The source is everything. Even in being an overcomer. The overcomer is Christ. And Zoe is Christ. And living out by abiding is what His eternal purpose is. Crystal-clear clarity cuts through all the shadows of the visible realm.
For instance, marriage is just a shadow of the reality of marriage. But we like to worship at the marriage altar and lose sight of His purpose. So sad… we spend all our efforts and energies on shadows and types and lose the actual reality that makes the shadow. The overcomer sees marriage as a temporary accommodation, just a process that elicits the bride of glory.
Dear Ray,
An overcomer is a person in whom Zoe—the life of God—is being lived. Everything turns on the source. Courage, sacrifice, endurance, and even martyrdom must be understood from there. None of them, considered by itself, tells us which life is being expressed.
God’s purpose is the one new man, a corporate humanity whose life and expression are Christ. Overcoming must serve that purpose. It cannot finally mean that the natural man has become exceptionally religious, exceptionally disciplined, or exceptionally brave. The natural man, however admirable, cannot supply the life of the new man.
The decisive question is not how impressive the action is. It is whose life is being lived.
I need this distinction to cut through my own confusion. Otherwise, I will take everything said about overcoming and turn it into another assignment for myself. I will try to listen more, speak less, exercise patience, receive correction, become humble, and act lovingly. I may improve in these things. But improvement does not, by itself, establish that I am living Christ.
A person can listen carefully through natural restraint. A person can remain quiet while inwardly rehearsing his superiority. A person can apologize to preserve a relationship, protect his reputation, or bring an uncomfortable conversation to an end. The outward act does not disclose its source.
These actions may be appropriate and beneficial. But none is a definition of overcoming.
The distinction is between my producing a response and Christ being the life of my response. That distinction reaches beneath conduct to the source from which conduct proceeds.
I can make humility my project and remain the center of the entire undertaking. I can become intensely occupied with how little I speak, how well I receive criticism, how graciously I behave. My apparent self-denial can become a remarkably thorough preoccupation with myself.
Even my desire to be an overcomer can become another ambition of the life that needs to relinquish its rule.
This is why I cannot begin with a list of overcoming behaviors. The moment I do, I am likely to recruit my natural ability to reproduce them. I have changed the standard without changing the source.
Zoe is not the reward for successfully imitating Christ. Zoe is the life by which Christ is lived.
The branch helps me see this clearly. Its fruit comes from the life of the vine flowing within it. The branch does not study grapes and then undertake their manufacture. Neither does it become fruitful by appearing more branchlike. Its fruitfulness is the expression of the life in which it already participates.
Abiding is the living reality of that union. It is not a technique by which I persuade a distant Christ to send assistance to my independent life. His life is already within us. The question concerns our living from that life.
When I replace this with self-improvement, I turn the Christian life into an imitation performed by the wrong source.
And I can do this while speaking constantly about Zoe.
I can explain the divine life, defend the divine life, distinguish it from religion, and still conduct the entire discussion from my natural energy. I can become irritated when someone does not understand the difference, then use my irritation to press the truth upon him.
The content of my words may be accurate while the source of my speaking contradicts them.
That is a searching possibility for me, Ray. I do not need merely to sharpen my explanation. I need the reality I am explaining to be my living.
The churches addressed by the Lord make this distinction painfully clear. Religious work can continue while first love has been abandoned. A reputation for life can remain where the reality is absent. Knowledge, endurance, order, and confidence can all exist within a condition the Lord calls to repentance.
Activity cannot establish the presence of life. Reputation cannot establish it. Correctness cannot establish it.
The Lord is not deceived by the appearance of what only His life can produce.
To recover first love, then, cannot mean merely generating stronger religious feelings. Christ must have His place as our inward source and everything. Even our labor for Him must arise from our participation in Him. Otherwise, the work can occupy the very place that belongs to the One it claims to serve.
I can give my days to writing about Christ and become inwardly sustained by the writing—by the satisfaction of saying something well, by being understood, by seeing that someone agrees. A work that began in fellowship can become an occupation that draws its energy from somewhere else.
The answer is not necessarily to stop writing. It is for Christ to be my life in the writing.
The same is true of speaking, serving, working, resting, and being with others. There is no need to manufacture a special religious appearance. What is needed is the actual living of the life we have received.
This also clarifies the cross.
I can turn the cross into a program of self-suppression: deny myself more, silence myself more, make myself smaller. But the self can supervise its own suppression and remain firmly in charge. It can even become proud of how thoroughly it has disappeared.
The cross brings an end to my claim to be the independent source. Its issue is the expression of resurrection life. The purpose is fulfilled as Christ lives in us.
