The church life has a strong presence of the Lord’s speaking. But without the impact and the echo of the Lord’s present speaking among the saints, we cannot have a true church life. The Lord’s word is living, and it must be continued in all of us, bearing fruit in our daily lives. So how is it that we can go through the church life and yet have so little deposit of the Lord’s speaking in us?
If we want to have the truth and the reality, we need to be saved. Salvation is powerful. In Acts chapter 2, people were saved because they “received his word”(v. 41). How simple! And yet if we do not have a tangible being with which to receive the word, the Lord’s speaking will have no impact on us. We may be full of good logic and religion, and yet we cannot absorb the Lord’s speaking because we cannot receive the Lord Himself. The Lord is the Word—the Word has to become flesh. We can never have a church life if we don’t have the incarnation. If the Word has nothing to do with our day-to-day life—if the Lord’s speaking has no impact—then there is no church life, no tabernacling. It is not a matter of being a better Christian or learning the “right” way. If we love someone, we don’t need to be taught how to be with them in our daily life. We are not robots or machines. We simply need to be the proper landing ground for the Lord’s speaking by having a tangible being for the Lord to mingle with.
So how does the Word become flesh to us? How can our humanity be restored and renewed to become tangible to receive the living Word?
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you have crucified.” (Acts 2:36)
In this key verse from Acts 2, we first see that even the humanity of God needed to go through the process of resurrection. Humanity needs to be uplifted through resurrection. Then, in the Lord’s resurrection, He can declare the excellency of His victory. And in that victory, which is in His ascension of this resurrected humanity, He was established as the Lord to us. God is always and forever Lord to us. His humanity had to go through a process of crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension so that we could take ownership of the meaning of our human life through the very same process. When we say, “You are my Lord,” this means that our humanity is fully under Him and has been uplifted through His processed and perfect humanity.
When we enjoy the Lord, the crucifixion has to be the essential part of our salvation. Crucifixion should not be bitter. Actually, through the cross we are able to enjoy the Lord, and through His victory, the Lord becomes the anointed One to us. Through the Lord’s anointed humanity, we are able to reign in his victory; every day we can enjoy our humanity. But in order for our humanity to be in the same victorious, superior excellence, we need this process. In the early days of the church life in the book of Acts, everyone was victorious and overcoming; they didn’t need to be worldly or common. How can we be rejoicing amidst such global turmoil and crisis, and still able to celebrate something else—to live unto another hope, not to depend on what the common people are depending on to live? It is through this very specific salvation. Humanity has to go through a resurrection process for Him to become the Lord to us. This is not just something that happened on the day of Pentecost—this also happens today. God has to become the Lord to us; otherwise, God is God—God is not the Lord to us. The humanity of the Lord Jesus has to be crucified so that the Lord can be the Lord, not just to others, but subjectively to us. What do we mean when we say the Lord is the Lord to us? It means that everything from the Lord’s humanity becomes our humanity.
Second, through the cross, the Lord became anointed. He is the Lord, but more specifically He is the anointed Lord. That means that His humanity was commissioned to accomplish God’s eternal plan. First, our humanity has to have the Lord. Then, our humanity has to be under a commission. God’s economy is accomplished through humanity—this processed, victorious humanity. And who was the one who accomplished that? Christ. That processed part of the humanity of God became Christ to us to accomplish God’s eternal plan through man. Our human living becomes the perfect interpretation of God’s economy. When humanity is sanctified, or anointed, then that is the reigning—the crown. We know we are reigning when we have this crown—this kingship. The ointment separates, or sanctifies us. And the part that is sanctified is our humanity. Our humanity is actually being used as the Lord’s essential economy, and that part has to be crucified so that the crucified humanity can become the anointed power to reign. In this way, He is simultaneously the Lord and Christ to us.
When we experience the humanity of God, being crucified and going through the process of resurrection, this resurrection becomes a reigning victory in His ascension, and He becomes the Lord and Christ to us. When this happens, there is a group of people who start to live a church life together. This is something very important in our day-to-day life. Many times, we think we are “doing” the church life, but Acts 2:36 has to happen in our experience first. We have to be saved! If we have never seen the cross and subjectively experienced that we are a sinner and that He died for us, He will never be Lord and Christ to us. If we don’t have this reality of this salvation—a salvation that is incarnated and made subjective—there are no following verses; there is no praying or fellowship without this. The church life is not something that we do, but something we have been brought into. The Lord has brought us in, and the Lord has to be the Lord and Christ to us subjectively. Suddenly, every perspective of humanity that the Lord has and is—everything—becomes our victory. When we are in that victory, all these elements of the Lord’s humanity become a superior excellence to us in our humanity. We are able to reign. We are able to live a very powerful life. This is the source of our church life.