About 19 minutes
Dear Ray,
I keep returning to something that seems to me to lie at the very heart of our life in Christ: we can actually live by another life.
I know how easily I can say those words. I can explain them, find verses that support them, and recognize their importance. Yet I also know how much of a day I can spend carrying everything through my own understanding, determination, and resources. I am writing about something I need to live more fully myself.
Christ becomes the inward source of our living. Everything we call Christianity must find its meaning in relation to this reality. Otherwise, we can spend a lifetime explaining, defending, and organizing a faith whose central experience remains largely unfamiliar to us. So much can accumulate around the reality while the reality itself remains almost untouched.
We can become remarkably knowledgeable about a life we seldom live.
That is why this question matters so deeply to me: How do we know we are living in our spirit, participating in the life of Christ? Must we examine our behavior, review our thoughts, weigh our progress, and arrive at a cautious conclusion? Must we wait for enough evidence to accumulate? Must someone more qualified tell us whether our experience meets the requirements?
Scripture speaks with an immediacy that I find both liberating and searching:
“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6).
Here is the center of what I am trying to say: peace comes forth from our present participation in Zoe, the divine life. We know because we are living it.
The knowing belongs within the experience. We do not have to step outside that living participation and become observers before it can be real to us. We are living in Him, and within that living we experience His peace.
A thirsty person drinking water does not first need a lecture on hydration to know that he is drinking. The participation itself carries a knowing that an explanation can describe but cannot replace.
Yet we have often made spiritual life seem strangely less accessible than ordinary life. We surround it with qualifications and explanations until believers become more confident discussing abiding than actually abiding. We teach the structure of the vine while leaving the branch hesitant to live from its life.
Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4).
Those words invite present participation. He is speaking to people who can live in the communion He describes. His invitation belongs to this moment, within the life we are actually living.
The branch does not study its relationship to the vine while waiting for life to arrive. Its existence as a living branch is already bound up with the life flowing through it. Likewise, abiding brings us into the present enjoyment of the Christ who is our life. Peace comes forth within that enjoyment.
Jesus makes the source unmistakably personal: “My peace I give unto you” (John 14:27).
His peace. What we experience belongs to the life He shares with us. We cannot detach that peace from Him and possess it as an independent spiritual accomplishment.
The Peace of His Life
Consider how different this is from being satisfied with our spiritual condition.
I may feel satisfied because I prayed this morning. I may have restrained an angry response, read several chapters, attended a meeting, or spoken something others appreciated. Looking over the evidence, I conclude that I am doing reasonably well.
My satisfaction rests on an assessment of myself.
Tomorrow, the assessment changes. I am distracted during prayer. Someone irritates me. My words sound empty. The favorable verdict disappears, and the peace I thought I possessed disappears with it.
That entire movement can occur within self-evaluation. The self performs, the self observes, and the self pronounces judgment. I become both the subject of the examination and the examiner.
I suspect I have mistaken this kind of satisfaction for spiritual peace more often than I realize.
The peace of Christ has another source. It comes forth as we live in Him. Even when His light exposes something painful in us, communion with Him remains a place of life and peace. We can acknowledge failure without being driven into the exhausting work of reconstructing a respectable image.
Our condition may need attention. Our source remains Christ.
This is where the gospel reaches beneath the religious instinct in us. That instinct tells us to improve ourselves until we can feel comfortable before God. The gospel announces Christ as our life and invites us to live from Him now, within our present, unfinished humanity.
Paul writes, “Christ liveth in me,” and then speaks of “the life which I now live” (Galatians 2:20).
Now. In this body. Within this day. In this unfinished human history. Amid responsibilities, interruptions, weakness, and unanswered questions.
Paul does not postpone participation in Christ until his humanity becomes impressive. He speaks of Christ living in him within his present earthly existence. And he describes that living as a life of faith.
Faith Within Our Living
I want to linger here, because I think we can unintentionally place another burden upon ourselves at precisely this point.
We often speak as though faith were an independent contribution we must produce before His life can operate. We hear the invitation to live in Christ, but then quietly translate it into another assignment: manufacture enough faith, and perhaps the life will follow.
