I’d like first to turn one more time to Colossians and some verses surrounding our theme verse. We’ll begin tonight in Colossians 1:25.
Of this church I was made a minister,
according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit,
so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God,
that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations,
but now has been manifested to His saints.
To whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles,
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
We proclaim Him,
admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom,
so that we may present every man complete in Christ.
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf, and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face,
that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love,
and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding,
resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, Christ Himself,
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Then let’s look at Colossians 3:1 and some following verses.
Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ,
keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, is revealed,
then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
And then let’s skip to Colossians 3:9.
Do not lie to one another, since you have laid aside the old man with its evil practices,
and have put on the new man, who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—
a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and freeman,
but Christ is all, and in all.
Father, we’re thankful that we have been led to this last time of ministry. Thank You for the endurance You have given us. And now we pray that the Holy Spirit would once again cause our ears to hear and our hearts to respond to all that You would have for us this night.
We thank You that we can gather. Do strengthen us and quicken us, even our mortal bodies, that we might be attentive to the things of God. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I’ve enjoyed being here this weekend, and there’s something I’ve noticed about energy. I feel pulsations of energy when God is doing His work. It’s a wonderful thing.
I remember the first time, when I was just newly saved, that I had my first chance to go to a Billy Graham Crusade. I tell you what, I think the hair stood up on my arms the whole time, because there was gospel energy there. And I saw people get saved, and although I’d been saved, I went up anyway. I wanted to get saved again.
Whenever God is doing His work, you can sense some kind of energy. Whether it’s the work of the gospel or whether it’s talking about God’s purpose, the reason that there’s an energy there, if I could put it this way, is because when we’re dealing with His mysteries, the Holy Spirit is scrambling all over us, trying to get us to see and understand these great mysteries.
Did that word mystery just pass you by as we read these verses tonight? Ooh, there are mysteries there. And there’s something about mysteries. Whenever somebody is being apprehended by mystery, it makes them greater than they are. It makes them more alive than they were.
When a church is trying to lay hold of the mystery of Christ—that is, the church is His body—there’s something about it. They don’t quite get it yet, but they see something, and they’re in that energy zone. You know what I mean?
Well, here we saw two mysteries which we read over, but I hope you’re in the mystery zone. One is the great mystery that has now been revealed: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
I hope you don’t say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, la la la.” You should say, “You know what? I know that, but I don’t know it. I know it, but I want to know it more,” and feel a little energy there.
The mystery of you being in Christ—I mean, I was trying to convey something last night, but you’d actually have to follow Paul around while he is an astronomer if you want to catch the greatness of the macrocosmic Christ. But you’re going to have to follow Paul the miner as he goes deep down into the mines of the breadth, height, length, and depth of God’s love. Or you’re going to have to be a mountain climber, climbing into the Alps of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
I don’t know. You know, Paul had been a Christian for quite a while when he was writing these prison epistles, but there seems to be a certain stillness in the life of Paul—something of the energy. And when we come together like this, my prayer is that we could sense the energy of God when He’s doing His work.
When we look at the Apostle Paul, the one who wrote the Colossian letter, what do we really see there? We see a man who had a life. His name was Saul. He once had a life, you know?
His Pharisee costume was always squeaky clean. He had a pedigree. He had an education. He had some kind of rhetorical abilities. He had his pride in all such things. That was Saul’s life—until he met the Life.
All that he thought was gain became loss. Look at him now. He’s no longer Saul, like King Saul. He’s Paul, which means “little guy.”
There he is. He’s probably not wearing his Pharisaical robes. He’s just a servant of servants. He’s serving everybody. He’s serving the Roman guards, and any brother or sister who comes, he preaches to them and prays for them and serves. He’s got a serving heart, and he’s been humbled.
I don’t know if he’s clean-shaven there in jail, even. You know, I mean, all that sort of pride, all that stuff that was so important to him, has gone out the window. There’s nothing left of him. He says, “I’ve been crucified to the world.” Why, on the Roman list of citizens, I think they probably even took my name off.
You know, Saul was a Roman citizen, which is no mean thing. But no more. As a guy in prison, he’s nothing. But wait. Let’s take another look at him.
There’s a book that was written in the second century called The Acts of Paul and Thecla. It’s not part of our Bible because it’s kind of a strange book, but there’s a perhaps eyewitness account of what Paul physically looked like. One fragment of that description of Paul said, “Sometimes he had the face of a man, and sometimes the face of an angel.”
Christ, His life, was now beaming out in pretty bright wattage. Here was a man who was nothing to the world, and yet here’s a man who’s living, “Christ, my life.” Yes, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
He’s all for Christ, and you can see coming out of his life the mind of Christ, the heart of Christ, the bowels of compassion of Christ, the power of Christ, the love of Christ. Christ—Paul could say—“my life.”
