Olives that have known no pressure

We may wonder why the Lord would allow such a great servant of His to suffer so much. This is because the ministry is produced through sufferings. I hope that the Lord comes back soon, but it may be that He will delay His coming just because of us. We may say that we love the Lord and that the Lord will bless us. Surely He will bless us, but what do we mean when we say this? Our dictionary is different from the Lord's dictionary. The Lord does desire to bless us, but His blessing us is according to the meaning in His heavenly dictionary. Without the sufferings, we cannot experience the Lord as our blessing in a rich way. The chorus of Hymns, #626 says, "Each blow I suffer/Is true gain to me./In the place of what Thou takest/Thou dost give Thyself to me." Every blow takes away something of ourselves and brings in something of the Lord. We should like this kind of trade. He takes away a part of our old man and gives back to us something of Himself.

The life of Christ in us is altogether a story of the Spirit; it is not a matter of seeking to be perfect through ethical pursuits, and it has nothing to do with the personal cultivation of morality. Several days ago I hurt my back, so I have not been able to move around too much. One day I heard my wife singing a chorus, "Each blow I suffer / Is true gain to me" (Hymns, #626). I immediately remembered stanza 1 of that hymn which says, "Olives that have known no pressure / No oil can bestow; / If the grapes escape the winepress, / Cheering wine can never flow." Of course, she was not intentionally singing this to me, but I felt that this hymn is not bad—it is half right and half wrong. Do not think that as soon as you toss something into the winepress, oil and wine will come out. What comes out depends on what you toss in. If you throw stones, coal, or wood into the winepress, you will only get some powder; you will have no way to press out a drop of oil or wine. Hence, in order for oil to be pressed out, the thing that is being pressed must have oil within it. Whether or not each blow is a true gain depends on whether or not we have oil within us.

In the foregoing messages and in this message, we have had much to say concerning the putting to death of Jesus. I am deeply concerned that some of the saints may have a mistaken understanding regarding this matter. They may think that every kind of suffering is an experiencing of the putting to death of Jesus. When they sing a hymn such as "Each Blow I Suffer" (Hymns, #626), they may not have the proper understanding either of this hymn or of what Paul means by "the putting to death of Jesus." Therefore, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I wish to point out that not all the sufferings experienced by Christians are of the same category. Actually, there are at least three kinds of sufferings that Christians may experience. Let us now consider these categories.