We discussed previously how we were created by God for His own purpose and plan but became fallen, sinful, and unable to live in a way that fulfills God’s plan. The consequences of the fall of mankind are tragic, and we see the effect both in our own lives and everywhere we look today.

But God can never be defeated! And though frustrated, God’s plan cannot be derailed. In His wisdom, God took three tremendous steps to carry out His original plan of imparting His eternal life into us so we could share His life and express Him.

First, God became a man named Jesus Christ.

Two verses in John tell us the first step God took.

John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Then John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”

When we put these two verses together, we see something remarkable. The Word—who is God—became flesh. God became a man! This first step of God becoming a man is known as incarnation.

Consider how amazing that first step was. The infinite, eternal God of the universe became a man of flesh and blood—Jesus Christ. He lived a real human life, limited by time and space, and knew all the sufferings of human life. Yet He was the only man in all history who was without sin. He lived on earth not for a day, a week, or a year, but for thirty-three and a half years. During that time, He fully expressed God in all His living. We can see His wonderful humanity, the way He lived, and the words of grace and truth He spoke when we read the four Gospels.

Through incarnation, Christ put on a physical body of flesh and blood, making it possible for Him to die for us. His perfect, unblemished life qualified Him to take our place on the cross.

Second, Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem us.

Jesus Christ came to die for our sins. The first time John the Baptist saw Christ, he declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” As the Lamb of God, Christ was sacrificed for us on the cross. This second step was Christ’s crucifixion.

Because Jesus Christ took the step of being crucified, Ephesians 1:7 tells us what is available to sinful mankind now: “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace.”

And Ephesians 2:13 tells us more of what we have because Christ was crucified for us: “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have become near in the blood of Christ.”

We sinful human beings can be redeemed, forgiven, and brought back to God, all because of Christ’s crucifixion.

Third, Christ rose from the dead.

Christ’s death accomplished a wonderful redemption for mankind. But His redeeming death isn’t the end of the story. Jesus Christ rose from the dead and defeated death itself! This third step is resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus is an accomplished fact, but it’s not just a fact, something for us to appreciate objectively. In 1 Corinthians 15:45 we read this extraordinary word:

“So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul’; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.”

This is tremendously important. As flesh and blood, Christ could never enter into us to be life to us. He could redeem us through His death, but He could only impart life to us through this step, His resurrection.

Because of this third step of resurrection, the Christ who was crucified for us is now the life-giving Spirit. As the Spirit, He is able to come into our human spirit with His divine life and we are reborn of the life-giving Spirit. We become children of God with the life of God!

Christ as the life-giving Spirit is available anytime, anywhere, to anyone who would repent, believe in Him, and open to receive Him. When we receive Him, we receive the eternal life as God had originally intended. As this life grows in us, spreading from our spirit into our soul, we express God to everyone around us.

The fall of man was calamitous. But God’s plan of salvation was carried out by these three tremendous steps—incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. God in Christ accomplished our redemption to forgive us our sins and bring us back to Himself. God redeemed us so that He could achieve His goal of entering our spirit to live in us, be with us, and be expressed out of us.

Have you been forgiven of your sins and received the life of God? If you haven’t, you can pray a simple prayer like this one:

“Lord Jesus, I turn to You and open my heart to You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. Thank You for resurrecting from the dead. Thank You, Lord, for being the life-giving Spirit. Lord Jesus, I believe in You and I receive You into my spirit right now. Thank You, Lord, for coming to live in me!”

As human beings we, of course, have a physical heart. But we’re all aware that we also have something within us we recognize as an intangible heart.

But what exactly is this intangible heart? We’ve heard the word heart used since we were young, in everyday language, in literature, in music, and in other contexts. And most of us probably have a general definition of the heart, thinking of it as something inside us that feels emotions like love, affection, compassion, or sorrow.

The definition of the heart in the Bible isn’t given in one verse; it’s spread throughout many verses and can be easy to miss. Since the Bible refers to the heart hundreds of times, it must be significant to God and to us. So what does the Word of God say about our heart? And what is its importance to God and to us?

If you search online for heart you’ll find details on the physical heart, with photos and diagrams explaining its function and the way it works. You’ll also find a lot of information on caring for it so you can live longer. A poor diet, lack of exercise, and other factors can have dire consequences.

But what about the condition of our intangible heart? If neglecting our physical heart affects our life negatively, then surely neglecting our nonphysical heart is also detrimental. But how can we care for our heart if we don’t know what it is?

So let’s discuss what our heart is, not according to our common understanding, but according to the Bible. This will help us to properly care for our heart in our life with the Lord.

In previous podcasts, we’ve discussed how God created man as a three-part being with a spirit, a soul, and a body. Our heart isn’t a fourth, separate part of our being. Instead, as the verses we’re about to read will demonstrate, our “heart” in the Bible is a composition of all the components of our soul—our mind, emotion, and will—plus the most important part of our spirit—our conscience.

Matthew 9:4 says, “And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why are you thinking evil things in your hearts?”

Thinking is something of the mind, but the Lord Jesus asked the scribes why they were thinking in their hearts. This shows that our mind is part of our heart.

Acts 11:23 says, “Who, when he arrived and saw the grace of God, rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain with the Lord with purpose of heart.”

To purpose means to decide strongly to do something, to use our will, so this verse shows that our will is part of our heart.

Next, John 16:22 says, “Therefore you also now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you.”

We rejoice with our emotions, and here we see that our heart rejoices. As we might expect, this shows us that our emotion is part of our heart.

Last, Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us come forward to the Holy of Holies with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”

As this verse shows, our conscience is part of our heart. This is further confirmed by the phrase “if our heart blames us” in 1 John 3:20. Since our conscience is what blames or condemns us when we’re wrong, this verse makes it abundantly clear that our conscience is part of our heart.

