Leaving the Visible Realm to Live in Christ
I am beginning to see how much of my life I have spent treating shadows as though they were the substance. I have believed in Christ while looking to almost everything else to tell me whether I was secure.
If circumstances were favorable, I could rest. If someone understood me, I felt settled. If something I had written or done was appreciated, I felt that it mattered. But when those things changed, something inside me changed with them.
Where, then, was I actually living?
It is possible to believe that Christ is our life while depending upon a hundred other things to supply the experience of being alive. We can speak about the invisible and eternal while allowing what is visible and temporary to determine our inward condition.
Paul speaks of things that are “a shadow of things to come,” and then identifies the substance with Christ (Colossians 2:17). That distinction reaches much further into our living than we may want to admit.
A shadow exists. It has an outline. It can tell us something about what casts it. But it does not possess the life of the person. We cannot embrace someone by embracing his shadow.
When I speak of the visible as unreal, this is what I mean: it has no independent, enduring life and cannot give us the substance we seek. It exists through Christ, but it cannot take His place. We have assigned ultimate importance to things that cannot carry it.
God has given us His Son.
We keep reaching for His shadow.
1. We Have Been Starting in the Wrong Place
Our senses teach us to begin with what appears. We see something, measure it, touch it, and decide that it is substantial. Then we approach God from that starting point. The world is the established reality, and God becomes someone we hope will help us manage it.
But Scripture begins with God.
Before there were nations, institutions, families, possessions, or people to admire us, God was. John begins his Gospel with the Word who was with God and was God. Everything that came into being came through Him (John 1:1–3).
Christ did not emerge from the world we see. The world came through Him.
This changes the whole order of our thinking. The visible cannot be the foundation by which we judge its Source. It has no independent existence from which to announce whether Christ is sufficient. Colossians tells us that all things were created through Him and for Him, and that in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16–17).
Yet how quickly I reverse that order. A difficulty arises, and I begin questioning the Lord according to what the difficulty appears to mean. Something does not work out, and I wonder whether He is present. I take a temporary condition and allow it to pass judgment upon the eternal One.
The shadow becomes the judge of the substance.
Hebrews 11:3 tells us that what is seen did not originate from visible things. Our starting point must therefore move beyond appearances. The Source comes first. Everything else receives its existence from Him.
This does not mean that every circumstance becomes understandable. It means that circumstances cease to be the foundation of our confidence. I may not know why a door has closed. I may not know what tomorrow will require. But neither the closed door nor tomorrow’s uncertainty can tell me the full truth about my life.
That truth is found in Christ.
The great reversal begins here: we stop asking the visible world to establish whether God is real. We begin receiving the visible world in the light of the One through whom it exists.
We begin with Him.
2. God Gave the Shadows to Bring Us to the Substance
Scripture explicitly calls certain things copies, types, and shadows. The tabernacle, the priesthood, the sacrifices, and particular observances were given to point beyond themselves. Other things, such as money or reputation, are not identified as biblical types, but they expose the same mistake when we ask them to become our life.
The tabernacle gives us a clear example. It was built according to a pattern. Its materials, furnishings, and services carried meaning. Yet Hebrews describes the earthly service as a copy and shadow of heavenly things (Hebrews 8:5).
The arrangement was never the destination.
Hebrews 10:1 says that the law had a shadow of the good things to come. Its repeated sacrifices could not bring the worshippers into the completeness toward which they pointed. An animal died, and another was required. A service ended, and the need remained.
The repetition announced that the final substance had not yet been received.
Then Christ came. The One toward whom the entire arrangement pointed stood among people who knew the arrangement thoroughly. Some could explain the shadow while failing to recognize the reality before them.
That possibility should trouble us.
We can become experts in things associated with Christ. We can defend their proper order, preserve their traditions, and know exactly how they should be practiced. Meanwhile, the living Lord may be asking for something that threatens our attachment to the familiar form.
The shadow is easier to manage. We can organize it, reproduce it, and hand it to another generation. Christ is living. He exposes what we are using to sustain ourselves.
Jesus spoke of His own body as the temple (John 2:19–21). Later, believers were described as being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21–22). The meaning of God’s house had moved beyond a structure people could point toward.
His presence and life make us His house.
Yet we keep trying to guarantee that reality through visible arrangements. We want the building, the name, the organization, and the familiar meeting to reassure us that the life is still there.