The responsibility for being the source has found its way back to us.
But faith itself belongs to this living reality. Faith is Zoe functioning within us—the life of Christ active in our trusting, receiving, and resting in Him.
Paul joins faith and the indwelling Christ in one declaration:
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, KJV).
“Christ liveth in me” and “I live by faith” belong to one present living. Paul is speaking of a humanity whose inward source has become Christ. His believing belongs within that participation.
This is what I mean by faith as Zoe functioning within us. Christ’s life is active in our actual dependence upon Him. We believe; we receive; we trust. These are real movements of our hearts, yet even here we have no independent spiritual achievement to admire. The branch receives through the living relationship that sustains it.
Faith receives and rests upon the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. It does not sentence us to perpetual uncertainty about whether there is any living reality beneath our beliefs.
Faith is more intimate than agreement with an explanation. I may agree that Christ is my life while continuing to carry everything through my own resources. Living faith brings that truth into my present existence. I entrust this conversation, this uncertainty, this unfinished moment to the One who lives within me.
“For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
Walking by faith is still walking. It is actual participation, actual movement, an actual manner of life. The invisibility of its source does not make the living imaginary.
We do not see the risen Christ with our physical eyes. Yet His unseen presence is not confined to a theological proposition. Through the Spirit, we participate in His life. Faith rests in His faithfulness, and within that living dependence we experience what our own reasoning, determination, and effort cannot manufacture.
Zoe is functioning within us while our feet remain on the ground and our responsibilities remain before us. We participate in a life that physical sight cannot measure.
And within this believing, peace comes forth.
Paul prays that God would fill believers with “all joy and peace in believing” (Romans 15:13). Believing and peace belong together in the present activity of God within His people.
We need not manufacture faith and then inspect ourselves for the proper result. We live in Christ, trusting Him, and experience the peace of that communion.
This peace is experienced, but calling it merely a feeling misses its character.
An emotion may rise because circumstances become favorable. A difficulty ends. Someone reassures us. We receive good news. The emotional relief is real, and we are grateful for it, but we can usually trace the conditions that produced it.
The peace of Christ can be present while those conditions remain unresolved.
There may be sorrow in the heart and tension in the body. The mind may still have questions. We may be facing something we would never have chosen. Yet within our communion with Christ there is peace that does not wait for those difficulties to disappear.
“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
Understanding has not necessarily solved the situation. Peace nevertheless keeps us within it. Its source exceeds what our explanation of the circumstances can account for.
I think we diminish this promise when we reduce it to thinking reassuring thoughts.
Paul speaks of the peace of God doing something: keeping our hearts and minds. We are experiencing the activity of a life greater than the resources of our own reasoning.
We do not argue ourselves into possession of it. Nor do we produce it by continually checking whether it is there.
Knowing Through Communion
This helps me understand why constant observation can become an obstacle.
The moment we turn everything into a spiritual examination, attention gathers around ourselves. Am I abiding sufficiently? Was that peace genuine? Have I maintained the right inward posture? How does today compare with yesterday?
Soon living communion has become a case study, and we are both the specimen and the examiner.
A person can become so occupied with checking whether he is listening that he stops hearing the person speaking. Something similar happens when we endlessly monitor our spiritual experience. Our attention shifts from Christ to our ability to certify ourselves.
There is a place for reflection. But reflection cannot perform the work of participation. We cannot observe ourselves into abiding.
Knowledge, too, has its proper service. Scripture gives language to what God has revealed, corrects our misconceptions, and directs our faith toward Christ. The trouble begins when possessing the language becomes a substitute for living the reality.
We can define Zoe, explain the human spirit, distinguish soul from spirit, and quote entire passages concerning union with Christ. None of those accomplishments, by themselves, constitutes the present act of abiding.
Jesus confronted people who searched the Scriptures yet would not come to Him that they might have life (John 5:39–40). Their searching and their refusal could coexist.
I find that searching, because it means my interest in spiritual things can never be a sufficient substitute for living communion. It also raises a question for any environment in which increasing information is treated as sufficient evidence of increasing life.
