In 3:3 Paul says, “Being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone, but in fleshy tablets of the heart.” Here Paul speaks of a letter of Christ ministered by the apostles. Such a letter is written, inscribed, with the Spirit of the living God. All those who are co-workers and leading ones in the churches must look to the Lord for His mercy and grace in order to carry on the work of writing Christ into the saints. Instead of merely teaching doctrines to others or only teaching the Bible, we must do the unique work of writing living letters of Christ.
If we would inscribe Christ into others, we must first have Christ in our experience. If we do not have Christ in an experiential way, then with what shall we write a letter of Christ? We shall, of course, have nothing with which to write. If we try to do any writing, it will be like trying to type with a typewriter that has a dry ribbon. One day I was typing and discovered that nothing was on the paper. Then I learned that the ribbon was completely dry. There was no ink on the ribbon to transfer the letters to the paper. I use this to illustrate the fact that in order to write a living letter of Christ, we must first have the experience of Christ ourselves.
Living letters of Christ are written with the life-giving Spirit of the living God. The life-giving Spirit is the heavenly ink. If we would have this kind of ink, we need to experience Christ and be filled with Christ. This means that we must be thoroughly saturated with the life-giving Spirit. If we are persons full of Christ, saturated with the life-giving Spirit, we shall have the riches of Christ to use in writing Christ into others. We shall also have the life-giving Spirit of the living God as the heavenly ink. The ink is the Spirit, the essence of the ink is Christ, and we are the pen.
Any kind of ink must have a particular essence. Ink is different from plain water. It is not possible to write a letter using only water. There must be a certain substance added to the water to make ink. Praise the Lord, the heavenly ink is the Spirit, and the essence of this Spirit-ink is Christ with all His riches. To have this ink in our experience, we must enjoy Christ, possess Christ, be filled with Christ, be saturated with Christ, and be covered with Christ.
Others should always find us in Christ. In Philippians 3:9 Paul speaks of being found in Christ. He wanted to be found by others in Christ, not in anything other than Christ. Paul did not want to be found in himself, in his culture, or in his particular way of living.
We also should aspire to be found in Christ, to be one with Christ, saturated with Christ, and even constituted of Christ and reorganized with Him. Then, being anointed with the Spirit and filled with the life-giving Spirit, we shall have the Spirit as the ink to write Christ into others. Then as we speak to others, we shall spontaneously write upon them with the life-giving Spirit of the living God. The element of the riches of Christ will be infused into them, imparted into their being. In this way, Christ will be inscribed into them. To write Christ into others in this way is truly to live Christ for the church.
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