But the arrangement can continue after the living fellowship has diminished. Its survival can conceal our need to return.
We must let the testimony do what it was given to do. It must bring us to Christ. Once we arrive, we cannot allow the form to claim the place belonging to Him.
3. We Want the Bread; He Offers Himself
In John 6, Jesus fed a multitude. The people ate and were satisfied. Naturally, they wanted more of what He could provide.
But He directed them toward Himself.
He was the bread of life. The miracle was a sign, and its meaning could not be exhausted by the meal. The visible bread answered a temporary hunger. Christ offered a life that the bread could never impart.
The people wanted Him to continue supplying the benefit. He wanted them to receive the reality.
I recognize something of myself here. I can become very interested in what Christ might provide while remaining strangely reluctant to receive Him as my actual supply. I want the situation improved. I want the answer, the opportunity, the reassurance, or the relief.
These are the things I believe will enable me to rest.
He offers Himself, and I am tempted to ask whether He has brought anything else.
The same distinction appears at the well in John 4. The woman begins with the practical questions of water, a bucket, and the difficulty of drawing from a deep well. Jesus speaks of water that becomes a spring within, reaching into eternal life.
The visible well requires another journey. His gift becomes an inward source.
This is where Zoe belongs in the discussion. By Zoe, I mean the divine life we receive in Christ. It is not a more agreeable arrangement of our natural existence. It is His life becoming our inward supply.
We have often asked temporary things to satisfy a hunger that only this life can answer. Recognition satisfies us briefly, and we need more. A purchase pleases us, then loses its power. A successful day reassures us until the next difficult one arrives.
The hunger keeps returning because we have been feeding it with things that cannot reach its depth.
Jesus also identifies Himself as the light of the world (John 8:12). We may see the objects around us clearly and still misunderstand what they can give us. His light exposes the mistaken hope we have placed in them.
We begin to see that our deepest need is not another favorable condition.
We need Him.
The bread, the water, and the light lead us to the same place. Their meaning opens as we receive the living Christ toward whom they point.
4. We Cannot Ask Another Person to Become Our Life
Marriage can become so central to our sense of existence that we scarcely notice what we are asking it to provide. We want to be understood, welcomed, valued, and secure. Gradually, another person may become responsible for making us feel complete.
Then we become wounded or controlling when that person cannot carry the burden.
Ephesians 5 takes the relationship between husband and wife into a deeper meaning. After speaking of the two becoming one, Paul identifies the great mystery with Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31–32).
The visible relationship points toward a union whose source is the Lord Himself.
Christ gives Himself to His people. They receive His life. Their belonging is established through Him. Marriage bears witness to this mystery, but it cannot replace it.
When I demand that another person become the foundation of my peace, I am asking the figure to become the substance. I may call this love, but much of what I am seeking is reassurance about myself.
Why did you speak that way? Why did you not notice? Why did you not respond as I expected?
There may be legitimate matters to discuss. But underneath them, another question can be operating: Why have you failed to give me the inward security I expected from you?
No human being can become Christ for us.
Receiving Him as our life releases others from a demand they were never able to fulfill. We can begin to love a person without requiring that person to preserve our sense of worth.
The same issue appears in friendship, family, and spiritual companionship. These relationships can carry affection, responsibility, and real fellowship. But when we make them our source, we begin to cling, fear, and manipulate.
Christ brings us into another ground.
We can remain faithful without possessing someone. We can listen without demanding agreement. We can acknowledge disappointment without treating it as the collapse of our life.
The supremacy of Christ reaches into our closest relationships because His place cannot be shared.
The visible union points toward Him.
It becomes distorted when we require it to give us what belongs to the eternal union alone.
5. Nations and Money Cannot Secure an Eternal Life
A nation appears solid because it surrounds us. We inherit its language, learn its history, and become familiar with its institutions. Its future can become entangled with our private sense of safety.
Money makes a similar promise on a smaller scale. It offers protection, choice, comfort, and some control over what happens next.
Both can become objects of trust far beyond their actual capacity.
Nations rise and decline. Their borders move. Their institutions change. Their apparent permanence lasts only as long as the period from which we are looking at them.
Hebrews speaks of a kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28). That kingdom is received from God. No earthly nation can become it through strength, religious language, or a claim to divine favor.
A nation cannot impart Zoe.
Yet believers can become so inwardly invested in a country that political events determine their entire spiritual condition. The latest threat becomes more substantial to them than the Christ they confess.