The Scriptures bear witness to Someone. Their testimony calls us into living fellowship with Him. We honor their purpose when we receive the Christ to whom they testify and live in the life they proclaim.
The certainty Scripture offers is richer than intellectual confidence.
John writes, “That ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). His stated purpose includes knowing. Believers are not instructed to regard eternal life as something forever inaccessible to assurance.
Jesus says, “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). He then speaks of knowing our union: “Ye in me, and I in you” (John 14:20).
These are words of intimate participation. The life is His; the living includes us. Our certainty rests upon His promise, and His promised life is something we enter into experientially through faith.
We know the promise by believing Him. We know its living sweetness by participating in Him.
Neither theological expertise nor a favorable opinion of ourselves can supply that communion.
Becoming at Home in the Vine
This also changes what we mean by spiritual maturity.
Maturity is increasingly discerning Zoe and becoming familiar with living in Christ. We become acquainted with His peace, His love, His inward freedom, and the character of His life through participation. Our discernment grows through living communion.
Peace belongs to this life. It is an essential characteristic of Zoe as we experience Christ within us. As we mature, we become more familiar with that peace and more sensitive to the difference between living from Him and taking up the burden of being our own source.
We may discern that we have begun forcing something. We are pressing an argument, defending an image, or trying to manufacture a spiritual result. The words may be correct. The intended outcome may be admirable. Yet we have become occupied with making something happen through our own resources.
Growing discernment brings us back to the simplicity of living in Christ.
We also become familiar with the inward movement of trusting Him—with releasing our insistence on control and allowing His life to carry our living. Faith becomes less a subject we examine and more the way we inhabit the day.
This familiarity need not become another exercise in anxious inspection. Our discernment develops within communion itself. We become acquainted with the life by living it, just as we become acquainted with a beloved person through sharing life together.
There is an intimacy of knowing that grows through the relationship. We do not need to suspend the relationship in order to possess that knowing.
Here, I think, we need to reconsider a deeply established religious habit: the continual inspection of our fruit.
We weigh ourselves. We measure our progress. We reflect on whether we are more loving than last month. We compare our patience with someone else’s patience. We examine the appearance of our spiritual life until we have scarcely any attention left for the One who is our life.
I understand the desire behind this. We want our lives to be real. We do not want to deceive ourselves. But how easily the effort becomes self-occupation dressed in the language of maturity.
Fruit is the unconscious aggregate of Zoe: the accumulated expression of His life coming forth through our living in Him.
By “unconscious,” I mean that we are not supervising its production, arranging its appearance, or continually calculating its value. We are not keeping a private account of each expression of patience or love. Our attention rests in Christ. His life bears its fruit through our humanity.
Jesus says, “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John 15:5).
The living relationship produces the fruit. The branch does not supply an independent power of fruitfulness.
The branch is the living conduit through which the vine bears. No one stands before a fruitful vine and congratulates a branch for its heroic effort. No one praises it for studying grapes, comparing itself with neighboring branches, or maintaining a rigorous program of self-improvement.
The branch lives in the vine. Fruit comes forth organically from that living connection.
Yet we imagine that spiritual maturity requires us to become experts in evaluating the look and taste of our own grapes.
When I picture it that way, I can see something almost silly in what I have sometimes called maturity. A branch absorbed in assessing its grapes has become a picture of my own self-concern. I am turning the expression of life into an achievement belonging to me, then assigning myself the further task of evaluating it.
There is an immaturity in this that I need to acknowledge gently but honestly. I congratulate myself when I like what I see and condemn myself when I do not. All the while, Christ is calling me to abide.
Jesus locates the glory elsewhere: “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit” (John 15:8).
The Father is glorified in the fruitfulness of the life He gives. The branch has no independent accomplishment to display.
This releases us from an immense burden.
We can love someone without privately recording evidence that we are becoming loving. We can listen patiently without interrupting our listening to admire our patience. We can give without turning the gift into a favorable report about ourselves.
His life is free to find expression because we are no longer making every expression an occasion for self-assessment.
