Abiding is NOT Impossible

"How do we abide? ‘Of God are ye in Christ.’ It was the work of God to put you

there and He has done it. Now stay there! Do not be moved back on to your

own ground. Never look at yourself as though you were not in Christ. Look at

Christ , see yourself in Him. Abide in Him. Rest in the fact that God has put you

in His Son, and live in the expectation that He will complete His work in you. It 

is for Him to make good the glorious promise that ‘sin shall not have dominion

over you. (Rom 6:14).”

Watchman Nee from The NORMAL Christian Life.

Personal: Nee speaks of what every Christian should be living from and in, not

just the spiritual heavy weights. God continues to challenge me. What about you?

Faith Speaks

“The point of the past couple of week is that there is practical

 value in the stand of faith that says:

‘God has put me in Christ and therefore all that is true of Him

is true of me. I will abide in Him.’ 

Satan is always trying to get us out, to keep us out, to convince us 

that we are out of sync with God, and by temptations, failures, suffering, 

trial, to make us feel acutely that we are outside of Christ. Our first 

thought is that, if we were in Christ, we should not be in this state,

 and therefore, judging by the feelings we have now, we must be out of Him. 

God’s injunction is to ‘abide’ in Christ, and that is the way of deliverance. 

Why? Because it opens the way for God to take a hand in our lives and 

to work the thing out in us. It makes room for the operation of His superior 

power--the power of the resurrection (Rom 6:4,9,10)--so that the facts 

of our daily experience, and where before ‘sin reigned’ (Rom 5:21)

 we now make the joyful discovery that we are truly ‘no longer...

in bondage to sin.’ (Rom 6:6).

If we stand steadfastly in Christ, we find that He becomes experientially true

in our lives. If instead we come on the basis of what we are in ourselves we 

find all that is true of our old nature remaining true in us. So often we go to the

wrong place to find the death of self. It is in Christ. We have only to look within

to find we are very much alive to sin; but when we look to Him who dwells 

within us, Christ, then God sees to it that even though death is working, 

newness of life is ours also. We are ‘alive unto God.’ (Rom 6:4,11)”

Watchman Nee from the Normal Christian Life

Well, dear reader, there is only one post left for this series on what 

it means for us to be in Christ and how to walk out of who we 

truly are. So few preach on it today and the concepts may sound

strange to you.  But more on this next week.

Abiding In Him

“The scriptures tell us that we are ‘dead indeed’, but nowhere do they say that

we are dead to ourselves. We shall look in vain to find death within; it can’t be

found. However, scripture does say that we are dead in Christ for we were

crucified with Him.

‘Abide in Me and I in you’ (John 15:4). It was an act of God that put us into

Christ and we have to abide there. This verse lays down for us a divine

principle, which is that God has done the work in Christ and not in us as

individuals. It is the history of Christ which is to become the experience

of the Christian, and we have no spiritual experience apart from Him. We

were ‘crucified with Him, quickened, raised, and set by God into the 

heavenlies in Him and we are complete in Him’ (Rom 6:6, Eph 2:5,6

Col 2:10). 

It is wrong to think that we can experience anything of the Christian life 

in ourselves, and apart from Him. All the spiritual experience of the Christian 

is all ready true in Christ. It has all ready been experienced by Christ. What 

we call ‘our’ experience is only our entering into His history, His experience. 

The character of the branches is determined by the Vine.The history of Christ

 becomes our experience and our spiritual history; we do not have a separate 

history from His. The entire work with respect to us is not done in us here 

but in Christ. He does no separate work in individuals apart from what He has 

done there. Even eternal life is not given to us as individuals; the life is in the Son, 

and ‘he that hath the Son hath life.’ God has done all in His Son, and He has 

included us in Him; we are incorporated into Christ.”

Watchman Nee from The Normal Christian life.

Tomorrow you and I will look at how this truth is lived out in our daily lives.

Sin Versus Sins

Sins vrs Sin

God dealt with our sins directly by means of the Blood so that they no

longer come to remembrance. But when it comes to the matter of sin

and deliverance from its power, we find that God deals indirectly. He 

does not remove the sin but the sinner. The vehicle of sin, the body,

is unemployed. 

(The verb katargeo translated “destroyed in Romans 6:6

does not mean ‘annihilated’ but ‘put out of operation, made 

ineffective’, and is from the Greek root argos, which means 

‘inactive, not working, unprofitable.’  