So according to the Bible, our heart is not simply something we feel emotion with. Because it’s composed of our mind, our will, our emotion, and our conscience, it does much more; our heart also thinks, decides, and senses right from wrong.

To understand what the function of our heart is, we first need to realize that God’s desire is to have a warm, loving, and affectionate relationship with us in which we and He share the same life—His divine life. For this, God created us with a heart.

The Lord tells us in Mark 12:30, “You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart.” So as we might expect, our intangible heart is our loving organ. If we didn’t have our heart, we couldn’t sense love, know love, or love in return.

Additionally, though, our heart has another important role. Two excerpts from The Economy of God by Witness Lee help explain:

“Our relationship with the Lord is always begun and maintained by the heart. Of course, to contact the Lord is a matter of the spirit, but this must be initiated and maintained by the heart, for our heart is the gateway of our whole being.” (p. 75)

Our heart is the gateway, the portal, of our entire being. So whether we open or close the doors of our heart determines what we let into our inner being. Witness Lee continues:

“In other words, the heart becomes both the entrance and the exit of our being. Whatever enters into us must enter through the heart. Whatever comes out from us must proceed through the heart.” (p. 75)

We can see that our heart functions as both the loving organ and the gateway of our being if we recall our salvation experience. When we heard the gospel of how the Lord Jesus died on the cross for our sins, our hearts were touched. We sensed the depth and the sweetness of His love for us and responded to His love. We couldn’t help but love Him in return for all He did for us. So we opened the doors of our heart to believe in Him and we received Him. We received Him into our spirit and were born again of the Spirit in our spirit, but it was our heart that first had to open to let Him in.

We were created by God in such a marvelous way with a spirit to contact, receive, and contain Him as life, and with a heart to love Him! He wants to be our life and He wants us to love Him, even with our whole heart. This is the relationship the Lord wants to have with us—in life and in love.

As the first excerpt from The Economy of God pointed out, our relationship with the Lord is both begun by our heart and maintained by our heart. This is why the condition of our heart is very important. In fact, many problems in our Christian life are really “heart problems.”

In future podcasts, we’ll get into some particulars on properly caring for our heart in order to maintain our relationship with the Lord in the best way.

This is the last podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

In the foregoing podcasts in this series, we’ve seen that God gave us two precious gifts—His Word and His Spirit—and that these two are actually one.

It is a glorious fact that God has become accessible and communicable to us as the Spirit embodied in the Word, but this fact remains objective to us if we do not exercise our spirit to contact the Spirit in the Word. In this podcast, we’ll take a look at how we can receive the Spirit in the Word through the exercise of our human spirit.

It’s best for believers to have two times each day to read the Bible—one to meditate on and pray over the Word to receive spiritual nourishment, and one to study and understand the Scriptures. At all times, however, we must remember that the Word and the Spirit are one. We must continually endeavor not merely to touch the letter of the Bible, but to touch and receive the Spirit in the Word.

In Life Lessons, Witness Lee says: “In reading the Bible, after we have understood the meaning of the text by our understanding and have apprehended the truth of the text with our wisdom, we should use our spirit by prayer to receive the truths in the Scripture into the deepest part of our being, that is, our spirit. In other words, after we understand the text and receive the truth therein, we still must exercise our spirit to turn what we have understood and realized into prayer that it may be assimilated in our spirit, becoming our life supply and the basis of our spiritual experience.”

In the Life-study of Philippians, he writes: “The Word becoming the Spirit in our experience can be illustrated by the lighting of a match. The head of a match is a ball made of phosphorus. When we strike a match in a proper way, the phosphorus bursts into flame. Is the flame different from the phosphorus? No, it is simply the explosion of the phosphorus. In like manner, the Spirit is the ‘explosion’ of the Word. When we experience this explosion, we are ‘burned’ by the ‘fire.’ This burning is faith.”

How can we exercise our spirit to receive the Spirit in the Word? Here are five ways that we can practice:

First, according to the Bible, we need to pray in order to receive the Word of God. By exercising our spirit through prayer, we touch and receive the Spirit in the Bible.

Ephesians 6:17-18 says, “And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints.”

In his book, Enjoying Christ as the Word and the Spirit through Prayer, Witness Lee says, “The way to transfer Christ as the Word into the Spirit is to open our heart, open our spirit, and exercise our spirit to pray.”

Second, we can be filled in spirit by speaking and singing the Word. God is a flowing and filling God, and by getting into the Bible daily, we can enjoy this flow.

Ephesians 5:17-19 says, “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissoluteness, but be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord.”

Third, the apostle Paul charged the Colossian believers to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly. The way to let the Lord’s word dwell in us richly is by teaching, admonishing, and singing.

In Colossians 3:16, he wrote, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.”

Fourth, we need to keep and obey the Word. The truth can become a part of us only by our reading and experiencing it. As we dig into the truth in the Word, we are both unveiled to see it and equipped to keep it.

In John 14:23 Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.”

And 1 John 2:5 tells us, “Whoever keeps His word, truly in this one the love of God has been perfected. In this we know that we are in Him.”

So, to receive the Spirit in the Word, we need to pray and petition with it; speak and sing it; teach and admonish it; and keep and obey it. And, finally, we also need to exercise our spirit to mix the Word with faith. This can be as simple as saying, “Amen,” to God’s Word, even when we don’t understand it.

Hebrews 4:2 says, “For indeed we have had the good news announced to us, even as they also; but the word heard did not profit them, not being mixed together with faith in those who heard.”

We hope you’ve enjoyed this special series on reading the Bible. As we put these five ways to exercise our spirit to receive the Spirit in the Word of God into practice, we’ll turn God’s Word into our daily life supply.

This is the sixth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

In our previous podcast, we pointed out that it is helpful to have two separate periods of time for reading the Bible. We should have time to meditate on the Word, praying and praising as we read and receiving spiritual food; it’s best to have this time in the morning. The other time of reading the Bible can be at any time of day and is for understanding and learning more about God’s Word.

