When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He did not live by His human life. Although, as a man, He was a perfect and complete individual person with a life of His own, He lived by the life of the Father, not by His human life. Since the Father’s life is divine and eternal, the Lord Jesus lived by the divine life. He and the Father had one life and one living. The Son lived by the Father’s life because the Son’s intention was to express the Father. Since the Son is the image, the expression, of the Father, and since He lived by the Father, the Son expresses the Father in a full way. The Son lives, but it is the Father who is expressed.
In John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said clearly that the living Father sent Him and that He lived because of the Father. The Father sent the Son, and the Son lived on earth through, because of, or by, the Father. I prefer to say simply that the Son lived the Father, for the Father was the Son’s life.
The Bible reveals that the Son is a seed who is to be reproduced in the believers. According to John 12:24, the one grain of wheat needs to fall into the earth and die in order to produce many grains in resurrection. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He lived the Father’s life. Now, after His resurrection, He has become our life. He wants us to live His life, not our own natural life. As individuals, we all have our own life. But in His economy, God does not intend that we live our natural life; He intends that we live Christ. As Christ lived the Father, so we should live Christ.
We have pointed out that Christ is versus our culture. Our self-made and self-imposed culture, as well as the culture we have inherited, may be excellent, but as long as it is not Christ Himself, it is a hindrance to our experience of Christ, to our enjoyment of Christ, and to our living by Christ. In order to see this clearly, we need a heavenly vision. If we try to drop our culture without seeing that Christ is our life and our everything, we shall succeed only in exchanging one kind of culture for another. To be uncultured is also to have a culture. Those who are cultured have a culture, and those who are uncultured also have a culture, although of a very different kind. If we realize this, we shall see that it is of no avail simply to decide to drop our culture. Apart from Christ, whatever we are and whatever we do is related to culture in some way. Every human being has culture. The culture may be developed or undeveloped, high or low, but it is nonetheless a culture. At the time the book of Colossians was written, the Greeks had their culture and the Jews had theirs. Throughout the thousands of years of history, every race and nationality has had its particular kind of culture. The crucial point here is that every kind of culture is versus Christ and that Christ is versus every kind of culture. Any culture, no matter what kind of culture it is, is versus Christ. Apart from Him, every human product and development is part of culture.
We should not try in ourselves to do anything about the culture within us. What is of vital importance is that we see the vision of God’s economy. God’s economy is to work the living, all-inclusive Person of Christ into us. According to the revelation in the book of Colossians, Christ is the portion of the saints, the firstborn of all creation, the image of the invisible God, the Head of the Body, the firstborn from among the dead, the One in whom all the fullness is pleased to dwell, the mystery of God’s economy, the mystery of God, the reality of all positive things, and the constituent of the new man. Christ is everything: He is life, light, power, might, strength, righteousness, holiness, kindness, and every other divine attribute and human virtue. Because Christ is everything to us, He is all-inclusive. God’s intention in His economy is to work this all-inclusive One into us. As the all-inclusive One, Christ has the highest attainments. He has ascended to the heavens and has been exalted to the highest place in the universe. He is now sitting at the right hand of God. Christ has been enthroned, and He has become the Lord and Head over all. Furthermore, He has obtained everything, for all things have become His. This Person with all He has attained and obtained is the very One that God desires to work into our being. Do you truly believe that such an all-inclusive living Person has been wrought into you? I doubt that very many Christians, including those in the Lord’s recovery, actually believe this.
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