This word is translated as ‘idle’ in Matt 20:3,6 of the unemployed

laborers in the market place.) 

Sin, the old master is still about, but the slave who served him 

has been put to death and so his members are unemployed. 

Thus we can say that ‘deliverance from sin’ is a more scriptural idea 

than ‘victory over sin.’ The expressions ‘freed from sin’ and ‘dead unto

sin’ in Romans 6:7 and 11 imply deliverance from a power that is still very

present and very real--not from something that no longer exists.

In 1John 1:3-9 John boldly writes: ‘whosoever is begotten of God doeth no

sin...he cannot sin,’ which is a statement that is often wrongly understood 

and thus misleading. John is saying that to sin is not the nature of that which

is born of God. The life of Christ has been planted in us by new birth and its

nature is not to commit sin.

So it is a question of choice of which facts we will count upon and live by:

the tangible facts of daily experience or the mightier fact that we are now

‘in Christ.’ The power of His resurrection is on our side, and the whole

might of God is at work in our salvation (Romans 1:16), but the matter still

rests upon our making real in history what is true in divine fact.

Watchman Nee. The Normal Christian Life

PERSONAL

I don’t know if these blogs are for you or for me. I first read this book of Nee’s

just after college and it is underlined from end to end. BUT, as I go back into

the book, I find a depth of truth I did not comprehended then. My prayer for

me as well as for you, dear reader, is that God will give us revelation of His 

truth so that we can walk in it.

What is the Secret of Reckoning?

What is the secret of reckoning?

“It is revelation.” 

“We need to have our eyes opened to the fact of our union with Christ, 

and that is something more than knowing it as doctrine. Such revelation 

is no vague indefinite thing. Most of us can remember the day when we 

saw clearly that Christ died for us, and we ought to be equally clear as to 

the time when we saw that we died with Christ. It should be nothing hazy, 

but very definite, for it is with this as basis that we shall go on. It is not that 

I reckon myself to be dead, and therefore I will be dead. It is that, because 

I am dead--because I see now what God has done for me in Christ--therefore 

I reckon myself to be dead. That is the right kind of reckoning. It is not 

reckoning toward death but from death. God tells us to reckon ourselves dead, 

not that by the process of reckoning we may become dead, but because 

we are dead. He never told us to reckon what was not fact.” 

Watchman Nee, from The Normal Christian Life

Scripture says, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, 

but alive unto God.” Romans 6:11

This is huge for me. It is the difference between seeing myself as a sinner 

still needing salvation or a saint who sometimes sins. Romans 6:11 seems to 

contradict everything I see about myself and other Christians. However,

if what God is saying in these verses is truth, then I want to understand

it and walk it out.  You see, I will live out of what I truly believe about myself.

Breakthrough

“I remember one morning--that morning was a real morning and one

I can never forget--I was upstairs sitting at my desk reading the Word

and praying, and I said, ‘Lord, open my eyes!’ And then in a flash I 

saw it. I saw my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him and that

when He died I died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter

of the past and not of the future, and that I was just as truly dead as He

was because I was in Him when He died. The whole thing had dawned

upon me. I was carried away with such joy at this great discovery that I 

jumped from my chair and cried,‘Praise the Lord, I am dead!’ I ran

downstairs and met one of the brothers helping in the kitchen and laid

hold of him. ‘Brother,’ I said, ‘do you know that I have died?’ I must

admit he looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ he said, so I went on:

‘Do you not know that Christ has died? Do you not know that I died with

Him? Do your not know that my death is no less truly a fact than His?’

Oh, it was so real to me! I longed to go through the streets of Shanghai

shouting the news of my discovery. From that day to this I have never

for one moment doubted the finality of that word: ‘I have been crucified 

with Christ.’ I do not mean that we do not need to work it out. Yes, there

is an outworking of the death which we are going to see presently,

but this, first of all, is basic. I have been crucified : in Christ it

has been done.”  Watchman Nee

Nee's Struggle

“For years after my conversion I tried to reckon as I had been taught. 

I reckoned from 1920 to 1927. The more I reckoned that I was dead

to sin, the more alive it clearly was. I simply could not believe myself

dead, and I could not produce death. Whenever I sought help I was

told to look at Romans 6:11, and the more I read Romans 6:11 and 

tried to reckon, the further death was: I could not get it. I fully 

appreciated the teaching that I must reckon, but I could not make 

out why nothing resulted from it. I have to confess that for months I

was troubled. I said to the Lord, ‘If this is not clear, if I cannot be

brought to see this which is so very fundamental, I will cease to do

anything. I will not preach any more; I will not go out to serve Thee

any more; I want first of all to get thoroughly clear here.’ For months

I was seeking and sometimes fasted, but nothing came through.”