In this podcast, we’ll talk more about this second time—our time for studying the Bible.

We must exercise our mind to study and understand the Bible. However, even when we study the Word, we must realize that the Word and the Spirit are one. To understand only the letter of the Bible is not our goal; rather, each time we read we must endeavor to touch and receive the Spirit in the Word.

For us to ascertain the facts in the Bible requires our prayerful reading and study. Hence, when we read the Bible, our spirit should be the dominant part of our being. There is no need for us to extensively prepare ourselves or make a long production out of reading the Word. Sometimes a short prayer asking the Lord to wash us with His blood so that we can freely come to Him in His Word to receive Him is sufficient to usher us into genuine contact with Him through the Word.

We should read the Bible with understanding and wisdom. Understanding has to do with apprehending the words of the Bible with our mind. This is a critical prerequisite to receiving revelation from the Word. The amount of speaking and revelation we can receive from the Lord is proportionate to the diligence we apply to our comprehension of the letter of the Bible. Getting acquainted with the facts in the Bible is like accruing capital for our future experiences of the divine life. In Life Lessons, Witness Lee observes,

“In reading the Bible, we must first use the understanding of our mind to comprehend its text, which was written in human language, and to know its meaning.”

Lee’s book The Full Knowledge of the Word of God lists some practical guidelines for understanding the Bible:

First, understand the Word of God literally.

Second, go beyond the letter, historical events, and persons and things to explore and to receive the revelation of life.

Next, take care of the context.

Fourth, expound God’s Word with God’s Word.

Fifth, learn from the saints of the past.

And sixth, pray-read the Word to eat, drink, and breathe in the spirit and life in the Word.

Reading the Bible with wisdom involves apprehending the truth in the Bible with our spirit. This wisdom is not our natural wisdom but the wisdom we obtain through prayer. It’s deeper and higher than the understanding in our mind.

In The Triune God’s Revelation and His Move, Witness Lee says, “We cannot receive the divine revelation through such fanciful imaginations. Instead, we receive it by the spirit of wisdom and revelation, spoken of in Ephesians 1:17. The spirit here is the mingled spirit, the divine Spirit mingled with the human spirit. Thank God that today in the universe there is not only the divine Spirit or only the human spirit but also the mingled spirit. God and man can be mingled together as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Basically, the way to receive revelation is by the mingled spirit, that is, by the divine Spirit indwelling the human spirit. This mingled spirit is called the spirit of wisdom. This is for our understanding. If we have a revelation, we need the wisdom to interpret and understand it.”

Our reading of the Bible should be comprehensive and thorough; thus, we must be consistent in our reading. We need a schedule.

In Messages for Building Up New Believers, Watchman Nee says, “Every Christian should have a definite plan of studying the Bible. If you can set aside half an hour a day, develop a plan to study the Bible for half an hour a day. If you can afford an hour each day, develop a plan that includes an hour of study. Whatever time you can afford, make a plan that will fit your schedule. The worst way to read is by ‘inspiration,’ that is, casual, unplanned reading that begins at whatever page one feels, at times reading voraciously for ten days and at other times not reading anything for ten days. This is the wrong way. We should not adopt this ‘inspirational’ method. Everyone should have a definite plan of reading. In reading the Bible, we need to be restricted and disciplined.”

To understand the text, we must also be able to properly interpret the types, shadows, and figures in the Bible. Additionally, we should learn to use reference tools that define words and explain grammatical structures, and we should have some knowledge of the Bible’s original languages, Greek and Hebrew.

It is a glorious fact that God has become accessible and communicable to us as the Spirit embodied in the Word, but this fact remains objective to us if we do not exercise our spirit to contact the Spirit in the Word. Join us next time for the final installment in this special series on reading the Bible as we discuss five ways we can exercise our spirit to receive the Spirit in the Word.

This is the fifth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

Last time, we began to look at how to read the Bible. God has given us two precious gifts—the Word and the Spirit; actually, these two things are one. Thus, we need to read the Bible not by any particular method, but by prayer, exercising our human spirit to touch the divine Spirit in the Word. As we come to the Word in prayer, we should love the Lord who is the Word and who spoke the Word. Then we can use our mind to grasp the facts, meanings, interpretations, and significances of the Word. As we do so, we should be ready to heed the Spirit’s speaking and obey the truths in the Bible. Ideally, we ought to read in this way a fixed amount of God’s Word each day.

In this podcast, we’ll go on to consider ourselves—the readers of God’s Word.

We may not realize that we ourselves affect what we perceive when we read the Word. To understand what the Bible is really saying, our inner being—our thoughts and especially our spirit—must be right. Listen to these observations by Watchman Nee on the subject of the reader of the Word.

In The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit, he spoke concerning the reader’s thoughts:

“There are at least two things that we should do when we come to the Bible. First, our thoughts must be identified with the thoughts of the Bible. Second, our spirit must be identified with the spirit of the Bible. We have to think like the writers of the Bible. Men like Paul and John had certain thoughts behind them when they wrote the various portions of the Word. We have to get into the same thoughts. We have to begin from where they began, and develop our thoughts along the same line they developed. We have to reason the same way they reasoned, and consider the same teachings they considered. In other words, our thoughts are like a cog, and their thoughts are also like a cog. The two cogs have to interlock with one another. Our thoughts have to enter Paul’s and John’s thoughts. As our thoughts enter the Bible’s thoughts and our mentality becomes one with the mentality behind God’s inspiration, we will understand what the Bible says.”

