Morning Nourishment - Disciples, Believers, Saints, and Christians
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Day 1
Verses: Matt. 9:9 And as Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man sitting at the tax office, called Matthew, and He said to him, Follow Me. And he rose and followed Him. 11:29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. First, the believers are designated as disciples. The term disciples is often used in the Gospels and in Acts, but it is not used at all in the Epistles…[In Matthew 5:1], when Christ sat down on the mountain, His disciples, not the crowds, came to Him to be His audience…The crowds that gathered around Him were the outer circle, but His disciples were the inner circle. These disciples were Jewish believers. However, when they were on the mountain listening to the decree of the kingdom’s constitution, they were representatives not of the Jewish people but of the New Testament believers. In Matthew 28:19 the Lord Jesus told His disciples to go and disciple the nations, that is, the Gentiles. This means that the nations would be converted into disciples. Therefore, both the Jewish and Gentile believers are disciples. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 1131)
Disciples are those who follow Christ. In His ministry the Lord Jesus told people to repent, for the kingdom of God has drawn near (Mark 1:15; Matt. 4:17). When some repented, or had an inclination to go with Him, He said to them, “Follow Me” (Matt. 4:19; 9:9; 19:21; Luke 9:59). Disciples are also those who learn of Christ. In Matthew 11:29 the Lord Jesus said, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me.” Discipline is required for both following Christ and learning of Him. We cannot follow Him or learn of Him without being disciplined. We especially need to be disciplined in order to learn of Christ. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 1132) We are being discipled from being a natural man to being a God-man, living the divine life by denying our natural life according to the model of Christ as the first God-man (Matt. 28:19). The young people have come to the full-time training not to be trained in the human understanding but to be discipled in the divine understanding. While I am helping them to be discipled, I am also being discipled day by day in many aspects to live the divine life by denying my natural life. We should live such a life according to the model of Christ as the first God-man. When Christ was on this earth, He denied His natural life, Himself. He said that whatever He spoke was not His word but the word of the Father who sent Him (John 14:24). He never did anything out of Himself (5:19, 30). He did everything out of and by the sending Father. He was not the Sender but the sent One. He did not live Himself; instead, He lived the Sender, the Father (6:57a). This is the model of the first God- man. There has never been such a man in all of human history…After God’s incarnation there was a particular man on earth who was a God-man. This God-man did not live His human life. Instead, He lived the divine life, God Himself, by denying His human life. The Lord called some to follow Him just to see how He lived so that He could show them the pattern of a God-man. For three and a half years they saw and were discipled by this pattern. In the church life we are also being discipled by the Lord. The church life is a discipling life to disciple us from being a natural man to being a God-man. God does not care whether you are a good man or a bad man, because everything of your natural man, good or bad, must go to the cross. All the natural persons should be discipled to the cross because we have another person in us. We have another life and nature, both divine, according to which we must live. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 88-89) Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 105; Life-
Day 2
Verses: Rom. 12:2 And do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and well pleasing and perfect. Eph. 4:23 And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind. We should not be fashioned according to this age. This means that we should not be fashionable. Rather, we should be transformed by the renewing of the mind…The renewing taught by the Scriptures is the renewing of the mind; it is altogether a matter related to the mind. The mind is our mentality, our philosophy, our religious concepts, our views concerning people and things, etc. We need to be renewed mainly in our mind. Ephesians 4:23 says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” The preceding verse says to put off the old man (v. 22), the succeeding verse says to put on the new man (v. 24)…The spirit of our mind is the regenerated spirit mingled with the Spirit of God spreading into our mind to exercise control over it. In this way our mind is renewed. Furthermore, Romans 8:6 says, “The mind set on the spirit is life and peace.” This also shows us the importance of our mind. Our mind can be renewed only by our setting it on the spirit. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Organic Aspect of God’s Salvation,” p. 407)