Watchman Nee

The Path of Progress: Reckoning

“Likewise reckon ye also to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God 

through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:11

As I look at this verse I see that it is written in the present tense. I looked

at other versions and most use the word “consider” instead of reckon, but

reckon is a strong word.

Reckon: To reason from the facts and draw conclusions

“Romans 6:6 says that our old man was crucified with Him.

It is final and can’t be undone. Our old man has been crucified once

and for ever, and he can never be uncrucified. (This is fact.) This is

what we need to know. The sequence is most important. Our reckoning 

must be based on knowledge of a divinely revealed fact, for otherwise

faith has no foundation on which to rest. When we know we reckon 

spontaneously...So it comes to this, that unless we know for a fact 

that we are dead with Christ, the more we reckon, the more intense 

will the struggle become,and the issue will be sure defeat.” 

 Watchman Nee

More tomorrow. It unfolds slowly. 

Having difficulty? Ask God to give you revelation.

Root Out the Drinking

If a government decided to get rid of a drinking problem and destroyed all the

bottles of alcohol, would that solve the problem? No. Behind the bottles are the

factories that produce the liquor, and if the factories were not dealt with, production

would continue and more bottles would be produced. All of the things that 

produced the alcohol would have to be completely destroyed if the drink question

was to be permanently solved. 

We are the factories; our actions are the products. The Lord Jesus dealt with

the question of the products, namely our sins. But, what about the question of

what we are? Our sins were produced by us. They have been dealt with, but

how are we going to be dealt with? Do you believe that the Lord Jesus would

cleanse away all our sins and then leave us to get rid of the sin-producing

factory? 

To ask this question is to answer it. Of course He has not done half the

work and left the other half undone. No, He has done away with the goods

and also made a clean sweep of the factory that produces the goods.

The finished work of Christ really has gone to the root of our problem and

dealt with it. There are no half measures with God. He has made full 

provision for sin’s rule is utterly broken.  ‘Knowing this, says Paul, ‘that

our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done

away, so that we should no longer be in bondage to sin (Romans 6:6)

Knowing this! Yes, but do you know it? Or are ye ignorant (Rom. 6:3)?

May the Lord graciously open your eyes.” Watchman Nee

Hudson Taylor's Story

Hudson Taylor’s Story

“Hudson Taylor knew that in order to be fruitful he had to be able to 

draw the sap out of the Vine into himself. ‘I knew,’ he said, writing to

his sister from Chinkiang in 1869, ‘that if only I could abide in Christ,

all would be well, but I could not.’ The more he tried the worse it got.

One day revelation came and he saw. 

‘I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I 

am a branch. I am part of Him and I have to just believe it and act

upon it. I have seen it long enough in the Bible, but I believe it now

as a living reality.’

A brother in Shanghai wanted to know the crucified life, the resurrected

life, but he could see no way of getting there. There was a thermos on

the table and his friend said, ‘what is this?’  ‘A thermos’ he answered.

‘Well what if the thermos started to pray, “Lord make me a thermos. I very 

much want to be a thermos!” ‘What would you say?‘ The brother said,

‘It would be nonsense to pray like that. It is a thermos.‘ The friend then said 

to him, ‘You are doing the same thing. God in times past has included you

in Christ. When He died you died. When He lived you lived. Now today

you cannot say, “I want to die. I want to be crucified. I want to have 

resurrection life.” The Lord simply looks at you and says, “You are dead!

You have new life!” ‘All your praying is just as absurd as that of the thermos

flask. You do not need to ask the Lord for anything; you merely need your

eyes opened to see that He has done it all.’  The man was shocked and

the light dawned. With tears in his eyes he said, ‘Lord, I praise Thee that

Thou hast included me in Christ. All that is His is mine!’ And, that brother

began to live a changed life.”  Watchman Nee

The First Step: Knowing This...

“Knowing is not an intellectual knowledge at all, but an opening

of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ. 