Concerning the reader’s spirit, he added:

“It is important in our study of the Word to have our thoughts enter into the thoughts of the writers of the Bible and to have our thoughts enter into the thoughts of the Holy Spirit. However, this is only the initial step. Without this step, we cannot study the Bible at all. But even when we have made this step, we may not be reading the Bible correctly. The Bible is not made up just of thought. The most important thing about the Bible is that God’s Spirit is released through this book. Peter, John, Matthew, Mark, and every writer of the Bible had the same experience: As they were writing the Bible under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they wrote according to a certain train of thought, but at the same time, their spirits were released along with the release of the Holy Spirit. The world can never understand that behind the words of the Scriptures there is the Spirit. When the Spirit is released, the prophets come alive, as it were, and speak to us once again. If we hear a prophet speaking today, we have to realize that his speaking contains not only words and thoughts but something else. This something is mysterious, even though within us we are clear that this ‘something’ is the Spirit. The Bible contains not only thoughts but the release of the Spirit. Therefore, the basic and most crucial requirement of all in reading the Bible is to be able to release one’s spirit to touch the spirit of the Bible. We have to strike the spirit of the Bible with our own spirit before we can understand the Bible.”

We should have two separate periods of time for reading the Bible. One time should be in the morning, during which we should meditate on the Word, praising and praying as we read. The goal of this period of reading is to receive spiritual food and to strengthen our spirit. The other time of reading the Word can be at any time of day and is for understanding and learning more about God’s Word. It’s best to have two Bibles, one for each time. The Bible for the first time should have no notes so we can be freshly inspired by the Word and gain new insight, but the second Bible can be annotated with our markings and notes as we study the Bible in a detailed way.

God’s people in the past have benefited from having these two kinds of times in the Word. In 1841, George Müller described his experience of meditating on the Word:

“I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning, early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon his precious word, was, to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching as it were into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for a while making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it, but still continually keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened, and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart…

“And yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything, that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is, to obtain food for his inner man. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts…”

Be sure to listen to the next episode in this special series on reading the Bible, when we’ll talk more about studying the Bible.

This is the fourth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

We’ve received two precious gifts from God—His Word and His Spirit. The Word reveals God to us so that we can know Him, and the Spirit transmits God to us so that we can possess Him. The Spirit without the Word is intangible, while the Word without the Spirit is mere letter. God’s Word makes the intangible Spirit substantial to us, and God’s Spirit makes the Word of God living to us. The Bible makes known to us the things of the Spirit, and the Spirit makes real to us the things in the Bible. The Word of God and the Spirit of God are one.

Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” clearly indicating that God’s Word is His Spirit exhaled. Thus, the logical way for us to take in God’s Word is to breathe in the Spirit who is incorporated in the breathed-out Word. Since the Word is embodied in the Spirit and the Spirit is received through the Word, the most basic and important thing in our reading of the Bible is to exercise our regenerated spirit to contact the Spirit in the Word.

In his book, How to Study the Word, Watchman Nee says:

“John 6 says that the Lord’s words are spirit. The basic principle is the same: Since the Lord’s words are spirit, we have to read them in spirit. In other words, we can only touch spiritual things with the spirit.

“The Bible is not only a book with words or letters printed on pages of paper. The very nature of the Bible is spirit. For this reason, everyone who reads this book must approach it with his spirit; it must be read with the spirit.”

Ephesians 6:17-18 tells us to “Receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints.” Note 1 on verse 18 in the New Testament Recovery Version says, “This indicates that we need to receive the word of God by means of all prayer and petition. We need to pray to receive the word of God.”

The way to read the Bible is not by a particular method, but with prayer. By prayer we exercise our spirit. When we pray properly, we exercise our spirit, we are in spirit, and we touch the divine Spirit. Since the same Spirit who dwells in us is also contained in the Scriptures, whenever we read the Word with a prayerful spirit, we enjoy the riches, receive the enlightenment, and appropriate the power in the living Word of God. In this way, the Bible will cease to be merely a book of history, ethics, doctrines, or prophecies to us and become rather a source of spiritual supply.

Both the Word and the Spirit are Christ Himself. In John chapter 1, He is the eternal Word, in Revelation 19:13 He is called the Word of God, and according to 1 Corinthians 15:45, in resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit. Christ is therefore the reality of the Word and the Person of the Spirit. Each time we open the Bible we must be conscious that we are approaching Him; we are not only reading His Word, but also communing with Him as the Word.

In John 5:39-40, the Lord Jesus reproved the Jews for searching the Scriptures without coming to Him that they might have life. His message was clear: reading the Bible without coming to the Lord Himself can be an empty pursuit. The knowledge of the Word alone, however precious, should never replace our receiving of Christ as life in the Word.

Although we should read the Word of God primarily for the nourishment of our being and not the gratification of our intellect, we must apply our renewed mental faculty—a mind under the rule of the Spirit—to understand the Scriptures. Throughout the centuries, the divine truths in the Bible, like hidden treasures, were seen only by those who toiled in the study of the Word book by book, passage by passage, verse by verse, and even word by word. As each stood on the shoulders of previous expositors of the Scriptures, with a spirit of wisdom and revelation, they saw something further and interpreted the mysteries of God, Christ, the Spirit, life, the believers, the church, the kingdom, and the New Jerusalem.

Following their example, we as believers should read the Word regularly and thoroughly with understanding so that our Savior God’s desire for us to come to the full knowledge of the truth can be fulfilled. We ought to first familiarize ourselves with the Bible by reading it and learning its contents fully in their breadth and depth.

Thus, for us to reap the most benefit from our Bible reading, we must adhere to the following five points:

First, we must exercise our spirit in prayer when we come to the Word in order to receive the Spirit.

Second, we should love the Lord Himself who is the Word and who spoke the Word.

Third, we need to use our mind to grasp the facts, meanings, interpretations, and significances of the Word.

Fourth, we should be ready to heed the Spirit’s speaking and obey the truths in the Word.

And finally, we ought to read a fixed amount consistently on a daily basis.

Be sure to listen to the next episode in this special series on reading the Bible when we investigate how we ourselves—the readers of the Bible—affect what we perceive when we read God’s Word.

