Lord, we want to gather together in Your name. We thank You for Your precious promise: where two or three are gathered together in Your name, You are in the midst. We pray that You will speak to us. Speak, Lord, for Your servants are listening. Amen.
Thank God for bringing us together this morning. The Lord has burdened me with Hebrews 3:1:
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus.
All who believe in the Lord Jesus are holy brethren, because God has set us apart in Christ Jesus. This is our position. We are partakers of the heavenly calling.
Brothers and sisters, do you know what our calling is? It is the calling of every brother and sister. Our heavenly calling is to glorify Christ Jesus. That is our calling.
We need to consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. We cannot fulfill our heavenly calling by ourselves. That is why we need to consider our Lord Jesus. He is our Apostle, and He is also our High Priest. He enables us to fulfill our heavenly calling.
This morning, we want to consider together that our Lord Jesus is our Apostle, and at the same time, He is our High Priest.
What is meant by an apostle? An apostle is a sent one. Our Lord Jesus was sent by the heavenly God. He was sent into this world to be the Apostle of our confession.
He came into this world with a definite commission. His commission was to accomplish the work of salvation. Therefore, when we consider our Lord Jesus, we need to consider how He accomplished that work.
Before the Lord Jesus came to us, the Holy Spirit moved us and caused us to realize that we were sinners. Before that, we often considered ourselves very good.
I know that was my experience before I believed in the Lord Jesus. I was in high school, and I came from a Christian family. My father was a pastor. I was on good terms with everybody, even with the servants in the school. I considered myself to be a good person.
Mentally, I believed that Jesus was the Savior of the world. But in my actual life, I considered myself so good that I did not feel I needed to be saved. Is that not the way many people are? We look into society, see all the sins in the world, and tell ourselves that we are better than other people.
But thank God, His Holy Spirit began to work in me. He showed me that from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, there was nothing good. I began to seek the Lord Jesus very earnestly.
At that time, a well-known preacher came to Shanghai and spoke in my father’s church. As I listened to the preaching, I was convicted. I went to the altar and confessed my sins before God. Yet, after the meeting was over, I felt just as sinful as I had felt before.
During that year, I went to every meeting of those famous preachers. Every time I was convicted, and I went to the altar a number of times. But I did not find peace. This continued for a whole year.
When summer came, I went to a summer conference. My only desire was to be saved. Speakers had come from America, and I listened to them. I knew the things they were saying already, but nothing really touched me.
One morning, I was alone in my room. I do not know whether I was praying or speaking to myself, but I said, “God, why is it that other people are saved so easily, and it is so hard for me? Is it because I have such a hard heart?”
That morning I told God, “If You want to save me, You must save me now.”
In the afternoon, I went to the meeting. The speaker spoke from John 3:16. Afterward, he asked everybody to kneel down and pray. I sat down by myself.
A brother came and knelt by my side. He urged me to go to the altar. So I went there, and again I confessed my sins. But afterward, as I was walking out, a Chinese brother came to me and asked, “Are you saved?”
To be honest, I told him, “I want to be saved. That is all I know.” Then he asked me, “Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?” I said, “I have believed that from my childhood.”
He opened the Bible to 1 John 1:9 and asked me to read it:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I knew how to pray, so I began to pray. I said to the Lord, “There are many things I have forgotten, but You know everything. According to Your Word, I confess my sins. I have done my part. Now it is Your part.”
Then I said, “I am saved.” The brother asked, “How do you know?” I said, “I am so peaceful within.” He shook his head. Suddenly, the Word of God came to me, and I said, “I know I am saved because God says so. He is faithful and righteous to forgive.”
He said, “Go and tell someone what the Lord has done for you.” I went back to my room, opened the Bible, and began to read 1 Peter. The whole book was different. I had read the Bible before, but now every word seemed to be for me. That was the beginning of my life in Christ.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the Apostle. He was sent by God to accomplish salvation.
When our Lord Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished,” salvation was accomplished. Very often, we think of salvation only in terms of the forgiveness of our sins and the receiving of new life. Thank God, those things are true. But the salvation accomplished by our Lord Jesus is much more than that.
He bore our sins in His body on the cross. Because He bore our sins, even the Father had to forsake Him. That is why we hear the cry of our Lord Jesus:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
The relationship and communion between the Son and the Father had been uninterrupted from eternity past. How could that communion be interrupted? Yet on the cross, during those dark hours, the Father forsook Him. Why? Because He was made sin for us.
It is not only the sins that we committed in the past that are dealt with. We have received a new life. The Holy Spirit has come into our spirit, and Christ Jesus has become the life of our spirit.
Before we believed in the Lord Jesus, our spirit was dead in sins. How could a dead spirit know God or commune with God? But when we believed in the Lord Jesus, our spirit was made alive. Christ came into our spirit and became the life of that spirit.