And you look at him, and if you’re not taken with the mystery of how a man could look like that, then you’re not looking for God. These great mysteries we’re talking about here in Colossians are tremendous, tremendous things.
Last night we tried to walk in the mystery of what it means to live in Christ. We come into Christ. As John puts it, “Whosoever believeth into Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
We walked into this life of Christ by faith. We repented of our sins. We received Him as our Lord. We obeyed Him in baptism, and we began a walk of faith, not by sight. We began a walk of faith, not by feelings.
We obeyed the Lord. When we heard His word, we obeyed it, and we lived that way because we were living in Christ. What a place. If any man is in Christ, he’s a new creation. And there’s something mysterious going on in that life.
That life in Christ, as we saw last night, is basically a very simple life:
As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.
Don’t get complicated.
The basic life in Christ is very simple. It’s the world that makes it complicated, or religion that makes it complicated, or your flesh that makes something so simple so complicated.
As I tried to talk last night about a generation that is so completely overboiling in their feelings that faith has taken a second seat—no, it’s a walk by faith, just faithfully obeying and serving the Lord. Well, it’s a simple walk.
Now, how many of you have read Pilgrim’s Progress, the famous classic? Now, wasn’t Pilgrim’s walk so simple? It started out very simple, didn’t it? Oh, but all the byways of the world, all the religious things that came his way, got him so confused. We wondered if he’d ever get to the heavenly city.
But praise God, with the help of God, he finally arrived through all those complications. Brothers and sisters, I think this is the genius of man’s flesh: he can make anything simple complicated.
You know, Lance once told us, when we were visiting Israel, he said, “The Knesset—now, you think there’s fighting going on in our Senate. Now, the Knesset in Jerusalem, as Lance always put it, if you had three members of the Knesset, you had four opinions.”
We can make anything complicated. Have you ever heard somebody leading the annual Christian church meeting? Something that’s so simple: How much money do we have in the bank? How many people are attending? How are things going? One, two, three.
Two and a half hours later, Robert’s Rules of Order, tabling things, and questions have come up. People who shouldn’t even be able to speak are jawing about some complaint they have. Oh, such a simple meeting is made into a terribly complicated mess.
That’s not the life of Christ. The simplicity of the life of Christ is: we just follow Him. But of course, as we saw, surrounding that simple verse—“As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him”—God will establish you, build you, and root you if you’ll just do that. But it is a fight, because there are many things opposing us.
I don’t know if you ever heard the messages—well, maybe you should try to read the messages—of Brother T. Austin-Sparks. If you hear the messages, they take a long time. But you can read them, and they’re very good.
Here are messages that I was so helped by years ago. Here’s what his title was: Faith Unto Enlargement Through Adversity.
Uh-oh. I knew there was a catch there, right?
Faith—you want your faith enlarged? Praise God. Adversity. That’s what all you need, and you will learn faith.
Actually, the exhortations in the book of Hebrews are pretty much on that line, isn’t it? Let your faith grow with endurance through these things that you’re going through, and you will come into the divine rest.
Ah, do you want greater faith? Enlarged through adversity. Nobody can talk about those kinds of things like Brother Sparks. His voice is so deep and determined that you can sense the adversity even as he talks about it.
So last time I focused on this matter of abiding in Christ our life and asking the simple question: Is Christ your life?
Well, I can partially answer it. When you got up this morning, did you say, “Lord Jesus, You’re my Lord. I come into You today”? Did you open the Word this morning, and read and hear and listen, and come here to the prayer meeting and listen to what our brother had to say, and go out and pray to give your life to the Lord in simple consecration today?
Then Christ is your life. And should the Lord come back—as our brother said, well, it looks like this afternoon the Lord didn’t come, because this place is still half full. Either that, or we’re in trouble because we missed those who have gone.
But assuming the Lord hasn’t come yet, maybe He can come tonight. Maybe you’re a new Christian and you’re worried about your position in this thing. You haven’t gotten too far along in Christ. Let me ask you this question: Did you get up this morning and say, “Jesus, be my Lord? Jesus, I give You my life. Jesus, speak to me today. Jesus, give me Your grace to love my brothers and sisters”?
You know what? Christ is your life today. Technically speaking, anybody who’s been born again, Christ is your life. But now I’m talking about laying hold of the reality of that. Is Christ’s life stimulating your life?
Well, it takes that faith—raw faith is not the right word. I’m just trying to say faith without necessarily a lot of emotions. You’re doing it because you’re loyal to Him, you believe in Him, and you entrust yourself to Him.
Now we’ve talked about that, but now we want to take another angle. Because when you walk into Christ, there’s another mystery involved yet, isn’t there? Christ in you.