This is the third podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

In the first episode, we discussed some of the benefits of reading the Bible and looked at what the Word of God is. In the second episode, we presented five of the functions of the Bible in our experience. First, the Bible is part of our initial experience of God, making us wise unto salvation. Next, the Bible is our food. The Bible also gives us light. Fourth, the Bible waters and refreshes us. And last, the Bible enables us to have God’s instant speaking.

In this podcast we’ll consider some of the results of reading the Bible.

To live the Christian life we need to read the Bible. We cannot survive without the provisions in the Word. Moreover, through reading the Word, all of our spiritual problems—our real problems—are solved. The Bible is the answer to our questions. How do I enjoy the Lord? How do I escape the world? How do I live the proper life? So many questions about our daily life and experiences as a Christian are cleared up just by reading the Word every day. We may not receive outward, instant answers to these questions, but inwardly, over time, we receive more and more of God as the Answer. Simply by reading in a proper way, the Bible supplies us to live both a normal Christian life and human life. We experience these marvelous consequences by getting into the Word daily. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the results of reading the Bible.

First, when we read the Bible, we are filled in spirit.

At times we may feel spiritually empty and dry, unsure of how to satisfy the discontent within. But according to the Word, we can be those who are filled in spirit. By reading the Bible we are filled in spirit, satisfied to the point of overflowing.

Ephesians 5:18-19 says, “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissoluteness, but be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord.”

And Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.”

What a joyful condition is expressed in these verses! Our being filled in spirit, speaking the truth, singing with grace in our hearts—all are results of our getting into the Word.

Second, when we read the Bible we are infused with faith.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substantiation of things not seen. As physical beings, we may doubt the unseen spiritual things and even the existence of God. However, when we read the Bible, we are infused with faith as our believing element.

Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes out of hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

And in Galatians 3:2 Paul writes, “This only I wish to learn from you, Did you receive the Spirit out of the works of law or out of the hearing of faith?”

If we are discouraged by doubts and feelings of unbelief, we should turn to the Word. The more we read, the more we believe.

Third, when we read the Bible we are nourished and supplied.

First Timothy 4:6 says, “If you lay these things before the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, being nourished with the words of the faith and of the good teaching which you have closely followed.”

Matthew 4:4 tells us that man lives “on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.”

The Bible is the food that sustains our spiritual life. When we eat a hearty spiritual meal by getting into the Word, we are nourished and supplied with the riches of Christ as our food and life supply. We then have the strength to continue our Christian life.

In the Life-study of John, Witness Lee says, “When we contact the Word in spirit, we are actually contacting the Lord Himself as the living bread. When we receive the Word in spirit, we are receiving Christ Himself as the abundant supply of life. Now, day by day, we are participating in this wonderful, resurrected Christ as our food, life, and life-supply.”

Fourth, when we read the Bible we are cleansed and washed.

Ephesians 5:26 says, “That He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word.”

According to this verse, in the Word is water that washes us. This washing is not the washing of the blood of Jesus, which cleanses our sins, but the washing of the water of life that washes away the blemishes of our old man. Through reading the Word, our old nature is cleansed and purified, and we are made new. We need to stay in this washing process by consistently reading the Word.

The fifth result of our reading the Bible is that we partake of the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world.

Second Peter 1:4 says, “Through which He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world by lust.”

The divine life contained in the Word includes as a virtue the energy and strength that enable us to escape the corruption in the world. By escaping the corruption in the world, we can partake of the divine nature of God and thus enjoy all the riches of what the Triune God is.

Note 5 on this verse in the New Testament Recovery Version says, “Having escaped the corruption of lust in the world and having thus removed the barriers to the growth of the divine life in us, we are freed to become partakers of the divine nature and to enjoy its riches to the fullest extent in its development by the virtue of God unto His glory.”

Sixth, by reading the Bible our spirit and soul are divided.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that “the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Our spirit is deep within our soul. At times it may be difficult to discern between the two because of the doubts and wonderings in our mind. The Word has the power to divide our spirit from our soul, releasing our spirit so that we may enter into the full enjoyment of God, and strengthening our capacity to discern our spirit from our fallen thoughts, intentions, and emotions.

Finally, when we read the Bible, the enemy is defeated and slain.

Ephesians 6:17-18 says, “And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints.”

In Matthew 4 Satan tempted the Lord Jesus in the wilderness. The Lord, a sinless and perfect man, defeated Satan by quoting the Bible to him. The Word is a sword, a weapon, with which we can defeat the enemy’s attacks and temptations. As with any weapon, we need to know how to use the Bible and practice using it by daily, prayerful reading and study so we may be fully equipped in all situations.

Note 4 on Ephesians 6:17 in the New Testament Recovery Version says, “The sword, the Spirit, and the word are one. When the constant word in the Bible becomes the instant word, that word is the Spirit as the sword that kills the enemy.”

This is the second podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

In our previous podcast we highlighted some of the benefits of reading the Bible and covered five points concerning what the Bible is. First, the Word is God Himself. Second, all Scripture is God-breathed. Next, the Bible is the complete revelation of God to man. Fourth, the content of the Bible is truth and life. And fifth, the Word of God is life.

Now we’ll go on to consider some of the functions of the Bible in our experience.

Having seen more of what the Bible is, we can realize that it is unique among all books in that we can experience it. The Bible is a book of divine revelation, truth, and life. What other book is filled with divine life—life that we can obtain and enjoy? By God’s mercy, we have a tangible book that opens the way to all spiritual experience. By reading the Bible in a habitual and proper way, we can enter into the depths of its reality. Let’s take a look at some of the functions of the Bible in our experience.

First, the Bible is part of our initial experience of God. The Bible testifies concerning the Lord Jesus, makes us wise unto salvation, and causes us to be regenerated:

John 5:39 says, “It is these [the Scriptures] that testify concerning Me [Christ].”

