Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace

Among those hymns related to Christ, the ones I like the best are hymn #501, "O glorious Christ, Savior mine"; hymn #499, "Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!"; and hymn #539, "O Lord, Thou art in me as life and everything to me!" After singing these hymns, I am full of enjoyment, touching the Spirit and receiving the life supply. Where can you find this kind of hymn among Christians today?

[Editor's note: The hymns referred to in the following letter are Hymns, #837, 608, 501, and 499, respectively.]

We will now learn how to use the hymns in the meetings with Hymns, #499. Stanza 1 says, "Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace! / The Christ who's all within me lives. / With Him I have been crucified; / This glorious fact to me He gives. / Now it's no longer I that live, / But Christ the Lord within me lives." According to our custom, when we call a hymn, we ask the sister at the piano to play the tune once before the saints sing the entire hymn. From now on, we should not remain in our old ways. If a brother senses that we should sing this hymn, he can call it. We do not have to sing all four stanzas. We may sing only stanza 1. The sister at the piano needs to be alert. If she waits for a brother to ask her to play the tune once and then plays the tune, the meeting will be deadened. Every saint needs to kindle the fire. If the sister serving at the piano is not quick enough to respond when a hymn is called, any saint in the meeting should begin to sing the hymn. Then everyone else will follow.

Hymns, #189 and #499 were composed not according to traditional, natural thought and logic but according to the divine revelation in the Bible. Hymns such as these are good for speaking. There are many different ways to speak the hymns. If the saints in a meeting practice to speak a hymn such as #189 or #499 for an hour or more, their speaking will equal a full message in content and will be better than one person giving a message.

I moved to the United States in 1962 to bring all the things concerning the Triune God, the all-inclusive Christ, the compound Spirit, the experience of Christ as life, our human spirit, and other scriptural truths to this country. These truths can be seen in the approximately two hundred hymns that I wrote in 1963, such as Hymns, #203, #499, and #501. These hymns represent the second age of the Lord's recovery. Some of my helpers who listened to my messages came up to the standard of the second age and responded by writing more hymns. For example, #1174 says,

What a victory! What a triumph!
God Himself became a man,
Clothed Himself in human nature
To fulfill His mighty plan.
He through death destroyed the devil;
Risen now, the Son of Man!

In the Lord's table meeting, there needs to be more praise. Instead of praising, the saints may merely read from the hymnal. They must learn to go beyond merely reading a hymn to digesting a hymn. Instead of merely reading, "Oh, what a joy! Oh, what a rest!" (Hymns, #499), we can say, "O Lord, in Your life we enjoy the rest. What a rest we enjoy!" We can digest the terms in a hymn and make them a living praise to the Lord.

First Corinthians 14:26 says, "What then, brothers? Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up." According to Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are not only for singing but also for speaking to and teaching one another. Hymns and spiritual songs are the cream—the best portion-of much speaking of the word of God. For example, Hymns, #499 begins by saying, "Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!/ The Christ who's all within me lives." This is not an ordinary speaking but the cream of Christian utterance. We need to practice speaking the hymns to one another.

Much of the terminology in the Old Testament psalms is good, but it is good in a natural realm. It has nothing to do with the Spirit. The New Testament is altogether in another field, in another world. It is altogether in the Spirit, who is the consummation of the Triune God. Thus, everything in the New Testament is altogether a matter in the Triune God. Our honesty, faithfulness, patience, endurance, kindness, and everything we are and do involves the Triune God. All of our virtues should be the expression of the Triune God, not of ourselves. The Christian life in the New Testament is not our doing, but is altogether a matter of our living Christ. To live Him in order to magnify Him is to enjoy Him. Thus, every day we should not do anything but enjoy Christ. Christ is our enjoyment.

This thought is in Hymns, #499, #501, and #841. These three songs were written absolutely according to the New Testament economy. Hymn #841 is concerning the building up of the church. Many Christians, however, still exalt the law, remaining in the Old Testament economy.

The hymns in our hymnal are arranged according to theological order and according to spiritual experience. Of the original 1080 hymns in our hymnal, approximately 700 were selected from many different hymnals. Among these hymns there was something lacking concerning the all-inclusive and all-extensive Christ, the compound life-giving Spirit of Christ, the divine life, and the church. To fill this lack, we composed more than 200 new hymns on Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. Consider, for example, Hymns, #499:

1. Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!
The Christ who's all within me lives.
With Him I have been crucified;
This glorious fact to me He gives.
Now it's no longer I that live,
But Christ the Lord within me lives.

Peace is a condition that issues from grace, from the enjoyment of God our Father. When we enjoy God as grace, we are in a condition that is full of rest, satisfaction, and joy. This is peace. Grace is a substance, whereas peace is a condition. The substance of grace is God Himself, and the condition of peace is that which issues out of our enjoyment of God as grace. We all can testify of the peace we have when we enjoy God as grace. The first line of Hymns, #499 says, "Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!" Life is grace. When we truly enjoy Christ as our life, we participate in grace. Then we have peace. What a life! What a peace! Now we can also say, What a substance! What a condition! We have the divine substance as our enjoyment, and we have the heavenly condition. This is the peace that we enjoy.