Not only so, the New Testament teaches us to have the mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5). This is equivalent to taking the mind of Christ Jesus as our mind. By regeneration we have the life of God, by sanctification we partake of the nature of God, and by renewing we have a change in our mind. The way of renewing lies in prayer and in reading the Scriptures, because for us to be renewed in our mind is for us to get rid of all our old concepts concerning the things of the human life and be made new again by the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the enlightening of the Holy Spirit. When you read the Bible and become familiar with it, the Holy Spirit will enlighten you and guide you. When the Holy Spirit comes to enlighten you while you thus pray and read the Word day by day, the mind in you is being changed from the old to the new. Your view is different, and your being is renewed. Such a renewing of the mind issues in the transformation of the believers in their spiritual life. Titus 3:5 refers to the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. The washing of regeneration washes away our old life; following this, the renewing of the Holy Spirit changes our mind. When our mind is renewed, our whole being is transformed. This is to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. The washing of regeneration purges away all the things in the old nature of our old man, whereas the renewing of the Holy Spirit dispenses the new things, the divine essence of the new man, into our being. Through this we turn from the old condition in which we were into a completely new condition, from the state of the old creation into the state of the new creation. Today our problem is due mostly to our mind…Sometimes when someone has something wrong in his mind, he begins to have wild imaginations. A wife may begin to weep when she indulges in wild imaginations. All these matters are related to the mind. God Himself has become our life, He is changing our disposition, and He is also renewing our mind. Thus, we can have the proper concepts and can pursue Christ in a proper way…Our disposition needs to be sanctified so that we may partake of God’s holy nature; our mind also needs to be renewed so that we may be transformed in our spiritual life. This is the saving that God renders to us in the organic aspect of His salvation. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Organic Aspect of God’s Salvation,” pp. 407-409) Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The Organic Aspect of God’s
Day 3
Verses: Rom. 12:5 So we who are many are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Phil. 3:10 To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. [Some] may consider that the recovery is for the recovery of the local churches. I say yes with a but…The local churches are too much in the expression of physical things. You have to arrange the elders and set up the deacons to take care of so many outward affairs. But with the Body of Christ there are no physical things. The local churches are nearly ninety percent physical, but they should be for something spiritual, and this spiritual thing is the Body of Christ. The reality of the Body of Christ is a kind of corporate living, not a living by any individual. This corporate living is the aggregate of many saints who have been redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, and transformed by the processed and consummated God within them. By this indwelling consummated God, these redeemed saints have been made actual God-men. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The Practical Points concerning Blending,” p. 127)
In regeneration a person is made a God-man, but he is not a matured God- man…The procedure in the church work is to beget, to nourish, and then to teach and perfect so that the saints may be mature to be built in the local churches for the building up of the Body of Christ. We know that God became a man to be a God-man…He appeared to His disciples and to the people as a genuine man…Yet this man would not live by Himself, by His own human life. Rather, He rejected His human life. He denied Himself…He told us that whatever He did and whatever He spoke were not of Himself but of the Father who sent Him (John 14:10, 24). He was a real man living there, yet He was dying to His natural life…That dying to His natural life is the cross, and His living by the divine life is in resurrection. [Jesus was a human being, a genuine man], but He did not live by that genuine man. Instead, He kept that genuine man on the cross. Then, in the sense of resurrection, He lived God’s life. God’s life with all its attributes was lived within this God-man Jesus and expressed as this God- man’s virtues. This life [in an individual man, Jesus Christ], has now been repeated, reproduced, in many men who have been redeemed and regenerated and who now possess the divine life within them…The reality of the Body of Christ is the corporate living by the perfected God-men, who are genuine men but are not living by their life but by the life of the processed God, whose attributes have been expressed through their virtues. Paul lived by dying to live [cf. Gal. 2:20]. He was dying to his natural man and living by his new man with the divine life. So he said that by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, he lived and magnified Christ (Phil. 1:19-21a). The reality of the Body of Christ is not just a corporate living but a mingling living…This living is not completed; it is still going on…Such a mingling living is in the resurrection of Christ, and the reality of this resurrection is the Spirit. If among us there is, if not in full at least in part, such a living, the reality of the Body of Christ is among us…Anyone who lives such a mingling life would never be a trouble to anyone. They have been delivered out of themselves and have been transformed and perfected. They would not despise or condemn anyone, nor would they be bothered by others. They would not have anything to do with dissension, rebellion, or division. Instead, they would be here in the recovery as the high peak, Mount Zion, in Jerusalem. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The Practical Points concerning Blending,” pp. 127-131) Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The Practical Points
Day 4