Second Timothy 3:15 says, “The sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

And in his first epistle, chapter 1 verse 23, Peter writes: “Having been regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.”

Some people have come to believe in the Lord Jesus simply by reading John 14:6, which says, “I am the way and the reality and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” This kind of salvation experience attests to the power of the Bible as the embodiment of God to make a person “wise unto salvation” and to regenerate a person with the divine life it contains.

Second, the Bible is our food.

First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.”

And in Matthew 4:4 the Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.”

We must read the Bible because our spiritual life depends upon it. As with all life, if our spiritual life does not receive nourishment, it will weaken and wither. The Bible is our spiritual food. It is both our spiritual milk and bread of life. We must daily nourish our spiritual life by reading the Word.

In Truth Lessons, Witness Lee writes, “Just as our physical life needs nourishment, so also our spiritual life needs nourishment. The nourishment of our spiritual life can only be supplied by the word of the Bible. In order to be living and strong before God, we cannot depend on bread alone, but on every word, that is, the word of the Bible, that proceeds out through the mouth of God. We must take the word of God as food and eat it (Jer. 15:16), even regarding the word of the Bible as more important than our food. (Job 23:12b).”

Many verses speak of God’s Word being our food and the experience of those who have taken in the Word as their sustenance:

Verses such as Jeremiah 15:16: “Your words were found and I ate them, / And Your word became to me / The gladness and joy of my heart.” And Job 23:12: “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my apportioned food.”

When we eat physical food, it becomes a part of us metabolically, through our metabolism. Similarly, our taking in the Bible as food produces a change in our inward constitution. The more we eat God’s Word, the more we are filled and constituted with Him.

In the Life-study of Second Timothy, Witness Lee says, “Just as the food we eat and digest nourishes us from within, metabolically changing and transforming us, so the Word of God transforms us by inwardly teaching, reproving, correcting, and instructing us.”

Note 1 on Jeremiah 15:16 in the Holy Bible Recovery Version says, “According to the entire revelation in the Holy Bible, God’s words are good for us to eat, and we need to eat them (Psa. 119:103; Matt. 4:4; Heb. 5:12-14; 1 Pet. 2:2-3). God’s word is the divine supply as food to nourish us. Through the word as our food, God dispenses His riches into our inner being to nourish us that we may be constituted with His element. This is a crucial aspect of God’s economy. When we eat God’s words, His word becomes our heart’s gladness and joy.”

If we don’t eat physical food, we will grow weaker and eventually die. Similarly, when we neglect the Word, we feel spiritually weak, dry, and dead. But this unhealthy situation can be reversed when we return to His Word and take in the proper nourishment. When we eat the Word, we are revived, supplied, and strengthened spiritually.

The third item of the functions of the Bible in our experience is that the Bible gives us light. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Verse 130 goes on to say, “The opening of Your words gives light.” Thus, as footnote 1 on verse 130 in the Recovery Version explains, our reading of the Word produces a result:

“When God’s word is opened, or unfolded, to us, it gives us light, shining inwardly over our heart and our spirit to impart wisdom and revelation to us.”

Note 3 on John 17:17 adds, “When God’s word says, ‘God is light,’ it carries God as light in it.”

Many times we have the experience that when we spend time in the Word, we receive the shining of God as light in our being, making us clear and full of light and revelation.

Fourth, the Bible waters and refreshes us. Deuteronomy 32:2 says, “Let my teaching drop like the rain; / Let my speech distill like the dew, / Like raindrops upon tender grass, / And like abundant showers upon herbage.”

When we live apart from the Lord and His Word, or when the dust of the old and common things settles on us as we go about our daily activities at work or in school, we feel dry and stale. But because the Word is living and new, when we read it we are watered, refreshed, and invigorated.

Note 2 on Isaiah 55:11 in the Holy Bible Recovery Version says, “God has sent forth His word to water His people.”

Fifth, the Bible enables us to have God’s instant speaking. Without God’s written word, it would be difficult for us to have His instant word, His instant speaking to us. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word.” Here the Greek word for “Word” is logos, which denotes the constant word, the eternal and unchanging word of God. In John 6:63 the Lord Jesus said, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Here, the Greek word for “words” is rhema, which denotes the instant and present spoken word. The constant word, logos, is necessary in order for us to have the instant word, rhema. The logos is outside of us, and when we receive it into our being it becomes rhema within us, which is spirit and life.

Often we experience the word that we previously read moving within us as the Spirit, speaking to us, teaching us, reproving us, and correcting us. This speaking is the instant word of the indwelling Christ, the rhema word, which issues from our receiving the logos word. Colossians 3:16 tells us that we need to let the logos word of God dwell in us richly. If we do, we’ll have the Lord’s instant speaking to us, and we’ll have the promise from the Lord Jesus in John 15:7: “My words”—rhema words—“abide in you.” The more we have God’s instant speaking, the more we enjoy His presence, see His revelation, and have His leading.

In a message titled, “Reading the Bible,” Watchman Nee writes, “God’s speaking to man today is based upon what He has already spoken in the past. God rarely speaks things which He has not already spoken in the Bible…If a person does not know what God has spoken in the past, it is difficult for him to receive His revelation in the present because he lacks the basis for God’s speaking. Moreover, if God wants to speak something to others through us, He will also do it on the basis of what He has spoken in the past. If we do not know what God has said in the past, He cannot speak through us to others, and we are useless in the eyes of God. This is why we need to let the word of God dwell in us richly. By letting His word dwell in us richly, we know His past ways and hear His present speaking.”

Be sure to listen to the next podcast in this special series on reading the Bible, when we’ll be talking about some of the results that come from reading the Bible.

This is the first podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.

The Bible is the foundation of Western civilization—morally, politically, literarily. Even the secular world recognizes the Bible as the most influential book in the world. It is the highest in its record of the origin of mankind, human history, and prophecies and in its wisdom, profoundness, ethics, and morality.

