Christ is the one reality of all

At the beginning of 1961 I was in Taiwan and wrote eighty-five hymns. One of these hymns says, "Christ is the one reality of all, / Of Godhead and of man and all things else; / No man without Him ever findeth God, / Without Him man and everything is false" (Hymns, #496). We cannot find a hymn with this kind of content in any hymnal in Christianity. Over the past two thousand years, thousands of teachers have expounded the Bible, but no one ever wrote a hymn on Christ being the reality of all. However, an old Chinese man who was born in a small town in Shantung and who has no degree in theology wrote such a hymn.

II. The all-inclusive Christ is the reality of all the positive things in the universe—cf. Rom. 1:20; Eph. 3:18; Hymns, #496:

Although we may speak many words each day, much of our speaking may not be for Christ. Thus, we need to learn how to speak for Christ. We need to learn how to prophesy, how to speak Christ as the reality. The first line of Hymns, #496 says, "Christ is the one reality of all." This indicates that our speaking of anything other than Christ is not real. When Christ is the content of our speaking, our prophesying is real. Whatever we speak in the meetings must be Christ. We need to learn to speak concerning Christ, to speak for Christ, and to speak forth Christ to others. We all need to learn how to prophesy in a proper and real way.

In [Col.] 2:18 Paul warns us to let no one purposely defraud us of our prize. Our prize is the full enjoyment of Christ. Even those of us who have been in the Lord's recovery for many years do not have the full enjoyment of Christ. We have been defrauded of this. Through seeing the vision of the all-inclusive Christ, we are being brought back to our prize. If we see this vision, no one will be able to defraud us of the full enjoyment of Christ. When we have this enjoyment, we realize that Christ is our reality. A stanza from a hymn on the experience of Christ as reality expresses it this way:

Christ is our real God, our real Lord,
Christ is our real life, our real light;
Christ is our real food, our real drink,
Our real clothing, and our real might
Hymns, #496

Since Christ is such a reality to us, we should live by Him, not by culture.