If God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, then we need to reconsider what we think we are doing.
We speak as though salvation depends upon our ability to persuade people. We organize the saints, train them, give them goals, and send them out to produce results. Then we count what happened and use the count to determine whether we have been faithful.
But where is the life?
That is the question I keep returning to. We can have activity, sincerity, knowledge, and considerable sacrifice. We can have people working very hard for something they believe God desires. Yet none of these things establishes that Zoe is flowing.
And if Zoe is not flowing, what are we supplying?
We can tell the saints to become more loving, more patient, more attentive, and more concerned. We can replace one set of expectations with another, gentler set. The language becomes tender, but the source remains the same. The person is still being asked to produce something from himself.
That does not reach the issue. Zoe must flow. Christ Himself must be the life that proceeds from us.
The question is where our speaking and living originate. Something can appear kind and still arise from the natural life. Something can be religiously useful and still be sustained by ambition, fear, obligation, or the desire to become important. We cannot determine the source merely by admiring the outward action.
Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing. We have found many things to do. His words require us to ask what those things amount to when they proceed apart from His life.
Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Before our activity, before our understanding, before any ministry had an opportunity to claim us, there was God’s choosing in Christ.
The following verse speaks of sonship through Jesus Christ. Romans 8:29 speaks of being conformed to the image of His Son. These passages disclose a purpose that reaches much further than obtaining religious decisions. God intends that His Son be expressed in those He has brought into relationship with Himself.
We have often treated salvation as the successful conclusion of an encounter. Someone agreed. Someone prayed. Someone joined us. But receiving divine life opens a life whose source is now Christ. The question continues long after the first response: from what life are we living?
If Christ is our life, then Christianity cannot find its fulfillment in making the old life more religiously productive.
Paul says in Galatians 2:20 that he has been crucified with Christ and that Christ lives in him. We can repeat that verse while leaving our entire approach untouched. We can continue asking the natural person to become a better worker, a more persuasive speaker, and a more dependable participant.
But Paul’s words reach the person who would accomplish all this.
The self cannot remain the source and merely borrow Christ’s name for its activities. Christ lives in us. His life is to become our actual living. Whatever proceeds from us in His service must have its origin there.
A change in methods cannot resolve this. A softer method can still proceed from the same self. A smaller meeting can still depend upon the same natural ability. A more compassionate vocabulary can still conceal the assumption that we possess the life necessary to accomplish God’s purpose.
We do not.
John 1:13 says that those who become children of God are born of God, rather than of blood or human will. Divine life originates in God. No degree of human earnestness can become its source.
Jesus says in John 6:44 that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him. In John 6:37, He says that all whom the Father gives Him will come to Him. If we take these words seriously, we must release our claim to manufacture the outcome.
We may be involved in someone’s coming to Christ. A word may pass through us. There may be a conversation, a proclamation, an encounter we could never have arranged. But our involvement does not make us the source of what happens.
The Father draws. The Son receives. The Spirit gives life.
What passes through us must proceed from Him.
Jesus makes this plain in John 7:37–39. He invites the thirsty to come to Him and drink, and He speaks of rivers of living water flowing from within the believer. John explains that He was speaking concerning the Spirit.
There is the order: coming, drinking, flowing.
We have often begun with the demand for an outward result. We tell people to flow, then supply techniques for producing the appearance of a river. We provide words to say, people to approach, activities to complete, and numbers to report.
But a river cannot be produced by instructions to the riverbed. The water must be there.
The living water is the Spirit. We cannot substitute enthusiasm for Him. We cannot substitute friendliness, eloquence, or the willingness to work. All these things may be present while the inward source of the action remains ourselves.
The Lord’s invitation brings us to Himself. We drink of Him. What flows is what we have received.
This is also the meaning of the branch in John 15. The branch bears fruit through abiding in the Vine. Its life is received life. The branch does not maintain an independent supply and then contribute that supply to the Vine’s purpose.
We have made much of what the branch ought to accomplish. Jesus directs us to the union from which anything living can proceed.
Abiding cannot become another technique for obtaining results. I cannot turn inward for a few minutes in order to become more effective at my own undertaking. Christ is not a resource added to an otherwise independent life. He is our life.
The branch lives because the Vine’s life is in it.
This is why the priority must be Zoe, God’s own life in us. The life of Christ must have freedom within us and expression through us. His life carries its own character. When it flows, what is expressed belongs to Him.