We can stop making the fruit a mirror in which we search for a satisfying image of ourselves.
Living from Him in Ordinary Moments
Imagine an ordinary moment of conflict. Someone has spoken carelessly. Immediately, arguments begin forming within us. We want to establish what happened, prove the injustice, and make the other person understand.
I know that inward activity. Even before I speak, I can be carrying on the entire conversation within myself.
We might control our speech through determination. We might remember a teaching about patience and perform the appropriate response. We might even feel pleased with our restraint afterward.
But another possibility is open to us.
Within that very moment, we can turn our heart to Christ and rest in the life already given to us. Perhaps no words are necessary. We cease insisting that our own resources must carry the moment.
As we abide, peace comes forth. The situation may still require a direct conversation. But we can speak within a different inward living. Our words need no longer carry the entire burden of defending our existence or establishing our importance.
Later, we need not award ourselves a high score for patience. We can simply remain in the communion from which the response came.
The significant thing was the source.
This is what I mean by living from another realm. Our feet remain on the floor. We hear the same words and face the same responsibilities. Yet our living draws upon the unseen Christ.
Paul says our life “is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). He also speaks of being seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). Our deepest life cannot be located within visible circumstances alone.
Living from that reality makes us available to the present moment. We can listen, work, apologize, and bear another person’s burden from communion with Christ.
Heavenly life takes expression in ordinary human acts.
Maturity draws our attention more deeply into this source. We become familiar with the peace of Christ while speaking, working, waiting, and responding to others. We learn the inward freedom of having nothing to prove. We experience a love that makes room for another person without requiring that person to affirm our importance.
These are living attributes of Zoe, becoming familiar through participation. Memorizing their definitions cannot impart their reality.
The peace arising within this living is precious precisely because it is His. We cannot detach it from Him and turn it into a technique for managing ourselves.
Nor should we build a new spiritual competition around it.
The moment we begin ranking believers according to how continuously they report peace, or how convincingly they describe it, we have recreated the old machinery of performance. We have simply replaced one measurement with another.
I would be sorry if anything I am writing became another burden laid upon someone already struggling.
A suffering believer does not need an accusation disguised as teaching. A troubled person needs room to turn toward Christ without having to manufacture a convincing report of serenity. The invitation is to Him. His life remains the source; our spiritual reputation contributes nothing.
Likewise, experiencing His peace does not make every opinion we hold divine. Peace frees us to listen and receive correction. We need not recruit it as a witness for our personal infallibility.
Its purpose is communion, and its fruit belongs to the character of the life we share.
Even our growing discernment serves this simple purpose: living more freely and fully in the One who is already our life.
The mature branch is increasingly at home in the vine. It lives from the life it receives. Its fruitfulness belongs to that life, and its peace belongs to that communion.
Ray, this is the freedom I want to live in more fully.
Christ Himself is sufficient as the source of our living. We no longer have to spend our days constructing a spiritual condition we can admire. We can relinquish the exhausting need to watch ourselves becoming successful Christians.
We can live.
We can trust Him in the present tense. We can abide while washing dishes, driving to work, sitting beside someone in pain, or enduring an unanswered question. The life does not become less divine because its expression is quiet.
And the peace does not become less certain because we cannot explain it into existence.
Knowledge serves this participation. Reflection may describe it. Satisfaction with ourselves cannot produce it. We know by faith the One who has given Himself to us, and that faith itself belongs to His life functioning within us.
As we live in Him, we experience His life and peace. Our familiarity deepens. Our discernment grows. His life bears its fruit.
I am increasingly persuaded that we need to give one another permission to be this simple—to live in the Christ we have spent so much time discussing, and to trust the life we have received.
Our calling is to abide. Our maturity is becoming at home in His life. Faith is that life functioning within us as we trust Him. Peace comes forth from our present communion. And the fruit belongs to the life of the vine.
We know because we are living it.
With love,
Brent
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The Quiet Turning of the Heart — On gently returning to the indwelling Christ amid the distractions of an ordinary day.
When I Leave the Source — A personal letter about turning abiding into a project, and the grace that calls us back to Christ.
