was fifteen years old. I had sought the Lord for a whole year. But one day, thank God, He opened my eyes.
Usually, when you have a revival meeting, the last day is the day of consecration. The consecration, at that time, meant that you consecrated your life to be a preacher. If you were a woman, you consecrated yourself to be a Bible woman. Consecration meant serving God, and only those who were going to be preachers needed to consecrate themselves.
At a meeting there was a large map of China on the wall. The preacher would say, “Now the Lord has saved you. Consecrate yourself to be a preacher. You can choose where you want to go and serve.” You would come to the platform and point your finger to a place on the map, and there you would go.
As a young man of fifteen, I told myself, “I must go to the furthest place, the most difficult place, to serve God.” So I put my finger on Mongolia. That was where I wanted to go.
To me, that was real consecration. I was still in high school, and I prepared myself to go to Mongolia. I did not want to go to college; I thought it would be a waste of four years. I chose Bible school and prepared myself to go to Mongolia.
But I have never been to Mongolia.
Brothers and sisters, there is a misunderstanding of consecration. Consecration does not mean that you will become a preacher or a Bible woman. It means that you live your life for God.
Let Christ be your life. Let Christ control your life. Let Christ direct your life. You no longer live for yourself, because He has redeemed you. You are His. Let His will be done in your life. His will is the best.
Live daily in obedience to Him. You do the will of God instead of doing your own will. That is consecration. That is our daily life. That is the life of every Christian.
No Christian should live for himself, because you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.
That is our first basic relationship with Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters, is this your relationship? He has redeemed you. He has paid a great price for you. For whom are you living today? For your family? For what? Or for God?
May the Lord speak to us, that our relationship with Christ may be basically correct. If our relationship with Christ is correct, we need not worry about our relationship with other people.
Dear Lord, we are sharing the most basic matter of our Christian life. We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt correct each and every one of us.
May none of us who has been redeemed by Thee still live for herself or for himself. Lord, Thy love constrains us. We cannot live for ourselves. We want to live for Thee.