Verses: John 1:12-13 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten…of God. Rom. 12:3 …Not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to be sober-minded, as God has apportioned to each a measure of faith. The designation believers designates those who have believed in [to] Christ as the Son of God according to God’s New Testament economy… Anyone who does not have faith in Christ, who does not believe in [to] Christ, is certainly not a believer. The believers are those who have received Christ as their generating life for them to become the children of God. Believing into Christ equals receiving Him. When we believe into Christ, we receive Him. We receive Him by believing into Him. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1133, 1137)
We are God’s regenerated new creation, united with Christ in His divine life, joined to Christ as one spirit (2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 6:17). We are not merely generated persons in the old creation. We have been generated twice. The first time was by our parents to be the old creation. We were generated to be the natural man, but one day we were regenerated. Our birth certificate is an important and official document that records the date of our physical birth. Our second birth certificate of our spiritual birth is seen in Romans 8:16, which says that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God. Our birth certificate is a double spirit, the Spirit with our spirit. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” p. 88) According to Romans 10:17, faith comes out of the hearing of the word. Thus, the source of faith is the word…There are three aspects of the word. First, there is the written word of God—the Bible (John 10:35). Then there is the living word of God—Christ (1:1). Finally, there is the applied word of God—the Spirit (Eph. 6:17; John 6:63). The Bible is the written word, and Christ is the living word. Without the Spirit, however, the living word cannot be applied to us. The living word becomes the applied word through the Spirit. God has only one kind of word. First, He spoke, and what He spoke was written in a book. That is the Bible. We have such a word, but not many have really been benefited by this word. This is why we have to either read or hear the Bible. Every week we gather together a number of times just to read, speak, and hear the word. When the word of the Bible is spoken to us and heard by us, right away the written word becomes the living word. That is Christ. When the living word is applied to us and received by us, it becomes the word of the Spirit. Then this word of the Spirit heard by us is the source of our faith. Faith comes from the hearing of this applied word by the Spirit through the living Christ out of the written Bible. If you think you are bigger than Paul in the quantity of faith, you are crazy. You are not sober-minded [Rom. 12:3]. If you are really sober-minded, you will say, “Brother Paul was a big mountain. I am just a small stone.”…To think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think without a sober mind is to annul the proper order of the Body life. In Romans 12 Paul deals with the practice of the Body life…God has not only allotted but also apportioned faith to us. He gave us the same faith in quality but not in quantity. The matter of quantity depends upon how you grow. If you grow today as the apostle Paul grew, the portion of faith you receive will be greatly enlarged. God first allotted faith to us in quality, and then He apportioned it in quantity. What kind of faith you have depends upon God’s allotment. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans,” pp. 286-287, 311-312) Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “A Word of Love to the
Day 5
Verses: 1 Cor. 1:2 To the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, the called saints, with all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place… 2 Thes. 2:13 But we ought to thank God always concerning you, brothers beloved of the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. The term saints denotes those who have been separated and made holy unto God…The believers in Christ are “the called saints” [1 Cor. 1:2]; they are not called to be saints. This is a positional matter, a sanctification in position with a view to sanctification in disposition. According to grammar,…”to the church of God” is in apposition to “to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus” [v. 2]. This indicates that “to the church of God” equals “to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.” This strongly indicates that the church is a composition of the saints and that the saints are the constituents of the church…Individually, we are the saints; corporately, we are the church. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1141-1142)
Christ is the element and sphere that separated us unto God, made us holy unto Him, when we believed in Him, that is, when we were brought into an organic union with Him through our faith in Him. Holiness is actually God Himself, and God is embodied in Christ. Therefore, Christ is our holiness…Through Christ’s redemption, God has put us into Christ. Now that we are in Christ, who is the sphere and element of holiness, we are sanctified, made holy. As saints, we have been sanctified by Christ with His redeeming blood positionally…Christ’s body suffered the death of the cross outside the gate, and His blood was brought into the Holy of Holies for our sanctification (Heb. 13:11-12). The book of Hebrews unveils that God’s heavenly calling is to make us a heavenly people (3:1), a people who are sanctified unto God. Christ is the Sanctifier (2:11). He suffered the death of the cross, shed His blood on it, and entered the Holy of Holies