Money can govern us in precisely the same way. A number rises, and we breathe more easily. It falls, and our world contracts.
Jesus warned that life does not consist in an abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15). The rich man who built larger barns assumed he had secured his future. He had stored resources, but he could not secure another night of life.
His confidence exceeded the capacity of what he possessed.
I can do the same with far smaller amounts. The issue is not the size of the account. It is the place the account occupies within me.
We can handle money responsibly and fulfill our responsibilities within a nation without asking either to become our enduring security. Their usefulness does not make them our life.
Philippians 3:20 locates our citizenship in heaven. Our deepest belonging is already established in Christ.
The country to which we truly belong cannot be destroyed by a political result. The inheritance we have received cannot be measured by a financial statement.
Outward provision matters for the tasks of the day. But it remains provision.
The Provider is our Source.
We become free to use what is passing without demanding that it save us. We can give, work, plan, and act while refusing to place the weight of eternity upon arrangements that cannot carry it.
6. Where Do We Go When Someone Dismisses Us?
Consider an ordinary day at work. Someone speaks to us dismissively. Perhaps they overlook our contribution, fail to communicate something important, or treat our question as though it were foolish.
The exchange may last less than a minute.
But we carry it for hours.
We hear the tone again. We reconstruct what should have been said. We prepare the response that will finally make the other person understand. While our hands continue working, our inward attention remains inside the conversation.
Where are we living?
At that moment, another person’s estimate has become more substantial to us than our belonging to Christ. We may not say this, but our attention tells the truth.
Reputation is an image inside other people. Sometimes it is accurate. Sometimes it is confused or unjust. Yet we allow this shifting image to tell us who we are.
Someone approves, and we feel enlarged. Someone dismisses us, and we feel diminished.
Colossians 3:3 places our life elsewhere: hidden with Christ in God.
The turn toward that reality may begin without any dramatic feeling. We simply notice what has happened.
“Lord, I have been living inside this person’s opinion. I have been asking them to give me back my peace. But my life is in You.”
The irritation may not disappear immediately. We may need to turn again. We may also need to address the practical problem. If information was withheld, we can ask for clear communication. If a pattern of mistreatment exists, we can speak honestly about it.
But the purpose changes.
We are no longer trying to recover our existence through the other person’s response. We can deal with what happened without making their agreement the condition of our peace.
First Peter 2:23 describes Christ entrusting Himself to the One who judges righteously when He was mistreated. The Father’s knowledge was more decisive than the accusations around Him.
This is the freedom being offered to us.
It does not make us voiceless. It gives us a place from which to speak without being consumed.
Perhaps we return to the task and do it carefully. Perhaps we discover that the cutting remark we wanted to make is no longer necessary. Perhaps we can ask a direct question without delivering the long argument we have rehearsed.
To others, very little may appear to have happened.
But inwardly, we have changed our dwelling.
The conversation is no longer our home.
We have returned to Christ.
7. Knowing the Language Is Not Living the Life
Jesus told people who searched the Scriptures that those Scriptures testified concerning Him. Yet they were unwilling to come to Him to have life (John 5:39–40).
We should not hurry past that statement.
They were occupied with the testimony but resisting its destination. They could handle the words without receiving the living One toward whom the words pointed.
The same thing can happen with the language of divine life.
I can explain abiding, speak about the spirit, and distinguish the shadow from the substance. Then I can spend the afternoon defending myself, resenting someone, or trying to make my work seem important.
My explanation may be correct.
My source may still be myself.
Witness Lee wrote, “The Bible is a revelation of Christ as life.” This statement appears in the opening message of his Life-study of Genesis.
But I can repeat that sentence for thirty years and still look elsewhere for my life.
The words must bring me to Him.
This is why religious knowledge can become so deceptive. It gives us the language of a reality before that reality has deeply governed our experience. We become familiar with expressions and assume that familiarity is possession.
We may even feel superior to people who use different words.
Then our knowledge has become another visible identity to defend.
The question is what happens when Christ’s life interrupts us. Are we willing to stop speaking? Can we acknowledge that our argument has become an exercise in self-preservation? Can we receive something through a person whose vocabulary seems less developed than ours?
If we cannot, our language has begun to conceal our condition.
Scripture is not given to furnish an impressive spiritual personality. Through its testimony, we are called into fellowship with the Father and the Son.
We read, consider, pray, and respond. We allow the word to expose what is actually governing us.