Now you’re in Christ, but Christ in you. This is yet another part of the same mystery. You see, for Christ to be our life, He surrounds us outwardly, and He also lives within us. Now, this is a great mystery.
But I hope there’s some energy of the Holy Spirit scintillating in your life as you ask this question: How can this be a reality in my life? We walk by faith and walk in Christ. Now, how do we sense Christ in me?
I tell you what you do. You go back to your room, stare at your belly button, and pray and pray and pray and pray: “Oh Lord, show me Yourself. I think You must be right down here. No, maybe up here. I don’t know where You are, Lord, but I’m looking, I’m looking.”
There’s a famous book that was written where a girl wanted to find Jesus, and so she walked around all day saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Somebody said, “Why are you doing that?” “Because I want to find Jesus.”
Well, you’ll never find Christ in you by staring at your belly button. Here’s what happens: You’re in Christ, and there’s a reciprocity. You begin to sense His life in you.
As Jesus put it in the Gospel of John:
Abide in Me, and I will abide in you.
You notice that you have the first step by faith. I abide in Christ, and then I begin to sense that He abides in me.
Now, how does this happen? What happens? Are you eating breakfast one day, and He says, “No, no, go brush your teeth”? You hear a voice from inside? Not exactly.
But you begin to sense some light from within, a voice from within, some direction from within, because as you abide in Him, as a reciprocal response, He abides in you. This is a mysterious but wonderful life.
There’s a response of God inside. When you’re perhaps a new Christian, you don’t sense it, perhaps—or perhaps you do. But it’s kind of like, you know, I think they still do this: when they have a submarine, and the submarine is in the ocean, they have a system for finding out where they are and where the other ships are. They call it sonar.
Now, Captain Sherwin—I see him right here—he’d know all about sonar, that it was a means of hearing things underwater. Basically, sonar would send out a message like, “Ping,” and then they’d hear, “Pong.” Ping-pong.
By hearing the pong back, now you know how close the submarine is—if there’s an enemy submarine, let’s say. It’s getting closer because the ping and the pong are closer and closer.
You come to Christ and you say, “Ping,” and it’s “pong.” It’s a still, small voice. It may just lead you by giving you a sense of rest. Or maybe there’s a sense of, “I’m a little uneasy.” But it’s that Christ in you.
That’s your realization that you’re going to be glorified. He’s in you, and He’s begun this inward work. This is the wonderful story.
Now Jesus goes on to say, “Abide in Me, I in you.” What’s going to happen? Well, He doesn’t come along with those electric hedge clippers, but He’s going to prune.
Do you want to hear His voice? He’s going to have to prune. The Word of God is going to have to come and separate soul and spirit.
Because sometimes I hear a voice that says, “Dana, you need a Mercedes-Benz.” I say, “Yeah, that’s the will of God.” But then the Holy Spirit says, “No, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. No, no. You need a Volkswagen Beetle.”
Then you realize that your voice was your own voice, you see. What’s the difference between your soul and the spirit? This is something that happens like this: there’s a pruning process, as the precious living Word in you begins to separate soul and spirit.
But thank God for that life in you. You’ll find that life precious to you throughout your life because it will bring you to some measure of the mind of Christ. You begin to understand things from the Lord’s side as He reveals things within you.
Or you find yourself sanctifying Christ as Lord of your heart, changing your heart even as He’s renewing your mind. Even though you were a very unmerciful, self-righteous person, He’s giving you what Paul calls tender mercies.
Paul calls it the bowels—it’s your intestines of Christ’s mercy. It isn’t your tender mercies, but Christ’s tender mercy. That’s a very unnatural life, except as Christ lives that life in you.
And the Word of Christ, as Colossians says, begins to richly dwell within you. Isn’t that wonderful?
Now you’ve studied the Word. Here you go every day in Christ, reading the Word and saying, “You know, I’m not getting anything, but I believe You, Lord. This is Your Word.” You keep studying.
Then a situation comes up at work, and that word comes right back: pong. It’s something the Lord had stored in your mind, but now it’s yours, and it becomes alive. Oh, this is an application.
So the Lord is beginning to live as the Word of Christ richly dwells within you. That’s why, if you’re a young person, please: study your Bible. Study your Bible.
You begin to find, despite your own weaknesses and imperfections, that you begin to sense this wonderful mystery of the Lord using you to help other people—actually giving you some wisdom to speak to somebody who needs counsel and prayer.
I don’t know what that would be, but there’s a point at which you begin to realize this mystery of Christ in me: “Lord, anoint me that I may be able to help other people.” This is a tremendous thing for just a regular human being, to have this treasure inside of us—this mystery, which is Christ.
Have you seen that mystery? Christ in you. Have you experienced that scintillating—I don’t know what they call that—spiritual energy? Somehow there’s something bubbling in you. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Now we have seen that, but actually I want to go another direction tonight. Because I want to talk about what we realize Paul is wrestling so much for. We read that in chapter 1, and we read it in chapter 2. He’s struggling. He’s wrestling.
