If I’d know Christ’s risen power

When we go out for the propagation, we should all be witnesses of Christ. A witness of Christ is a person who daily lives under the shadow of the cross by being in death and resurrection. Stanza two of Hymns, #631 says, "If I'd have Christ formed within me, / I must breathe my final breath, / Live within the Cross's shadow, / Put my soul-life e'er to death." The chorus says, "If no death, no life, / If no death, no life; / Life from death alone arises; / If no death, no life." When we go out to spread the gospel, we are spreading God's kingdom; that is, we are spreading Christ. To spread Christ means that Christ is lived out through us. When we daily live a crucified and resurrected life under the shadow of the cross, Christ can be lived out from us, and life can flow out from us.

We must learn to know the truth, and we must learn to know the genuine experience of life. We need the foundation of life, the Spirit, the apostles' teaching, the subjective experience of the cross, and resurrection. I have no desire to pass on to the saints mere spiritual or biblical knowledge. My intention is to bring all the saints into the full realization of the experience of life. In life we must experience the cross of Christ subjectively, and we must also experience resurrection, which in reality is the pneumatic Christ. We must experience these things in our daily life. When we are about to exchange words with our spouse or with the brothers, we must first ask ourselves, "Am I doing this under the cross? Is this in resurrection?" This is the experience of life.

The first two lines of Hymns, #631, say,

The chorus of hymn #631 says, "If no death, no life." This life comes to us not by our natural life but by the power of Christ's resurrection. Yes, we have been crucified, but how can we keep ourselves on the cross all the time? No human being can do it except those who know the power of the resurrection of Christ; they have the capacity, the ability, to practice this. By the power of the resurrection of Christ, we have the ability and the power to keep our pitiful self on the cross. How can a sister be a good wife? A good wife is a crucified wife, a wife on the cross.

We are required to remain on the cross under the crucifixion all the time. Sometimes I went to the Lord and said, "Lord, I cannot carry out this kind of Christian life. I thought that after I believed in You, You would do good things for me." The Lord answered, "Yes, I will do everything good for you, but you have to remain on the cross. As long as you live by yourself, I can do nothing for you. I can do something for you only if you remain on the cross." I said, "Lord, how can I do it? I have no power to do it." The Lord said, "I am in you, I am the resurrection, and I have the power to enable you to remain on the cross." Stanza 1 of hymn #631 says, "If I'd know Christ's risen power, / I must ever love the Cross." Life is Christ. If I am going to live Christ out, I have to remain on the cross to die there. This is the second application of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem has twelve gates, and they should be applied to our daily life by our keeping ourselves crucified all the time in our daily experience that we could be conformed to Christ's death.

Our co-crucifixion with Christ is an accomplished fact; this is realized through divine revelation (Rom. 6:6). Our co-crucifixion with Christ should also be our moment-by-moment experience; this is enjoyed through the effectiveness of the Spirit (Rom. 8:13b; Gal. 5:24). Hymn #631 says, "If I'd know Christ's risen power, I must ever love the cross; Life from death alone arises; There's no gain except by loss." We should have this prayer daily so that we may have this experience every moment. On the other hand, according to the New Testament revelation, our co-resurrection with Christ is also an accomplished fact (Eph. 2:6a). We were crucified together with Christ, and we were also resurrected together with Christ. Hence, to be resurrected together with Christ should also be our experience every moment (Phil. 3:10a). It is through this experience of resurrection that we can be conformed to His death.

Christ took up His cross daily by dying to Himself. Likewise, as God-men who pursue Him, we should bear the cross and live under the cross daily. This means that we should put our natural life on the cross by daily dying to our self and putting to death all the practices of our natural man and our flesh. We have a short hymn (Hymns, #631) which says:

If I'd know Christ's risen power,
I must ever love the Cross;
Life from death alone arises;
There's no gain except by loss.
If no death, no life,
If no death, no life;

In Mark 10:38 the Lord Jesus asked James and John, "Are you able to drink the cup which I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" When they said that they were able, He went on to say, "The cup which I drink you shall drink; and the baptism with which I am baptized, you shall be baptized" (v. 39). Both the cup and the baptism refer to Christ's death (John 18:11; Luke 12:50). To drink the Lord's cup and to be baptized with the baptism with which He has been baptized are to experience His death, to have His death applied to us in our experience.