See Ephesians 1:17. The written Word has to become a living 

word to your heart that something is true. Forgiveness

 of sins is in the Bible, but it does not benefit you until a light 

shines into your inner being and you are wholly persuaded 

of the fact as truth. What is true of the forgiveness of your sins 

is no less true of your deliverance from sin. Once the light of God 

dawns upon the heart, you can see yourself in Christ.

It is not because someone quoted Romans 6:6 to you, but 

you know it because God has revealed it to you by His Spirit.” 

Watchman Nee

Pondering...

As I sat pondering what I had written yesterday morning I began 

to think about how our Lord is an Eternal Being with no beginning 

and no end. He is outside of time. He is at the beginning of time

and the end of time, at the same time. He entered time and dwelt

among us for 33 years and then He died but all during that time

He was still God the Son. When we come to Christ and receive Him

into our lives, He takes up His abode within us. We become one

with our Lord who dwells outside of time. Dear reader, if you can

grasp this then it is easier to grasp the concept, the truth that you

were crucified with Christ on the cross. You are in Him and when He

died, you died. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him,

that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should

not serve sin.  Romans 6:6

Next week we will take up knowing who we are in Christ.

Crucified With Christ--Part 2

“Our crucifixion can never be made effective by will or by effort, 

but only by accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the cross.

Our eyes must be opened to see the finished work of calvary.

This is how we entered into salvation in the first place. 

Sanctification is made possible for you on exactly the same

basis as that initial salvation.

When we are preoccupied with the power of sin in our lives,

we naturally conclude that if we are to have victory we need 

more power. ‘If only I were stronger,’ we say, ‘I could overcome

my violent outbursts of temper,’ so we plead with God to strengthen 

us so we can exercise more self control. However, God’s means 

of delivering us is by making us weaker and weaker. God sets

us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old

man but by crucifying him, not by helping him to do anything but

by removing him from the scene of action. Once you see the

truth that you are powerless to do anything, that God has done

it all, it brings to an end human striving and self effort.”  

Watchman Nee

Well, I don’t know about you, dear reader, but this goes against

my grain and against what I have been taught in church 

through the years. Just before Jesus died He said, 

“it is finished.” 

I know that He took care of it all. I want to grasp this truth 

and so I say, “Help.”

Our Death with Christ is Historic

“As a Christian, do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course 

you do. But the same Holy scripture that says He died for us

says also that we died with Him.

'Christ died for us'--Romans 5:8  That statement is clear

'Our old man was crucified with Him'--Romans 6:6

'We died with Christ'--Romans 6:8

We can say reverently but accurately, “I was crucified when

Christ was crucified.” No, you have never felt it. You believe

it because the Word of God tells you so. It does not depend

on your feelings.

You have died! You are done with! You are ruled out! The self

you loath is on the cross with Christ. And ‘He that is dead is 

freed from sin.’ Romans 6:7 AV. This is the Gospel for the

Christians.”  Watchman Nee

Dear Reader, munch on this. I will do likewise. It was only

the last few years that this scripture was unpacked for me

and I am still trying to get my head and my heart around it.

It is changing me. I am not a sinner but a Saint who sometimes

sins.  Stick with me on this journey.

Romans 6:1-11

Romans 6:1-11

These scriptures are key for what I will share this week. When our 

kids were younger we memorized them but neither the parents

nor the children had a clue what they meant!

1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace

may abound? 

2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer

therein?

3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 

Christ were baptized into His death?

4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism in death:

that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of

the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of

his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the

body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should

not serve sin.

7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also

live with him:

9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;

death hath no more dominion over him.

10 For in Him all died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth

he liveth unto God.

11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but

alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Path of Progress

As I read the words of The Normal Christian Life, they become, again,

water to my thirsty soul. I receive the words as a Well of Water springing

up and my desire is to share this Well with you, my dear reader. I will

go slow. There is no hurry. If they minister to you, share them with others.

“Our old history ends with the cross, our new history begins with the

resurrection. ‘If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old

things are passed away; behold they become new.’ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The cross terminates the first creation, and out of death is brought a 

new creation in Christ, the second Man.”

 Romans 6,7 and 8 lay out the conditions for living a normal Christian 

life. They are fourfold and Nee states that all four are necessary:

“a Knowing

 b Reckoning

 c Presenting ourselves to God

 d Walking in the Spirit.”

Tomorrow we begin this journey together!

Crucified, Buried and Risen Again!