with His blood (9:12) that He might be able to do the sanctifying work by the heavenly ministry (8:2, 6) of His heavenly priesthood (7:26) and that we might enter “within the veil” (6:19) by His blood to participate in Him as the heavenly Sanctifier. Christ’s redeeming blood sanctifies us positionally. As saints, we are also being sanctified dispositionally by the Holy Spirit with God’s holy nature. The Holy Spirit is changing our disposition by causing it to be mingled with the holy disposition of God. This is subjective sanctification…This is a matter of a long process, beginning with regeneration (1 Pet. 1:2-3; Titus 3:5), passing through the whole Christian life (1 Thes. 4:3; Heb. 12:14; Eph. 5:26), and reaching completion at the time of rapture, at the maturity of life (1 Thes. 5:23). Another verse that speaks of dispositional sanctification is 2 Thessalonians 2:13…The salvation unto which we were chosen by God is salvation and sanctification of the Spirit…While the Holy Spirit is sanctifying us, God is saving us. Therefore, we are being saved in sanctification of the Spirit. This sanctification of the Spirit is actually the divine transformation. By this we are thoroughly saved from all old and negative things and made a new creation to obtain the Lord’s glory. Every day we are being sanctified, and the One who sanctifies us is the Spirit… All day long the Spirit is sanctifying us, applying to us what the Father has planned and what the Son has accomplished. The Spirit has been commissioned to sanctify us; He has been given to us for the purpose of completing the work of sanctification. As saints, we have such a practical, living, and subjective Sanctifier. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1142-1146) Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 106
Day 6
Verses: Gal. 2:20 I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. In the New Testament the believers are also designated as Christians [Acts 11:26; 26:28]…In 11:26 Christian is a term of reproach. That the disciples in Antioch were given such a nickname as a term of reproach indicates that they must have borne a strong testimony for the Lord, a testimony that made them distinct and peculiar in the eyes of the unbelievers. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1146-1147)
The designation Christian is used again in 1 Peter 4:16, where it denotes those who are adherents of Christ, bearing His reproach. The context of this verse concerns sharing the sufferings of Christ [v. 14a]…”In the name of Christ” is actually in the person of Christ, in Christ Himself, because the name denotes the person. The believers, having believed into Christ (John 3:15) and having been baptized into His name (Acts 19:5), that is, into Himself (Gal. 3:27), are in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30) and one with Him (6:17). When they are reproached in His name, they are reproached with Him, sharing His sufferings. After speaking of being reproached in the name of Christ, Peter goes on to say in 1 Peter 4:16 that if a believer suffers “as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this name.” Whereas in the time of Peter and Paul Christian was a term of reproach, today it should bear a positive significance, that is, a man of Christ, one who is one with Christ, not only belonging to Him but having His life and nature in an organic union with Him, and who is living by Him, even living Him, in his daily life. If we suffer for being such a person, we should not feel ashamed, but be bold to magnify Christ in our confession by our holy and excellent manner of life to glorify, express, God in this name. When we believed in Christ, an organic union took place between us and Him. By believing in Christ, we believed into Him and thereby became one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). This is what we mean by the expression organic union. Our organic union with Christ also involves our being baptized into Christ (Gal. 3:27). God’s intention in His economy is to put us into Him and to come into us and live in us. Therefore, to be baptized into Christ is to enter into an organic union with the embodiment of the Triune God, which is able to transform our whole being. Now as Christians, those who are of Christ and are one with Him, we need to live by Him, and even live Him, in our daily life…If we are living by Christ, we are still doing the living. To live Christ means that Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). When we live, He lives. When He lives, we live. The central thought in the Bible is that Christ must be our life and that we must live Him as our living. The goal of being a Christian is to live Christ. Furthermore, the destiny God has ordained for us in His economy is that we live Christ. God’s economy is to dispense Himself into us and to work Himself into us that we may take Christ as our life and life supply in order to live Him. God’s desire is that we live Christ…Christ is to be our life, our daily walk, our everything. In Galatians 2:20 Paul declared, “Christ…lives in me.” Paul could say not only that Christ lived in him, but also that to him to live was Christ [Phil. 1:21]. On the one hand, Christ lived in Paul; on the other hand, Paul lived Christ. Inwardly Christ was Paul’s life, and outwardly Christ was Paul’s living. Paul and Christ thus had one life and one living. Christ’s life was Paul’s life, and Paul’s living was Christ’s living. The two, Christ and Paul, lived as one…The organic union that has taken place between us and Christ causes us to be so close and intimate with Him that we are even one spirit with Him [1 Cor. 6:17]. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1147-1150) Further Reading: CWWL, 1953, vol. 3, “The Knowledge of Life,” ch. 14;