A hymn that speaks of being salted is Hymns, #631. The second stanza and the chorus say:

If I'd have Christ formed within me,
I must breathe my final breath,
Live within the Cross's shadow,
Put my soul-life e'er to death.
If no death, no life,
If no death, no life;

The New Jerusalem is the conclusion of the entire Bible of sixty-six books. In the New Testament the designation new indicates resurrection, something that comes out from death. To live a new life is to live a life in resurrection (Rom. 6:4). Anything that has not passed through death is old. To be new, something must pass through death and enter into resurrection. The ultimate issue of the entire revelation of the Bible is a new city in resurrection. Today we are in the long tunnel of death through the cross. I have been in this tunnel for over sixty years. It is here that we find our pathway. Stanza 1 and the chorus of Hymns, #631 say, "If I'd know Christ's risen power, / I must ever love the Cross; / Life from death alone arises; / There's no gain except by loss. / If no death, no life, / If no death, no life; / Life from death alone arises; / If no death, no life."

In Philippians 3:10 Paul speaks of knowing Christ, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of, the participation in, His sufferings. The fellowship of Christ's sufferings involves much more than Christ's crucifixion alone. In Christ's crucifixion, when God judged Christ as our Substitute, put our sins on Him, and made Him sin for us, Christ was under the suffering of death (1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; 2 Cor. 5:21). We have no part in Christ's suffering of death for redemption. Before He was crucified, however, Christ was continually under the suffering of death for thirty-three and a half years. Paul tells us that he shared in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. In this fellowship of Christ's sufferings Paul was being conformed to His death. Likewise, as we walk today on this pathway, we are under the suffering of Christ's death in order to be conformed to His death.

Stanza 2 of Hymns, #631 says, "If I'd have Christ formed within me, / I must breathe my final breath, / Live within the Cross's shadow, / Put my soul-life e'er to death." In the dark tunnel of Christ's death, we live in the shadow of the cross. Here we put our soul-life to death not by ourselves but through the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14; cf. Rom. 8:13). From morning until evening we must continually put our soul-life to death. We need to tell our soul-life that death is its destination. The soul-life is the "I" (Gal. 2:20), and the place where we put it is the death of Christ. We are continually in the tunnel putting ourselves to death. Here we enjoy Christ as the divine life, and here He is lived out of us. Everything related to life is in the death of Christ. Without this, life is simply a term. The resurrection life is nowhere else but in the death of Christ. In the tunnel of His death there are no left turns, right turns, U-turns, or exits. We simply must go forward, not knowing when we will emerge. We must be prepared to go through this tunnel for our entire life. This is our pathway.

In addition to serving by God's life, we need to see that the entire universe opposes this life. Our natural disposition, our spouse, our parents, and our children oppose this life. Hence, when we live and serve by this life, we will surely encounter opposition, even to the point that we need not only to endure but also to die to our self, natural life, and old man. When the Lord was living this life as a man on earth, He said, "Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). The way the Lord took was not only to endure but also to die. Hymns, #631 says, "If no death, no life." According to our natural concept, none of us are willing to die; but according to the revelation of the Bible, blessed is the one who is willing to die!

Hymns, #631 speaks of the subjective experience of the cross. Stanza 1 says, "If I'd know Christ's risen power, / I must ever love the Cross." Stanza 2 says, "Live within the Cross's shadow, / Put my soul-life e'er to death." It is by Christ's resurrection power that we live in the mold and shadow of the cross. This enables us to live a life of death and resurrection.

In Philippians 3:10 Paul continued on to say, "To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death." In this passage, we see further the secret to experiencing Christ. One of the secrets is the power of resurrection. The other is the conformation to His death, which is the conformation to His cross. Stanza one of #631 in Hymns says, "If I'd know Christ's risen power, I must ever love the Cross." The power of resurrection is our riches. If you are a rich man, you will spend your money gladly. To be conformed to the cross is the way our riches are spent. This passage tells us the experience of Paul. It shows us that if we do not know the power of resurrection and do not live in resurrection, there is no way for us to die by ourselves. It is the power of resurrection that bears us on to death and that takes us on the way of the cross.

Today the reality of Christ's resurrection is the Holy Spirit. When you live in the Spirit, you live in the reality of resurrection. The last stanza of #631 in Hymns says, "If God thru th' Eternal Spirit nail me ever with the Lord." It is the Spirit who nails you. Hence, it is not your colleagues or your husband or wife who is dealing with you. Rather, it is the Holy Spirit in you who is taking you on in the experience of the Lord's death, so that you can be conformed to His death. Therefore, the conformation to the cross comes about through the power of resurrection.

This is why we must learn to exercise our spirit, experience the Spirit, and receive the killing of the cross. If we would not receive the cross, but would only exercise our spirit, this experience of the spirit would not be reliable. The result of a true exercise of the spirit will surely cause us to die and to be crucified. The cross and the Holy Spirit go together. The two also follow one another. On the one hand, we must receive the cross before the Holy Spirit will fill us up. On the other hand, we must be full of the power of the Holy Spirit before we can receive the cross. The two complement each other. From Philippians 3:10 we see that the power of resurrection is the Spirit, and the conformation to the cross is death. This is the secret to our experience of Christ.