While these qualities are compelling enough reasons to read the Bible, they cannot compare with the amazing fact that God Himself is embodied and expressed in His Word. But God does not want His words to remain confined in a book, and He tells us so in the Word:

John 15:7 says, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you.”

And Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

God’s destination is our inward being, and He gets there through His Word. By reading the Bible with our spirit, we can touch God and allow Him to enter into us.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that “the word of God is living and operative” within us. When we read the Bible in a consistent and prayerful way, the Bible becomes a subjective and practical part of our daily living. It reveals God’s person and fills us with life, truth, and light. Our spiritual life depends on the nourishment we receive from the supply of life in the Word. By contacting the Lord through our reading of the Bible, we are washed, filled in spirit, and infused with faith. Furthermore, as we receive more of the Word, the Lord Himself increases within us, and we mature to become full-grown, fully-equipped men of God.

Now we’ll take a look at what the Bible is.

First, the Word is God.

John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This verse indicates that God and the Word are not separate, but one. Christ is the living Word of God, as indicated by John 1:14, and the Bible is the written Word of God. Although Christ is not physically with us, He is the Spirit, embodied and expressed in the written Word of God.

In his book The Full Knowledge of the Word of God, Witness Lee says, “Ultimately the word in the Bible is God Himself. It is the embodiment of God Himself. This does not mean that we consider the words in black and white as the living God. What we mean is that the words in black and white contain God Himself.”

In a series of messages titled The Conclusion of the New Testament, he adds: “God is mysterious. He needs the Word to express Him. Christ, as the Word, defines, explains, and expresses Him. Therefore, Christ as the Word, is the definition, explanation, and expression of God. This Word is actually God Himself, not God hidden, concealed, and mysterious, but God defined, explained, and expressed.”

Second, as 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us, the Scripture is God-breathed.

God’s Word, the Scripture, is the breathing out of God. When we touch the breath of God in the Bible, we touch the very essence and substance of the Bible, which is nothing less than the Spirit. In John 6:63 the Lord Jesus said that “it is the Spirit who gives life” and that the words He has spoken are “spirit and are life.” The Word of God is spirit, or breath. When we receive His Word with our spirit, we get God into us.

In another passage in The Full Knowledge of the Word of God, Witness Lee says, “God’s Word is God’s breathing out (2 Tim. 3:16). The Bible is God’s breathing out; that is, it is the breath breathed out by God. The Bible is God’s breathing. To God it is a matter of breathing out; to us it is a matter of breathing in. Through God’s breathing out and our breathing in, God’s word enters into us and becomes our life and life supply. Therefore, when we read the Bible, we must understand that the Bible is not merely black and white words on paper, but it is the breathing out of God. It is full of spiritual breath.”

In the series Truth Lessons he adds, “As Christians, our greatest joy, or shall we say, our greatest blessing, is to be able to contact God and taste Him daily through the word of His breath.”

Third, the Bible is the complete revelation of God to man.

We must read the Bible to know God’s revelation to man. In addition to revealing God’s Person to us, the Bible also reveals God’s plan to accomplish His heart’s desire. God’s heart’s desire can be seen in His economy, which is His plan to dispense Himself as life into us so that we can become His expression. The center of this plan is Christ, and the goal of this plan is the church. The Old Testament contains types, shadows, and figures that show us God’s economy. All these types, shadows, and figures are fulfilled and realized in the New Testament.

When we read the Bible, more of God’s economy is revealed to us, and this revelation becomes a controlling vision that guides our entire Christian life. Reading the Bible brings us into God’s economy.

Note 1 on Genesis 1:1 in the Holy Bible Recovery Version says, “The Bible, composed of two testaments, the Old Testament and the New Testament, is the complete written divine revelation of God to man. The major revelation in the entire Bible is the unique divine economy of the unique Triune God (Eph. 1:10; 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:4b). The centrality and universality of this divine economy is the all-inclusive and unsearchably rich Christ as the embodiment and expression of the Triune God (Col. 2:9; 1:15-19; John 1:18). The goal of the divine economy is the church as the Body, the fullness, the expression, of Christ (Eph. 1:22b-23; 3:8-11), which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the union, mingling, and incorporation of the processed and consummated Triune God and His redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified tripartite people. The accomplishing of the divine economy is revealed in the Bible progressively in many steps, beginning with God’s creation in Gen. 1—2 and consummating with the new Jerusalem in Rev. 21—22.”

The fourth item of what the Bible is concerns its content; the content of the Bible is truth and life. John 17:17 says, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”

By reading the Bible, we come to know the truth. The Lord Jesus said that God’s word is truth. Truth brings us the knowledge of all the realities in the universe, particularly the reality of Christ and the church, and reveals God in His Person and economy. This is God’s desire for us.

In 1 Timothy 2:3-4 we read, “Our Savior God, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth.” God desires for us to know the truth, but as the phrase “come to the full knowledge of the truth” implies, fully knowing the truth is a progressive matter. The Bible always has more to speak to us concerning the truth. Therefore, we must regularly read the Word so that we can be filled more and more with truth and revelation.

In his book Life Lessons, Witness Lee writes, “The content of the Bible is both extensive and inclusive; the two main aspects of this content are truth and life. Truth brings us revelation and knowledge of all the realities in the universe, such as the reality of God, the reality of man, the reality of the universe, the reality of the things of the present age, the coming age, and the eternal age, and in particular, the reality of the Christ appointed by God and the church chosen by Him.”

Fifth, the Word of God is life.

When we read the Word with our spirit, we get life. In John 6:63 Jesus said, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

Life is God Himself coming to be our life. As we read the Bible, which is the embodiment of God, He comes into us as life. The more this divine life grows within us, the more we become His expression. Hence, we need to read the Bible so that we may continually receive God as life into us that we may express Him to fulfill His heart’s desire.

In the Life-study of Matthew, Witness Lee says, “The Bible is a book of life. This life is nothing less than the living Person of Christ.”

