CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LIVING LETTERS OF CHRIST BY 
BEHOLDING AND REFLECTING HIS GLORY

Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 17-18

GOD’S INTENTION TO MINGLE HIMSELF WITH US

In the Scriptures a wonderful, mysterious, and glorious fact is revealed; that is, God’s intention is to mingle Himself with us human beings. This glorious, mysterious, and wonderful fact is the very central thought revealed in the Scriptures. The first illustration of God’s intention in the Scriptures is the tree of life, which is to be taken as food into our being. The tree of life typifies the Triune God with the Father as the source, the Son as the course, and the Spirit as the flow that we may partake of Him as our food. He is presented to us in the form of food that we may take Him in. Then He will be mingled with us. The best way to have something mingled with us is to eat that thing. In order to have a chicken mingled with our being, we have to eat the chicken. When we eat chicken, it becomes a part of our being, our very constituent. When we eat the Lord as the tree of life, He will be one with us, and He will be mingled with us.

Another illustration in the Holy Scriptures is the lamb (Exo. 12:3-4; John 1:29). Most Bible students know that the lamb is for redeeming. During the passover, the children of Israel slew the lamb, and the blood of the lamb was shed for their redemption. Under the covering of the sprinkled blood of the lamb, the children of Israel enjoyed the lamb by eating it. They feasted on the meat of the lamb. After a short time the entire lamb got into the children of Israel, who had been feasting on the lamb. On the evening of the passover, every home had a lamb, but within a short time all these lambs disappeared. They became one with the children of Israel. This illustrates that the lamb was mingled with the children of Israel.

There are two illustrations in 2 Corinthians 3 that also illustrate [204] God’s heart’s desire to mingle Himself with us. Verse 3 of this chapter says, “Being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh.” The first illustration is that we are the letters of Christ inscribed with the Spirit of the living God on our hearts. Second Corinthians 3:18 says, “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” The second illustration in 2 Corinthians 3 is that we are mirrors beholding and reflecting the glory of the Lord. These two illustrations show that God wants to mingle Himself with us.

LIVING LETTERS OF CHRIST

When ink is applied to paper, it is mingled with the paper. Christ Himself desires to be inscribed into our being so that we can become living letters of Christ. A letter of Christ is one composed of Christ as the content to convey and express Christ. All believers of Christ should be such a living letter of Christ, that others may read and know Christ in their being. Our heart, as the composition of our conscience (the leading part of our spirit), mind, emotion, and will, is the tablet upon which the living letters of Christ are written with the living Spirit of God. This implies that Christ is written into every part of our inner being with the Spirit of the living God to make us His living letters that He may be expressed and read by others in us.

Christ desires to be written into every part of our inner being, our heart, but we may be preoccupied by many other things. How can Christ be written into us and written on our heart when our heart is preoccupied with other things? Our heart may be preoccupied with our family, our material possessions, our education, our job, or our future expectations. There are many things that can usurp the place of Christ in our heart. How many preoccupations are in our heart, giving no room for Christ to write Himself into us? Furthermore, our heart may be closed to Christ. The preoccupations of our heart and the closing of our heart have to be dealt with. The filthiness, the uncleanness, of our heart also needs to be dealt with. Is our mind pure? Is our emotion clean? Is our will right? We all have to confess that to one degree or another there is dirt in our [205] mind, emotion, and will. Although we may come to the church meetings, we need to ask ourselves how much of Christ has been written into us. There may be no possibility, no ground, no opportunity, for the Lord to come in to write Himself into us because our heart is preoccupied with other things, closed to the Lord, and dirty, impure.

By the Lord’s mercy we need to open our being to Him. When we open our heart to Him, He gets in. He is waiting for us to open to Him so that He can write Himself into our inner being. We need to ask ourselves what our situation, condition, and relationship are with the Lord.

We have seen that the spirit is the very inmost part of our being, the hidden man of the heart (1 Pet. 3:4). Christ as the life-giving Spirit has come into our spirit to make us alive, to regenerate us, to indwell us. Christ lives in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). Ezekiel 36:26 shows us that the heart and the spirit are two things. God gives us a new heart and a new spirit. The heart is composed of the mind, the will, the emotion, and the conscience. The Lord wants to inscribe Himself as the Spirit into our heart, “in tablets of hearts of flesh” (2 Cor. 3:3). As the letters of Christ we are to express Christ. The letter is an expression. Thus, this letter is not written on our spirit but on our heart that Christ might be expressed and be read by others. A person expresses himself by his mind, emotion, and will. If Christ is written only on our spirit, He will be hidden; He will not be seen, read, or expressed. Christ as the living Spirit must be written on our heart, which includes our mind, emotion, and will, so that He can be expressed and be seen by others.

Christ is in our spirit as the life-giving Spirit, and as the Spirit He is the heavenly ink to be inscribed, to be written, on our heart, which includes the mind, the emotion, and the will. This means that Christ will be mingled with our mind, emotion, and will. Then in our mind there will be the description of Christ, in our emotion there will be the definition, the explanation, of Christ, and in our will there will be the expression of Christ. Then when people look at our mind, emotion, and will, they will see Christ. A wife’s love for her husband should be full of Christ. Her emotion should be describing Christ, expressing Christ.

We are the letters of Christ written by the living Spirit of the living God on our heart. People should be able to read Christ in our [206] being, in what we are. When we think, love, and make decisions, there should be the expression of Christ. When people notice our thoughts, our desires, our love, our hatred, the decisions that we make, and what we choose, they should be able to read something of Christ. For Christ as the Spirit of the living God to be inscribed into our being is for Him to mingle Himself with us. Christ is within us, but how much of Christ has been written into our mind, emotion, and will? It may be that our heart is preoccupied. We may listen to the ministry of the word and get nothing because we are preoccupied.