More than that, the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer. What is His work? His work is to reveal Christ in us. He removes all those things that take the place of Christ, and He makes Christ increasingly real within us.
How can we grow spiritually? It means: how can Christ grow in us? It is through the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. As we cooperate with the Holy Spirit and yield to Him, He delivers us from all that is not of Christ, and He allows the life of Christ to grow within us.
Christian growth is Christ growing in you. How do you know that Christ is growing? You become less, and Christ becomes more. That is real Christian growth.
Christian growth is not merely gaining knowledge. Real Christian growth is that the divine life, even the life of Christ, grows in you. You become less, and Christ becomes more.
Brothers and sisters, the question is not merely whether you are growing in knowledge. Is Christ being formed in you? Is Christ becoming more, while you become less and less?
Jesus Christ is our Savior. He saves us to the uttermost—not only from past sins, which are forgiven, but also from the power of sin, so that Christ may grow in our lives.
Salvation includes not only our spirit, but also our soul and even our body. This is the salvation God has prepared for us in Christ.
Salvation has an objective side and a subjective side. The objective side is all done by Christ. You cannot add anything to the salvation of God. When the Lord said, “It is finished,” it was finished. It was all done.
But how can what He has done become real in your life? This is the subjective side of salvation. What has been accomplished by Christ Jesus for us must be applied to us.
That is real Christian living. Our Lord Jesus is not only the Apostle; He is also our High Priest.
I remember a story of an elderly sister who was being questioned before baptism. One of the elders asked her, “What is Christ doing in heaven now?”
The elderly sister answered, “Christ is looking down from heaven upon me.” Of course, that was not considered the right answer.
What is Christ doing in heaven now? On earth, He finished the work of salvation. In heaven, He is applying His finished work to us. He is not merely sitting there. He is working as our High Priest.
Christ Jesus is praying for every one of us. As He prays, the Holy Spirit comes to work within us, applying to each child of God all that Christ accomplished on the cross. This is the subjective side of salvation.
The salvation of the Lord is not something that belongs only to the past. It is an ever-present salvation. Therefore, we are able to live the Christian life, because Christ is praying and the indwelling Spirit is working.
Are you enjoying the working of the indwelling Spirit? Some may say, “The Holy Spirit is working in you, but I do not have this experience. How does He work?”
Brothers and sisters, that is impossible. If the Holy Spirit is working in you, you must know something of His work. Perhaps you do not recognize it, or perhaps you do not cooperate with Him.
I remember that, even though I was a pastor’s son, I loved to go to the movies. The first page of the newspaper I looked at was the page about films. I would not dare to go to a movie on Sunday, but on Saturday I was usually in the movie house.
A brother began to speak to me. He said, “You are a Christian. You should not go to a movie house.” I answered, “I choose good movies. What is wrong with that?”
But somehow, the Holy Spirit began to work within me. I began to feel that I should not do that. I asked myself, “How can I use God’s money in this way?” Yet I liked movies too much.
Finally, I made a determination that I would not go. But then a particular movie came, and I struggled greatly. I thought I could go and see it without anyone knowing.
I sat in the movie house for two hours, fighting with the Lord. As a matter of fact, it was a very bad movie. But I did not go out.
When I walked out, I knew that the Holy Spirit had been working in me. Brothers and sisters, this is how the Lord begins to deal with us.
Suppose the Lord begins to deal with your speech. Perhaps you are speaking proudly of yourself, boasting about something you have done. While you are speaking, Someone speaks within you. Do you stop? Or do you continue as before?
When you return to the Lord and pray, you find that the Holy Spirit has been dealing with you. Unless you yield to Him, you cannot go deeper. He asks, “Where are you going? What are you doing? What are you saying?”
Gradually, His work goes deeper. He deals with your imagination and your thoughts, so that even in your thinking you are sanctified. He deals with your will, until you can say, “Not my will, but God’s will be done.”
That is not easy. But that is the way the Lord saves us.
Brothers and sisters, we need not only our spirit to be saved; we need our soul to be saved. After we are saved, Christ becomes the life of our spirit, but in our soul there is still the old life, the natural life, and the old man.
That is why there is often a civil war within us. There is fighting within. Unless we yield to the Lord, we cannot be delivered from the life of the soul.
When the Lord returns, this mortal body will become immortal. This corruptible body will put on incorruption. Then our whole being—spirit, soul, and body—will be transformed.
This is salvation. This is how our Lord Jesus is our Apostle and High Priest. As Apostle, He fulfilled the work of salvation. As High Priest, He applies that salvation to each one of us.
May we pray that, because our salvation is so great, we will cooperate with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to work in each one of us, that Christ may be formed in every one of us.
Brothers and sisters.