A quiet person is not necessarily a crucified person. A forceful person is not necessarily living from the flesh. Temperament does not settle the matter. Christ may be expressed through a quiet word or a strong confrontation. We cannot identify His life by selecting a preferred personality and calling it spiritual.
We must come back to the source.
This is also why martyrdom cannot be the complete definition of overcoming. People can endure suffering and die courageously for many convictions. Courage tells us something about their resolve. It does not, by itself, tell us that Christ is their life.
When a believer bears faithful witness even unto death, the precious thing is Christ expressed in that faithfulness. Death does not create the victory. The victory belongs to the life that death cannot conquer.
The martyr does not supply something missing from Christ’s triumph. Christ’s triumph becomes manifest in a member of His Body.
But that same life can be expressed in someone who never faces execution. Overcoming is not withheld from the believer whose circumstances contain no dramatic final test. The central reality is available now: Christ as our life, actually lived.
This brings us directly to God’s corporate purpose.
The one new man cannot be produced by placing improved natural people beside one another. We could become more agreeable, more organized, more disciplined, and more successful at managing disagreement without arriving at the reality God desires.
We might establish an impressive association. But the one new man has one life: Christ.
Its oneness arises from that life. Its expression arises from that life. Its growth is the increase of that life in its members.
Zoe lived in us is inherently for the Body, because the Christ who is our life is not a private possession.
This is why overcoming cannot culminate in my spiritual distinction. Whatever of Christ is expressed through me belongs to His purpose for His people. Life supplies life. The reality of Christ in one member nourishes the others.
The few are for the many. Spiritual maturity carries a capacity to supply, not a claim to superiority.
If my understanding of overcoming makes me more occupied with my own qualification, something has gone wrong at the center. I have taken a word concerning Christ’s expression and made it concern my standing.
The same danger appears collectively. We can identify our circle as the overcomers, protect our terminology, and measure others by their agreement with us. We can speak about the one new man while making our own group the controlling center of our affections.
Yet association cannot live Christ for us. Correct terminology cannot live Christ for us. Loyalty to a ministry cannot live Christ for us.
No identification, however cherished, can substitute for the living of Zoe.
Nor can rejecting those identifications establish that I am living by another source. I can leave a religious system and carry its inward principle with me. I can become proud of being free, proud of seeing more clearly, proud of refusing what others accept.
The natural life can make a home in my criticism of the natural life.
That leaves me without a position from which to congratulate myself. I need Christ as my actual living, including in the very moment I speak about these things.
There are different understandings of the promises to overcomers. Some apply the word to every genuine believer through new birth and faith. Others distinguish between possessing divine life and allowing that life to mature into an overcoming expression, connecting this with future reward and participation in the kingdom.
Those differences deserve honest consideration. But no interpretation removes the distinction between having life and living by the life we have.
I cannot use my position in Christ to make His expression in my living irrelevant. Neither can I produce that expression by anxious striving to earn a superior position.
Christ Himself remains the substance.
This also puts our ordinary examples in their proper place. Listening, patience, forgiveness, truthfulness, and courage can be expressions of Zoe. They must never be offered as substitutes for it.
If I tell myself merely to listen more, I may have given the natural man another useful instruction. If Christ is my life in the encounter, my listening can be His availability to another person. My speaking can be His supply. My silence can be free of resentment. My firmness can be free of the need to injure.
These are fruits. The source remains Christ.
And I should not turn the discernment of that source into endless inward inspection, examining every movement until I become immobilized. That would make self-analysis another occupation displacing Him. The way is the present reality of abiding: living in the union already given, allowing the One within us to be our life.
There is response, obedience, and the exercise of our faculties. We still speak, choose, work, and act. But the supply and initiative of our living belong to Him. Our humanity becomes the expression of His life.
So I need to say this without blurring it, Ray:
Overcoming is Christ’s victorious life being lived in His members, bringing forth His corporate expression.
Bravery may be its expression. Martyrdom may be its expression. A word, a refusal, an act of care, or an unseen moment of faithfulness may be its expression. None can be detached from its source and made the thing itself.
God’s purpose is not fulfilled by my becoming an admirable version of myself. It is fulfilled as Christ lives in us and the one new man becomes His expression.
I do not want to end by giving myself another list: listen better, speak more gently, try harder to love. I know how readily I would take up the list and leave the source behind.
I want the distinction to remain clear enough that I cannot hide within my own explanation.
I can speak about Zoe from myself.
Or Zoe can be my living.
Only the second gives the Body what I have been speaking about.
With love,
Brent