Of course, that we might see the mystery which is Christ. But more than that, that we would see the mystery which is Christ in us. But more than that, Paul is not only burdened for the Colossians as individuals; he’s burdened for the Colossian church, that the church live by Christ our life.
Did you notice there when we read Colossians 3:4, Paul says, “When Christ, who is our life…” Now, in one sense he’s talking about your life and my life, not individually, but actually Paul very much has his mind on the church.
His burden is for the church to be prepared as that bride. So, when Christ, who is our life corporately, is revealed, you all—in the plural, in the Greek—will be revealed with Him in glory.
Paul’s wrestling for more than just the perfection of these brothers and sisters as sons of God. He’s also burdened for the church, that she become the bride, that she become Christ and live this life of Christ.
So when you look at Colossians 1:27, this famous verse where we mostly apply it individually—“Christ in you, the hope of glory”—I take that personally, and I don’t think there’s any violation of the Scripture. But the actual context Paul is talking about is a corporate context.
Some translators translate this: “That you might know the mystery hidden for ages, but now revealed—the mystery, Christ among you, the hope of glory.” Or, “the Christ in you all,” because that you is plural: Christ in you all, the hope of glory.
Now, the context would lead us to believe that what Paul is trying to say is this: “I know that you Gentiles feel like you’re Christians, but perhaps you don’t feel you’re fully part of the children of God and their inheritance like the Jews.”
These false Jewish Christians are having you be circumcised and keep all kinds of rules. No, no, no, no, no. Listen. Here is the mystery that I was sent as a steward to reveal: Christ is among you Gentiles, your hope of glory.
You don’t have Abraham for a father, so you don’t have an ancestral hope of inheritance. But Paul says, “Through Christ, I want you to know, you’re in full inheritance just like the Jews.” So Christ among you Gentiles—it’s your hope of glory. It’s Christ that is the basis of your inheritance.
Contextually, this is what he’s talking about. But we can also understand why he would be wrestling and laboring for the church to live out this life: Christ our life.
What does he call Christ our life there in Colossians 3:4? If you notice there in Colossians 3:11, here’s his new definition—his corporate definition of Christ our life:
Christ is all, and in all.
Now there’s the definition of the church. This is another mystery. You just get hold of the mystery of God, which is Christ, and now the Holy Spirit is once again working on us to open us up to a further revelation, which is the mystery of Christ: we are His body.
We are actually incorporated into the Christ. The church is a living body, an organism. It’s a mystery, but it’s not an institution.
For the early Christians, there was no confusion. They did not consider the church a synagogue, like a synagogue wherever they lived, where the Jews met. It was an institution. They had some rabbis and they had all this kind of stuff.
But no, the church was not a building, and the church was not an institution. The early Christians saw the mystery—the mystery: the church is Christ in His body.
Now, many of you say, “Oh, la la la, yeah, I’ve heard all about that.” I hope that’s still scintillating to you, because it’s a mystery that causes us to ask this question tonight:
Would you define the assembly that you’re in as Christ is all, and in all?
Let’s look at these verses. In Colossians 3, Paul begins dealing with the carnal flesh of the old man. But if you’ll notice, as we keep reading, his idea morphs from the old man and new man individually to the old man and new man corporately.
So let’s look at some verses and see what he’s talking about. In Colossians 3:5, he’s mentioning these carnal things which keep us from being who we should be in Christ.
Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.
In them you also once walked, when you were living in them.
But now you also put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Can I remind you of the context in which he says this? He says, “If you’ve been raised from the dead, now seek the things that are above. For you’re dead now, and because you’re dead, put these things off.”
Wrath, malice, anger, abusive speech, and all of these physical sins that were part of your old man life—you’re living in a new man now. Because you’re dead, you can put these things off.
Now, if your old man isn’t dead, you can’t put this stuff off. You can try to hold it down, but it’ll just pop up. But if your old man has been crucified with Christ, then you can lay these things off by an act of obedience.
When they come up, you confess them. You can lay them off, and you’ll find the power of God within you to lay aside these carnal, worldly things that are preventing your personal life from being Christ our life.
But now, you’ll notice as we come to Colossians 3:9, he begins to talk about things that we’re doing toward one another, which also need to cease.
Do not lie to one another, since you have laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
and have put on the new self, who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.
Paul begins to move from this truth in the Bible of the old man being us fallen, and the new man being us with Christ living in us, but he moves his definition of the new man to include the church.
Because look at this definition. This is not a definition of an individual. This is the new man—the corporate new man.
A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free,
but Christ is all, and in all.