Here is the problem. We were born sinners. How then 

can we cut off our sinful heredity? When Jesus was crucified 

on the cross, He was crucified as the last Adam. All that 

was in the first Adam was gathered up and done away with

 in Him. Our union with Him as the second Adam begins

 in resurrection and ends in Eternity. He arose as the Head 

of a new race of men. It is in His resurrection that He stands 

forth as the second Man, and there we were included.

“For if we have been planted together

in the likeness of his death,

we shall be also

in the likeness of His resurrection.” 

Romans 6:5

The cross is thus the mighty act of God which translates 

us from Adam to Christ; from the kingdom of darkness 

into the kingdom of His dear Son.

Now when I get up in the morning, by whose life do I live the Christian life?

The Cross--Good Friday

Ah, why is it called "GOOD Friday?" Read on.

The blood takes care of my sins, but the cross must deal with the sinner.

A sinner is said to be a sinner because he is born a sinner, not because

he has committed sins. We sin because we are sinners.”Through one man’s

disobedience the many were made (or constituted) sinners. Rom. 5:19.

I am an American even if I live outside of America my whole life. I am an 

American because I am born an American. I am a sinner because I was

born in Adam. The blood procures our pardon for what we have done,

the cross procures our deliverance from what we are.

Look at it this way: We try to please the Lord but we find something within that

does not want to please Him. We try to be loving but something inside is un-

loving. The more we try to change the outside the more we realize how deep

seated is the trouble. Then it begins to dawn: “It is not only that I DO wrong,

I AM wrong.”

More on this tomorrow....

The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee

Overcoming the Accuser

Today is Maundy Thursday as we continue to think on what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

(And, yes, dear readers, I just discovered that I posted the same 
thing twice putting me a  day behind schedule! Perhaps I will post two today...)

Satan’s most strategic activity in this day is the accuser of the brethren.

See Rev. 12:10. The Blood of Jesus operates against Satan by putting

God on the side of man against our enemy.

“God is in the light, and as we walk in the light with Him everything is

exposed and open to that light, so that God can see it all--and yet,

the Blood is able to cleanse from every sin.” What a cleansing!

(IJohn 1:7 Darby)

Satan accuses us before God. God points to the Blood of His dear

Son and says, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s

elect? It is God that justifies; who is he that shall condemn? It is

Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead,

who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.”

(Romans 8:34)

Our faith in the precious Blood and our refusal to be moved from

that position can silence the charges and put our enemy to flight.

See The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee

The Believer's Access to God

The second value is that the blood cleanses our conscience. 

What does this mean? It means that my guilty conscience came between 

me and God whenever I sought to approach Him. It constantly reminded 

me of the barrier that stood between myself and Him. As soon as I find 

my conscience uneasy, my faith leaks away, and immediately I know 

I cannot face God. In order to keep trucking I must know that God keeps 

short accounts; that I am made right by the Blood every moment of everyday. 

It means that I come to God on the basis of the finished work of the 

Lord Jesus. A clear conscience is never based upon my own attainment; 

it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His 

Blood on the cross.

All of us may feel weak, but looking at our weakness will never make 

us strong. But we can say to God, “Lord, I do not know the value of 

the Blood of Jesus, but I know the Blood has satisfied You and so the

Blood is enough for me and it is my only plea.”

See the Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee

Easter Thoughts

The Power of the Blood

I have been reading Watchman Nee’s book, The Normal Christian Life,

and getting a new perspective on the meaning of the Blood and of the

Cross. This is a good week to revisit these things. Here are some tidbits:

We need to understand the work of the Blood for us, in three ways:

1 Our sins were dealt with by the Blood of Christ.

2 Our guilt was dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by 

showing us the value of that Blood.

3 The attack of the enemy was met and his accusations answered by

the power of the Blood.

We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come

under judgement; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks

what we have done but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is 

therefore not primarily for us but for God. This carries over in the old

testament in these two places: The first is in the story of the Israelites 

placing the Blood over the lintel of their homes so that they would not die 

at the passing of the Angel of Death; the second story tells how the High Priest 

would enter the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement and 

sprinkle the Blood on the Mercy Seat before the Lord.

Sometimes the sense of sin and guilt is so great, so terrible as to cripple us

by causing us to lose sight of the effectiveness of the Blood. We cannot

approach the Blood of Christ subjectively and measure how we feel on a 

particular day. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God 

because He says so. A holy and righteous God has the right to say that

the Blood is acceptable to His eyes and has fully satisfied Him--so it

must satisfy me also.