A passage about love brings us to the person we have refused to hear. A passage about faith exposes the demand that everything become predictable. A passage about the cross reaches the private ambition we have dressed in spiritual terms.
The testimony becomes living as it brings us to Christ.
We cease being satisfied with knowing what to call the reality.
We begin receiving Him.
8. The Cross Exposes What We Have Been Preserving
The cross overturns the visible account of success.
At Calvary, the outward scene appeared to announce defeat. A condemned man was dying. His followers had scattered. Religious and political authority seemed to have settled the matter.
Yet through that death, Christ accomplished what the visible scene could not explain.
The appearance was not the full account of reality.
This reaches directly into our expectations. We often want Christ to preserve and enlarge the life we have already constructed. We want our gifts recognized, our usefulness confirmed, our plans made effective.
We may surrender these things in words while quietly requiring Him to return them with greater significance.
But the cross reaches our dependence upon them.
A closed opportunity may reveal how much we needed to be useful. Silence after we have spoken may expose our hunger for approval. Someone else being chosen may uncover an ambition we had mistaken for spiritual burden.
The gift itself may be good. The dependence upon it as our identity is what must be exposed.
These experiences do not automatically make us deeper. We can become resentful. We can interpret every disappointment as evidence that others have failed to recognize us.
Or we can turn to Christ with what has been uncovered.
“Lord, I did not know how much of myself I had placed here. I have been asking this work to establish me. Bring me back to You.”
Paul counted former grounds of confidence as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ (Philippians 3:7–10).
He was not seeking a more impressive spiritual résumé. He wanted the Lord Himself, including fellowship in His sufferings.
There is a death in that change of source.
The self that has survived by comparison, recognition, and control does not surrender easily. It wants to turn even surrender into an accomplishment.
But Christ patiently reaches beneath the performance.
We begin to discover that we can lose an opportunity without losing our life. We can become less noticeable without becoming less loved. We can lay down a demand without disappearing.
The cross does not leave us with emptiness as our destination.
It brings us out of dependence upon what cannot give life, so that we may live by the One who can.
9. Faith Brings Us to Christ Before the Answer Comes
Faith is often confused with confidence that circumstances will improve.
We expect the door to open, the difficulty to end, or the desired result to arrive. When it does, we call this the success of faith.
But Hebrews 11 includes people who received remarkable deliverance and people who suffered without visible rescue. Both are described as faithful.
The common reality was God, not a favorable outcome.
Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27). Abraham looked toward a city whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10). Their lives were directed by something the immediate scene could not establish.
This changes prayer.
We can ask honestly for help. We can bring the whole difficulty before the Lord. But prayer becomes more than asking Him to rearrange the visible until we feel secure.
We come to Him.
Sometimes we begin by explaining why another person must change. As we remain before the Lord, our own insistence becomes visible. We discover how much resentment we have been protecting.
At other times, we receive courage to do something practical that we have avoided. Communion may lead us into a difficult conversation rather than away from it.
The point is that Christ becomes our source within the situation, even before He changes it.
We do not need to manufacture a feeling to make this real.
There are days when we are tired, distracted, or inwardly dry. On those days, we can simply turn: “Lord, I feel empty, but You have not ceased to be my life.”
Our union with Him is not created by a sensation.
Neither does anguish prove that we have left Him. Jesus experienced profound sorrow in Gethsemane. Paul described fears within as well as conflicts without (2 Corinthians 7:5).
We can bring our actual condition to the Lord without first making it look spiritual.
Romans 8:6 connects the mind set on the Spirit with life and peace. That peace belongs to our fellowship with Him; it is not a performance of uninterrupted calm.
As we turn, we learn to distinguish His inward supply from our demand that the world reassure us.
The answer may still be pending. The feeling may remain unsettled.
But we are no longer alone inside the difficulty.
We have come to the living One.
10. We Are Called to Live Where Christ Has Placed Us
Ephesians says that God has made us alive with Christ, raised us with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenlies (Ephesians 2:4–6).
This is not a reward reserved for a few unusually spiritual people. It describes what God has done for His people in the Son.
Yet we can belong there while taking all our daily bearings from appearances.
We let the passing scene tell us whether we are secure, whether we matter, and whether we can rest. Our position is in Christ, but our attention keeps returning to the things we once depended upon.
Paul therefore tells us to seek the things above, where Christ is, and to set our minds there (Colossians 3:1–4).