Now there is a new man, a corporate man. As Paul says in Ephesians 4, that you might come into a new man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. He’s talking about the church in its maturity.
The church in its maturity looks like Christ, has the character of Christ, expresses the heart of Christ, the love of Christ, the gospel of Christ. The church is Christ met in the members of the body of Christ—you and I.
Now this is a great mystery. I would dare to say that many, even in the church today, don’t realize who they really are. They think of themselves as a member of an organization where they come together and worship and hear the Word, but they have no sense of, “I’m a member of the body of Christ.”
“I have a part to play in a united whole that has been brought together by God to glorify His Son.” And so this mystery remains a mystery. Is it a mystery to you?
Let me broaden it just a little bit. Back where you fellowship and worship the Lord, is this mystery of Christ—that is, the church—a mystery to the saints?
It’s so unfortunate if that’s the case, because it means as we gather, we may have wonderful worship or a wonderful preacher, and even some wonderful fellowship down in Fellowship Hall, but we’ve missed something in the process.
We’ve missed the opportunity to realize we’re connected with one another. The Lord wants everyone, by the grace of God, to discover that they can add to the life and glory of Christ as we live out Christ our life together.
So, having said that, if you see that Christ is all and in all—that’s the church—well, praise God. Now it should be very simple. It should be very simple to gather together, shouldn’t it?
No politics. No problems. We gather together and say, “Oh, Christ, You’re our Head. Lead us by Your Spirit. Let every member express some aspect of Christ.”
Oh, it’s so wonderful. We just get together and we say, “We’re Christ. We’re Christ. That’s all we are. We’re just Christ. No building, no institution, no membership. We’re just Christ. Everybody in Christ is part of the church.” Isn’t that wonderful?
Now, if I selected a hundred people from this very room, and we started a brand-new church right out here on the corner of this inlet, how long do you think it would be before we’d have problems?
Now, we’re selecting from the best. These are the best people in the whole world. Yeah, but we selected a hundred of them. Your names are back on that board, and we’re going to start a church right over here.
Now, how long would we be all Christ—Christ all and in all? Isn’t it wonderful? Well, what happens when the novelty wears off?
You know, you look at that couple who has now just joined us in a brand-new church. The grace of God is upon us, and you say, “Oh, look at that brother and sister. Wow.” Two years later, you say, “Eh, look at that brother and sister. Wow.”
Well, it should be so simple. But because Christ is not all and in all, in a sense, you might say, the Lord has to take the church through the cross.
So Paul writes that letter. Our brother Stephen spoke on Paul writing to Corinth. You know, Paul loved the Corinthian church. He saw them come to birth, and he saw Christ in their lives. He saw their spiritual gifts, and he saw how they just licked up the Word of God and gained knowledge and everything. He loved that church.
But isn’t it true? Almost every chapter of 1 Corinthians is a cross.
Now you guys—you men, of course; there’s a problem right there. Men always think they’re a big shot. So you got some big shots in there. No. The Holy Spirit says, “No.”
The Holy Spirit brings a sentence of death on men who are trying to gain by ambition a place in the body of Christ. No, you lay down your life. That’s how the Lord will determine who’s serving.
What are you fighting about? Who’s the best guy? Peter? Paul? What is all of that? What about you suing each other? What’s the deal? The cross.
There’s a divine veto on that stuff of the flesh that has gotten into their church. There’s a man living with his father’s wife. There are people going around eating meat offered to idols, and they’re stumbling other Christians who aren’t so clear on it.
There are folks who are wearing head coverings and some sisters who refuse to. There are people, exhibitionists with spiritual gifts, who need to get some order there. There are people baptizing people for the dead.
Where did all of that come from? Was that from Christ? It’s superfluous junk. And there’s a divine veto on that stuff.
The Lord loves His church, but if He has His way, He will not allow human junk in His church. So when we bring human junk into the church, there’s a sense of death—a heaviness that we sense. Oh, we wish we could be joyful, but there’s something.
In Philippi, what a wonderful church. They gave so much to Paul and everything. But there was a little problem brewing, and what was it? Ah—sorry, sisters—Euodia and Syntyche.
These two sisters were fervent in the gospel, but one was a lover and one was a preacher, or whatever it is—they were fighting each other. And it was affecting the whole assembly.
Now, can you imagine an assembly where two of the leaders are fighting? There’s a death in that assembly. You don’t have that freedom of the unity of the Spirit because you’ve got this fighting going on.
In another life, in 1968, I became a student pastor of a Baptist church while I was going to seminary. I went into this church, and the people were precious. It was a country church, way up a dirt road somewhere. I mean, they had to send me far off, far away.
I went there and I started preaching, and it wasn’t long—it was at my first deacons’ meeting. Now, you know the deacons in the Baptist church: they are the kings of the church.