If love appears, it is His love finding expression. If patience appears, it is the expression of His life. We have not succeeded in producing a spiritual quality from our own reserves.
Galatians 5 calls these things the fruit of the Spirit. The source is named. Turning the fruit into a list of qualities for the natural person to manufacture loses the very thing the passage identifies.
I do not want to tell people to imitate the river. I want us to recognize how often we have substituted something of ourselves for the water.
Even concern for others can become a substitute when we make our concern the foundation of spiritual work. We can become deeply occupied with being useful, understanding, and helpful. Yet the essential question remains unanswered: is Christ the life proceeding through this?
Human concern cannot regenerate another person. Our emotional intensity cannot become divine supply. We may exhaust ourselves and those around us while believing that our exhaustion demonstrates faithfulness.
Zoe does not originate in the intensity of our effort.
Paul asks in Galatians 3:3 whether those who began in the Spirit are now being perfected by the flesh. That question reaches both harsh religious demands and gentle appeals to become better people. The flesh does not cease to be the flesh because its ambition has become benevolent.
We began by receiving what we could not produce. We continue by that same source.
Paul’s own labor makes this clear. In Colossians 1:29, he describes striving according to God’s operation within him. There is real labor, but its power is God’s operation. In 1 Corinthians 15:10, he speaks of laboring abundantly, then attributes that labor to the grace of God with him.
The life of God does not leave a person inert. It becomes the source of his movement.
There may be vigorous speaking. There may be costly labor. There may also be a quietness that has no need to establish its usefulness. We cannot prescribe one outward appearance and call it the evidence of life. The question is whether the action proceeds from Christ.
This changes how we understand evangelism.
Romans 10 speaks of people hearing through someone who proclaims the message. Second Timothy 2:10 speaks of Paul enduring for the sake of the elect, that they may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus. God’s choosing does not make the speaking unnecessary. It places the speaking within His work.
The person proclaiming Christ has no independent supply of spiritual power. Paul describes his speaking in 1 Corinthians 2:4–5 in terms of the demonstration of the Spirit and power, so that faith would rest in God’s power.
We have concentrated upon preparing the speaker. We must ask what is proceeding through the speaking.
A person can explain divine life accurately without supplying it. He can describe the Vine while remaining occupied with his own performance. He can speak of the cross while protecting his importance.
I can do that in my writing.
The fact that I am writing about Zoe does not establish that Zoe is flowing. My words can become a vehicle for my frustration, my desire to be heard, or my satisfaction in seeing what others have missed. The subject may be Christ while the inward movement remains my own.
I cannot correct that merely by adopting a humbler tone. The Lord must have access to the source of the speaking. His life must have room where my own need to prevail has been governing me.
This is where the cross becomes deeply practical. The claim of the self to originate, control, and possess the work must be relinquished. Even a true perception can become something the self takes up and tries to accomplish.
I may see that the church ought to express Christ. That does not mean my natural determination can bring the church into reality. I may see that religious arrangements obstruct the saints. That does not mean the strength of my opposition supplies the life they need.
The obstruction can be named. It may need to be removed. But the removal of an obstruction does not create the river. The life still comes from God.
Our priority must remain there.
This also releases us from the demand to see everything completed within our lifetime. God’s eternal purpose cannot be reduced to the visible results of our few years.
David desired to build the temple, but the building was given to his son. Joseph died before the departure from Egypt. Hebrews 11 speaks of those who died in faith without receiving the fulfillment of the promises.
They were not required to force the whole purpose into their allotted years. Neither are we.
I do not need to establish the success of God’s purpose through my own visible achievement. I need Christ to be my life in the day that has actually been given to me. If something proceeds from that life, its significance belongs to Him. I may never see where it reaches.
The church’s reality must arise from the life of Christ in His members. We cannot assemble its outward features and then expect life to follow. We cannot organize ourselves into the source.
If salvation originates in God’s choosing, drawing, and life-giving, then our priorities must agree with that origin. We must stop returning the saints to themselves for the power to accomplish what began in Him.
We must also stop offering a gentler version of the same demand. “Be more loving” can leave a person just as occupied with himself as “gain more people.” Both can become attempts to supply from a life that cannot produce Zoe.
Christ must be our life. Zoe must flow.
Let our speaking proceed from Him. Let our movement arise from His operation. Let whatever belongs merely to our need for results lose its authority over us.
He has given us Himself. The living water is not ours to manufacture.
We drink of Him. We abide in Him. His life finds expression through His members.
That is the priority.