Our attention must come into agreement with our life.
This does not mean becoming fascinated with invisible experiences. Scripture also speaks of spiritual darkness and deception. Our destination is Christ Himself. He is the truth by which spiritual claims must be tested.
Nor does our union with Him disappear whenever we become anxious or distracted. We may live far beneath what He has given us, but we return because we belong.
This is important. Otherwise, the call to live in the heavenlies becomes another demand to maintain an impressive condition.
We are learning to live from an established relationship.
Romans 5:17 speaks of reigning in life through Jesus Christ. That reign begins to become practical when what once governed us loses its authority.
An insult no longer owns the afternoon. A failed plan no longer becomes the verdict upon our existence. Another person’s recognition no longer feels like a subtraction from our life.
We are beginning to live from the Christ who has been our life all along.
Reigning does not mean controlling everyone around us. A person who must control circumstances to remain at peace is still being ruled by them.
The freedom Christ gives runs deeper.
We can speak truth without securing an advantage. We can acknowledge a mistake without collapsing. We can allow someone else to be noticed without struggling to recover the attention.
Our feet remain on the earth. We still work, decide, speak, and respond.
But the source has changed.
The visible event can require action without becoming our lord. It can affect our circumstances without defining the life we possess.
This is what walking in the heavenlies begins to look like in an ordinary day.
11. The Reality Expresses Itself Through Love and Remains Through Loss
If our teaching about shadows makes us less available to people, we have misunderstood the reality.
Christ is living, and His life expresses itself through love. Jesus did not dismiss suffering because it belonged to a passing world. He touched people, listened to them, fed them, and wept with them.
His source was the Father. His life became visible among people.
The same must become true of us. First John refuses to separate love for God from love for the brother whom we can see (1 John 4:20–21).
We cannot claim to dwell in the unseen while using spiritual language to avoid the person before us.
Receiving Christ as our life actually frees us to love. We no longer need every relationship to affirm us. We can listen without preparing our own defense. We can serve without turning service into a claim upon someone’s gratitude.
The visible act may be small, but the life expressed through it matters.
This becomes especially precious as outward capacities change. With age, we may lose some strength, opportunity, or public usefulness. Things that once supported our identity become less dependable.
Outwardly, it may look as though we are becoming less.
But Paul places outward decline beside inward renewal in 2 Corinthians 4:16. The person who can do less may be growing in freedom from self-importance and becoming more available to Christ.
A quiet conversation can contain more life than an impressive performance. Someone unable to occupy a former role can still express patience, tenderness, and a depth of fellowship that the role never guaranteed.
Our hope also reaches beyond present decline. God promises the resurrection of the body and the liberation of creation from corruption (Romans 8:19–23; 1 Corinthians 15:42–49).
We are not waiting to escape into a permanently disembodied existence. Christ brings His people into the fullness of resurrection life.
What must end is our dependence upon the present, decaying order as our source.
The things we have used to establish ourselves cannot preserve us. Positions end. Possessions change hands. Names are forgotten.
But the life we have received in Christ does not depend upon those things continuing.
We can receive each remaining day without forcing it to prove that we mattered.
He is our life now.
He remains our life when the visible supports are gone.
12. Where Are We Living Right Now?
The question is no longer whether we understand the difference between shadow and substance.
Where are we living right now?
What has occupied our inward attention today? What have we been defending? What must happen before we believe we can rest?
We can write about divine life while drawing our identity from being right. We can speak about the heavenlies while living inside a wounded ambition. Even an essay about leaving the shadows can become another shadow if it gives us something to admire about ourselves.
The question reaches beneath our words.
Where have I been living today? In Christ—or in the conversation I cannot stop replaying? In His life—or in someone else’s opinion of me?
We do not have to wait for the circumstances to change before we turn. We do not have to wait for heaven to begin living where Christ has placed us.
We are joined to Him now.
“Lord Jesus, I have been asking the passing things to tell me who I am. You are my life. Bring my actual living into what You have already given me in Yourself.”
Then yield where the shadow has been governing.
Release the argument. Tell the truth. Let the demand for recognition go to the cross. Receive the person before you without asking them to establish your worth.
Turn to Him. Follow Zoe. Walk in the heavenlies and reign in life through the grace He supplies.
Let His life govern the next word out of your mouth.
The shadow cannot hold your life.
Christ already does.
Live where your life is.