Among the deacons there were two men. One guy sold gasoline to everybody. He had a petroleum truck, and they were all farmers out there, so he sold gasoline to everybody. There was one brother who was a deacon who believed this guy cheated him twenty years ago.
And they still weren’t talking. So I came into this meeting, and here are these deacons, and these two guys are fighting. I said, “You know what?” I was twenty-four years old, and I said to these two deacons in their mid-fifties, “Either you forgive one another or resign from being deacons.”
The oil-truck guy walked out of the meeting. The other guy went, “Blah, blah, blah, blah.” Everybody heard about it. And you know what happened? Those two guys reconciled, and twenty kids got saved in that church.
There was just a staleness over that assembly because these brothers were vying. When the Lord, through my ignorance, I told them what to do—of course, when you’re a pastor, you have to tell everybody what to do. That’s one of the things.
Can you imagine? How can you have life when you have men against each other in the same assembly? Oh, these things should never be—or sisters at each other’s throats. It just causes the life to go out.
Whenever Christ is not all in all, all of these things need to go if it is worthwhile. Have you ever touched and lived? I’ve never yet seen an assembly where you could say, “Christ is all and in all.” I’ve never seen one.
But the more reality that becomes, and the more we allow the Lord to deal with our fleshliness, our differences, and our attitudes, the more you can touch His life.
That’s what the Lord wants in your assembly and my assembly. He wants that mystery revealed: “Here’s Christ. Look at her. He’s in His body, manifesting in the love of the saints, in the worship of the saints, in the giving of the saints.”
Whatever it is, brothers and sisters are functioning because Christ is their life. How wonderful.
Let’s take a really beautiful look in Colossians 3, beginning in verse 12, at the church. Can I put it this way? Maybe not Christ all in all, but the church on resurrection ground, where His life can be felt.
Listen to this. Verse 12:
So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved,
put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Wow. Now Paul has just listed some things which are not natural affections. We can gather with one another and like one another, have brotherly love for one another, and have natural affection because we have an affinity for this person or that.
But if the church lives on the basis of natural affections, schism is always the result. Right? Because you like people who are such a way, and they like people who are such a way, and the next thing you know, we have a schism.
So when Paul mentions these things—a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience—he’s talking about something that’s developing in the new man as Christ crucified lives His resurrection life out of you.
This is not natural compassion. Some people are naturally compassionate. Believe me, any natural temperament that you might have will be worn out pretty soon by the body of Christ. You need these living expressions of Christ.
So you have compassion, kindness, humility. Uh-oh. Then you see the splinter in somebody’s eye. What does that tell you? “I knew that they were wrong.” No, no. What it should tell you is, “I see their splinter. I must have a log in my eye.”
Which way will we go on that, right? Or I start to hear rumors about somebody. “Oh yeah, and I knew that there was something wrong. That’s why they lost their job. Yeah, I know.” Rumors are going around, and compassion goes out the window.
Or we see flesh in somebody’s ministry. Somebody gets up and shares in our local meeting, and we sense some flesh, and we say, “Ah, it’s flesh, not spirit. Flesh.”
You know, we raise up in every assembly some omniscient critics. They know the Bible very well. They’re impossible to be built with. They always know, they always criticize, they always have the answer, and they’re never wrong.
One time I was in a fellowship, and there was a brother who thought he had a great teaching ministry. It wasn’t that hot. But anyway, because we were letting everybody sort of share, he did some Sunday school work with the teenagers for a little bit.
But then he kept coming back to the brothers. He said, “No, no, no, no. I want to share to the whole group.” The brothers said, “No, no, we think you need to sit and listen to the sharings of brothers for a while.”
He said, “Well, if I can’t share in this group, I’ll go somewhere else where I can.”
Now, the shame is, some people really know the Bible, but they’re like the Lone Ranger. They shoot you with a silver bullet, and then they ride their horse out of town. You can’t get hold of them, you know?
Some of them are precious brothers if they could just be dealt with, if they would allow people to say, “Now sit down, brother,” and be corrected. Oh, no, no, no. When you’re omniscient, you are never correctable.
This happens, and it’s such a shame.
Bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
whoever has a complaint against anyone;
just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
Beyond all these things put on agape,
which is the perfect bond of unity.
Oh boy, would I like to go to that church.
He’s telling us what resurrection ground looks like. He’s telling us what Christ all and in all really should look like. What a wonderful thing—the perfect bond of unity, the love, the agape of God flowing in the midst. Is that your experience?
Paul, of course, has that little secret which is so valuable in the book of Colossians, at the end of chapter 2. It’s this: sometimes when things aren’t going so well, and there’s a little competition or some things in the assembly, here’s what we have to do: hold on to our brothers and sisters.
No, no, no. Don’t write that down. Some of you are so fast at taking notes, you already wrote that down.
