Human Life without Christ being Utterly Hopeless There are a few verses here that can be considered as the sweetest and richest in life in the whole of the Scripture. The first portion is Ephesians 2:12: “You were at that time apart from Christ,...having no hope and without God in the world.” This tells us that as those who live in the world, there is no hope if we are apart from Christ, because we do not have God. God created the universe with a purpose, and for this purpose He created man. God created man differently than He did all other things. First, He created man according to His own image. As He Himself is love, light, holiness, and righteousness, so He put these virtues into man. Therefore, when a person is born, inherently he has love, light, holiness, and righteousness. From the depths of our being, we all hope to be persons of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Yet all these are only the outward form. Consider the example of a glove: it has just the outward form of the hand. Only when a hand is inserted can there be the reality of the glove. Since God wants to enter into us to be our life and reality, God has created a spirit for man within. This has been especially created by God for each one. This spirit within man is like the receiver of a radio and is able to receive the “sound waves” from the heavens. Yes, we all have God’s image, but that is only outward. Now within us there is an organ which can receive God. That organ is our spirit. Therefore, if we do not open our heart to let this God come in, as far as we ourselves are concerned, we are only an empty shell, an empty vessel. We need to receive God into our spirit to be our content. Throughout human history there have been tens of thousands of books, yet it is a marvelous thing that from the past to the present only one book is called the Holy Bible, the Holy Book. This book is indeed holy for it is God’s speaking and God’s breathing out (2 Tim. 3:16). This book tells us from the very start that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). We do not need to speculate, for it clearly tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. Even modern science has proved that God indeed used the dust of the earth to create man, because the elements found in man are compatible with those found in the dust of the earth. God first created our body, and then He created a spirit for us that we may contain Him. However, the spirit of man lost its function due to man’s fall, so God came to be a man and died for us on the cross as our Savior. When He resurrected from the dead, He became the ever-living Spirit, not only forgiving our sins but also entering into us to be our life. What a sweet salvation! What a wonderful fact! The Lord who created the universe, the God of all, is actually willing to enter into us, who were created yet fallen people, to be our life. This is indeed a great matter in the universe. For this reason, the Bible tells us that if we live apart from this Christ, our human life is without hope. Why is it without hope? It is because we are without God. The Christ in whom we believe is God Himself. He was God who came to be among men, and He was God manifesting Himself to man, that is, God reaching man. This God who has reached us is our Savior. Once we receive Him, He and we have a spiritual union in life. He enters into us, and we enter into Him. Therefore, if our human life is without Christ and God, we are truly without a goal. The hope previously mentioned refers to this goal. When we are endeavoring for our career, living a very busy life, we may not feel as much the pain of having no hope. However, when we have achieved success and have acquired fame, and when we have obtained all that we desire to have, we will sense a great lack and a great dissatisfaction in the depths of our being. We cannot say for sure where the shortage is, but we do experience it. Particularly before graduation from college we readily feel the vanity and emptiness of human life. What will our future be? What is the direction of our human life? This tells us that without God and Christ, our human life has no goal. A human life without a goal is the greatest reason for our feeling of vanity. If a person does not have God in his spirit, no matter how prosperous his career is, how numerous his achievements are, or how high his position is, he will still have a great sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction. Extracted from "The Mystery of the Universe and the Meaning of the Human Life" - 7 (A message given by Witness Lee on December 7, 1985 at a gospel meeting in Taipei). Published by Living Stream Ministry
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:37:58 +0000
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