In Life Lessons he writes, “Life is God coming to be our life that we may be regenerated, grow, be transformed, and be conformed into the image of Christ, who expresses God, that we may become the expression of God.”

Tune in to the next podcast in this special series on reading the Bible to hear about some of the functions of the Bible in our experience.

Lusts—we all have them and we’re all susceptible to them. We can never be safe from them while we’re in these earthly bodies. This is because in the fall of the entire human race, the pure physical body God created for us became the sinful flesh, full of lusts.

We believers are not exempt from this fact. Certainly, when we believed in Jesus Christ, we were forgiven of our sins and saved eternally. We became God’s children, born again with His divine life. But though our spirit was regenerated, our body was not. The sinful lusts in our flesh remain.

That believers still have the lusts of the flesh is proved by many verses in the New Testament, but in this podcast we’ll focus on 2 Timothy 2:22. Here Paul was not speaking to an unbeliever. He gave this word to a young man named Timothy, his brother in the Lord and co-worker in serving the Lord:

“But flee youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”

If the lusts of the flesh were no longer a problem to Timothy because he was a saved, spiritual person, why would Paul have given him this strong word? And what does this verse mean for us believers today?

Paul’s word to Timothy concerning lusts applies to all of us believers. Although Paul said “youthful” lusts because he was speaking to Timothy, a young man, that doesn’t mean we can ignore this word if we’re older. Whether young or old, we have a corrupted body of sinful lusts that are incited by the world. As Satan’s system, the world has only one aim: to draw us away from God and damage us by feeding our lusts. This evil world system is clearly defined in 1 John 2:16:

“Because all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.”

Today the world is increasingly persistent with its endless stream of sinful and unclean temptations. And modern technology makes it so easy to gratify our lust by just a quick tap on our phone or a click on our computer. With diverse attractions that cater to our lusts, the world is ever present, tempting us twenty-four hours a day. What should we do?

We should flee! To flee means to escape, to turn away from. It doesn’t mean to struggle with, but to run away from. The Bible does not say to resist lusts or to overcome lusts with a strong faith; no, Paul uses the verb “flee,” a definite and active word, when it comes to how to handle lusts, and Romans 13:14 says, “Make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts.” We can’t afford to be passive or complacent about lusts. Perhaps more than ever before in human history, we have to flee, to run away from, lusts.

Giving in to or indulging in the lusts of our flesh brings damage to us. God created us as vessels to contain and express Him, but Satan wants to damage our vessels—spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically—through the lusts in our flesh. In 1 Thessalonians 4:4-5 Paul spoke this word to the Thessalonian believers:

“That each one of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.”

Clearly, no believer is immune to the passion of lust. No matter how much we love the Lord Jesus, no matter how long we’ve been saved or how many experiences of Christ we’ve had, Paul’s word of wisdom to flee is for every believer, since lusts are a constant peril to us all. The way to not be damaged and defiled by lusts but to possess our vessel in sanctification and honor is to flee!

However, Paul didn’t stop at “flee youthful lusts”; he went on to say, “Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.” To flee in an aimless, directionless way is difficult. But Paul told us not only to flee from something, but also to pursue toward something.

To pursue means to seek, search out, follow, or run after—another definite, active word.

On one hand, we are to flee something terrible: youthful lusts; on the other, we are to pursue something wonderful: Christ as our real righteousness, faith, love, and peace. While we flee, we also pursue Christ as all these virtues for our living.

Note 2 on this verse in the Recovery Version explains these virtues in our experience:

“Righteousness is toward oneself, faith is toward God, and love is toward others; peace is the issue of these three virtues.”

So when we pursue Christ, the virtues of righteousness, faith, and love can become ours. We experience Christ being our righteousness in our relationship with others, so that we can be right with them. We experience Christ as our living faith in our relationship with God for us to believe in Him. And we experience Christ as our unlimited love with which we can love everyone. As we experience Christ as all these virtues, instead of struggling with lusts, we have Christ as our real peace within.

Fleeing lusts and pursuing Christ shouldn’t be occasional events with us; instead, we should have a daily life of fleeing and pursuing. As we consider our own daily lives in the light of 2 Timothy 2:22, we might stop and ask ourselves, “If I’m not fleeing and pursuing, what am I doing?” Let us daily flee lusts and pursue Christ!

How can we have such a daily life of fleeing lusts and pursuing Christ? All alone, it’s impossible. But Paul wasn’t merely speaking theory or doctrine to us, so in the second half of the verse he gave us the practical way to flee and pursue: “with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”

To flee and pursue is with those, meaning, with other believers who are also actively fleeing lusts and pursuing Christ, calling upon Him with a pure heart. Besides having a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, we all need to find some spiritual companions with whom we can pray, read the Bible, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, consecrate ourselves, and fellowship about growing in the Lord and experiencing Christ every day.

By ourselves, we’re no match for Satan, his world system, and our fallen flesh. But being “with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” enables us to flee the lusts of the flesh and escape the enticements of the world. And even more, by being “with those” we’re strengthened and encouraged to actively and positively pursue Christ and all He wants to be to us.

As we heed the word to be with others who run after the Lord, we also need to heed the warning in 1 Corinthians 15:33: “Do not be deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals.”

The kind of people we’re with influences us. That’s just how it works. So we must be wise and not become companions of people who draw us away from God; instead, we can choose to be with fellow believers who are running away from the damaging lusts of the flesh and running after the Lord Jesus.

We do have our fallen flesh with its lusts, and profuse temptations and unashamed immorality are present wherever we turn. But we can be believers who have a daily life of fleeing lusts and pursuing Christ with other believers. As vessels God created for Himself, we can be filled with Christ as our righteousness, faith, love, and peace. Then we can be vessels unto honor, sanctified, and useful to our beloved Master, as mentioned in 2 Timothy 2:21.