Paul says, whatever you do, don’t hold on to one another. You’ll only form cliques. Hold fast to the Head.
We only have one basis of unity, don’t we? Now, you’re looking at me. You know, I’ve been around you guys so long, I know I’m about sixty percent Chinese. But actually, I’m still a lot different from you.
If you don’t hold fast to the Head, you’re not going to get along with me—and vice versa, I may add. Holding fast to the Head.
The Colossians had let go of the Head because they were pursuing circumcision, religious philosophies, and all kinds of worthless things. It was hurting the church.
You see, in the church, you shouldn’t have all of these crazy things, but all the time there’s something novel going on in the church today. What we need to do is hold on to the mystery of Christ.
Let me tell you something. Back several years ago, I was in Seattle at a West Coast Christian Conference. I was working with the young people, and I was walking to the meeting place where a meeting was in session.
I saw a dear sister that I had taught the Bible to and sung to, doing young people’s work since she was this big. She was growing, growing, growing, growing, and now she was in college.
I saw her and said, “Hey, how you doing?” She came over. “Hey, good to see you, Dana.” I hadn’t seen her in years. We talked for a second, and I said, “Hey, Brother Stephen’s speaking in the meeting. Let’s go in.”
She said, “Oh, sorry, I can’t go in.” I said, “Why can’t you go in?” I was completely thrown. She said, “Well, I’m attending a group that’s a covenant group, a Calvinistic group, and I cannot fellowship with those people inside because they’re Arminians.”
Now, first of all, I don’t know if you know Brother Stephen, but he’s not an Arminian. But all that aside, it broke my heart. She would not go in because she was now a Calvinist and held to the five tulips, and she couldn’t fellowship with Christians who were not of that persuasion.
Now, what a tragedy. There are doctrines now that proliferate through the body of Christ, these novel things. You know what? If Calvin were alive, he’d say, “Don’t follow that. You follow the Lord, and you follow the Word.”
I’d never find a theology yet that fits the Word. You know what I’m saying? Theology is always a mess with the Word of God in some way or another, as valuable as it may be in certain points. Don’t follow a theology.
Pentecostals have a whole theology. The faith movement has a whole theology. Now there’s a whole new thing coming out where it’s all about social justice. “Don’t even preach the gospel. What you should do is get a storefront in the inner city and just help people get jobs and get on their feet.”
Did the Bible ever say there’s anything wrong with helping people? No. But they say, “Forget the gospel. Just do charity work. That’s all we’re supposed to do.” Where did they get that?
All of these kinds of things are being thrown in. One guy—I was in a church one time—and he said, “Imagine, I have to leave. I can’t fellowship with you anymore.” I said, “Well, how come?”
He said, “Because you say that the Holy Spirit”—now, he had a King James Bible, so for Chinese this won’t make sense—“you say that the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are the same thing, but they’re different.”
So I said, “No, no, wait, wait. They’re both the same Greek word.” “No, no, no, no Greek. Paul used the King James Version.”
It’s so funny, but it’s true. He ended up staying in the fellowship, but he always had it in for me about the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit. Where do we get these things? These divisive doctrines and things.
It’s just people. Churches split over the color of carpets. What a shame.
While I was studying at the Baptist seminary, we had a history course. The historian—this was in Kentucky, where I went to school—said, “Now, in Kentucky, we have an important case in church history I want to tell you about. It’s the history of Harmony Baptist Church.”
At the beginning of the twentieth century in Kentucky, in the rural areas, there were still some Native American renegades who traveled around from house to house. They killed people and took money, just a little group of renegades.
Harmony Baptist Church had a discussion one night. “Now, if these Native Americans come into our church, or if they come into your home, and you hide your children down in the potato cellar underneath the floor, and the Native Americans come in and say, ‘Do you have any children here?’”
“Do you lie and save their lives, or do you tell the truth and the kids get killed?”
They had such an argument about it that the only solution was that across the street they started New Harmony Baptist Church. So they had Harmony Baptist Church, No Harmony Baptist Church, and they split over a theoretical question.
Now, we could go on and on about these kinds of things, and all of them are true and worse. But what God is looking for is Christ to be all and in all, and for us to live in this mystery of Christ among us, the hope of glory.
Christ among us, revealing Christ—such wonderful things.
But as you know, every church in the New Testament was being challenged by something. The churches in the Galatian region were being challenged by Judaizers. The Corinthians had so many things wrong, but let’s just say they had men who were the problem there.
Philippi had these two precious sisters arguing. Ephesus perhaps had a problem of unity because rather than just live in the unity of the Spirit and work toward the unity of the faith, they were trying to start with the unity of the faith—that is, doctrine—and work the unity of the Spirit. That doesn’t work that way, right?
Colossae had heresies coming in there, false doctrine. Laodicea, we see later on, was a very wealthy town, and wealth just became a problem. That heaviness of the Lord’s veto came into that assembly.
It just comes to the place, as our brother was sharing this morning, by the time we come to Revelation 2 and 3, here’s my question: Do you think any of those churches saw the mystery of Christ all and in all?
Or had it been lost in institutions, in doctrines, in compromise, in carnal activity?
The story would be bad if it ended there. But even though some of these churches faced this decline—and as we know historically, all seven of those churches presently are nonexistent for various different reasons—we have to see something.
The Lord was satisfied because there were some who overcame, who lived by an overcoming life that said, “No, Christ is still the church, and Christ is still our Head, and Christ is still in the members of the body of Christ.”
Down through history, there has been a remnant every generation. Here’s a large church—well, I don’t know how you want to describe what the church is like today. It’s so large, and there’s so much going on: some good, some not so good, all kinds of things.
But here’s what we know: the Lord sovereignly has a remnant of people. In their heart, they say, “I believe Christ is all and in all.” They pray for their church.
The Lord has sent some of you to various places where you don’t have the luxury of a fellowship that has even heard of these things. But He wants you to pray these things and share these things so that maybe the Lord can recover some kind of corporate testimony in the place that you live.
We have a dear brother from Flushing who moved out to Minnesota. I think his name’s Richard. I think it’s Minnesota that he moved out to. He went into a church that was a Chinese Bible church, just like a denominational Chinese Bible church.
One by one, he’s praying and bringing in things about how we do the Lord’s table. These people had never heard these things before. Slowly but surely, I think Richard is bringing them more and more to Christ all and in all.
Isn’t that wonderful? He was sent out to Minnesota—further north than I’ve ever been over there in the United States—and the Lord is using him in that place.
One last story. You know Robert Chapman? Robert Chapman, called the Apostle of Love, lived in nineteenth-century England in Barnstaple. He became pastor of a Baptist church that was one of the most divisive churches in their area.
They sent Robert Chapman there, and these people were fighting. There were two deacons, I think, who were really at it. They were always fighting each other.
Robert Chapman went to that church, and I forget how long he pastored there. Anybody know? Fifty years, I’m going to say.
He was a pastor there for fifty years, and one by one, by the preaching of the Word, he pulled their fingers off church traditions and doctrines and brought them to Christ. They began to see Christ at the center.
I think they were a Baptist church while he was there, but I don’t know the number of years. Finally, one day they said, “Why do we have the name Baptist on our assembly? Let’s just call it a Barnstaple assembly.” They took the name Baptist off, and he kept working with them.
The irony of it is, by then the Brethren movement was full steam ahead, believing in local assemblies, the breaking of bread, and wonderful things the Brethren had. But they got to fighting each other.
When they would fight each other, often they would bring Robert Chapman in, who was never a Brethren, because he understood Christ all and in all.
There was one time, I understand, when somebody criticized Chapman during one of these meetings where they were wrestling with each other. It was J. N. Darby himself, ostensibly the head of the movement at the time, who said, “Don’t ever say that about Robert Chapman. We need to learn from him, not him from us.”
That man basically laid down his life for those people in Barnstaple. By the time it was through, that was a wonderful assembly of people moving toward Christ is all and in all.
Now, is that vision of the church lodged in your heart? Oh, what a mystery. What a mystery that causes that electricity of the Spirit whenever somebody is trying to unearth that mystery—the mystery of Christ in His body.
All I can say is, your assembly where you live would be a lot different if you had that kind of vision clearly in your mind. Even if others are still not clear, if you are clear, there’s something added there, and there’s the possibility of others also seeing what you’re seeing.
Do you hold to these dear mysteries of God? I love that He has mysteries meant to be revealed to us, but through a process of searching, understanding, and living out that which we see.
Oh, may the Lord bring us all to the place where we can say, “Christ is our life.” And corporately, can we say, “Christ is our life”?
This is what I feel the work of God is doing in our midst in these days. May the Lord help us. We need so much help in this. Our flesh is so strong. Our traditions are so long.
But God’s life is waiting to testify to the glory of Christ in our midst, if we’re willing to go the way of the cross. Let’s just pray.
Lord, these matters of Your mystery are so tremendous. From the mystery of the gospel right through to the mystery of God, and the mystery of Christ, and the mystery of the church, and the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory, and the mystery of godliness—all of these mysteries are meant to be understood, and yet searched.
Oh, give us that kind of heart that would awaken the boredom of our lives with a sense of life—life directed by Your Spirit. Bring us into these things, O Lord.
How Paul, there in jail, yearned for that day when Christ would be revealed in His bride. Oh, may we have that same heart as we share these matters with one another.
Christ, our life. Christ, our corporate life. Make that real in us, we pray, in Jesus’ precious name.