Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ

1. Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ

2. The Christian Life (God’s Plan) Position Position Heavenlies Eternity Death/ Rapture Condition Condition

3. Identification Truth • Spirituality: A Complete Package by God’s Plan • Phase 1/Phase 2 Crosswork Distinctions • Reality through Reckoning • The Question of Yielding • Spirituality and Obedience: The Law Problem

5. Forgiven in Christ Righteous in Christ Secure in Christ

6. Forgiven in Christ Righteous in Christ Secure in Christ Dead in Christ Raised in Christ Alive in Christ

7. Identification Truth • Spirituality: A Complete Package by God’s Plan • Phase 1/Phase 2 Crosswork Distinctions • Reality through Reckoning • The Question of Yielding • Spirituality and Obedience: The Law Problem

8. Freed from Power of Sin Freed from Penalty of Sin

9. “In the key Book of Romans there is nothing said about growth until the problem of righteousness is completely settled… It is important to note that Romans 1:1–5:11 present God’s remedy for the penalty of sins, while Romans 6–8 present God’s remedy for the power of sin… “It is the captive, dominated by the wretched self-life, to whom the identification truths call. This struggling one, who has long been plagued by doubt, defeat, discouragement, and depression, is being prepared to enter into the reality of the provision set forth in Romans 6–8… “In the light of that realization he is able to appreciate the positional truth that self, the old man, was identified with the Lord Jesus in His crucifixion (Rom. 6:6). This is the gospel for the Christian! Our Savior dealt not only with the symptoms but with the disease, the root as well as the fruit. We have His substitution for our sins; we have identification with Him in His death for sinful self.” Part Five: A Guide to Spiritual Growth, Chapter 56, Think Position!, pp 254, 255

10. “The trouble of the believer who knows Christ as his justification is not sin as to its guilt, but sin as to its ruling power. In other words, it is not from sin as a load, or an offence, that he seeks to be freed—for he sees that God has completely acquitted him from the charge and penalty of sin—but it is from sin as a master. To know God’s way of deliverance from sin as a master he must apprehend the truth contained in the sixth chapter of Romans. There we see what God has done, not with our sins—that question the Apostle dealt with in the preceding chapters—but with ourselves, the agents and slaves of sin. He has put our old man—our original self—where He put our sins, namely, on the cross with Christ. ‘Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him’ (Rom. 6:6). The believer there sees not only that Christ died for him—substitution—but that he died with Christ—identification" (Thoughts on Life and Godliness, p. 50). Part One: Principles of Spiritual Growth, Chapter 8, Identification, p 31

11. “Madam Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the immense spiritual achievement of Watchman Nee, a great pioneer of Christianity in China. Christianity Today magazine recently honored Watchman Nee as one of the 100 most influential Christians of the twentieth century. Watchman Nee died over thirty years ago but his life and work continue to influence millions of Protestant Christians in China. From House floor July 30, 2009 “Today more than three thousand churches outside of China, including several hundred in the United States, look to him as one of their religious and theological leaders. “Watchman Nee was an astonishingly devoted and energetic man, which I think can be seen from a capsule summary of his life. He became a Christian in 1922. In the 1930s, he traveled to Europe and North America, where he delivered sermons and speeches. Later his sermons were collected and published as books. By the late 1940s, Nee had become the most influential Chinese Christian writer, evangelist, and church builder. In 1952, the Chinese government imprisoned Nee and many other Christian leaders for their faith. Nee was never released, though during the 1960s and 1970s several of his books continued to grow in influence and popularity, particularly in the United States, and his best-known book, ‘The Normal Christian Life’, sold over one million copies world-wide and became a twentieth-century Christian classic. In 1972 he died at the age of 71 in a labor farm; his few surviving letters confirm that he remained faithful to God until the end.

12. From House floor July 30, 2009 “Madam Speaker, it is estimated that China has more than one hundred million Christians, and millions of them consider themselves the spiritual heirs of Watchman Nee. Millions more are rightly proud of the contribution Watchman Nee made to global Christianity — he was the first Chinese Christian to exercise an influence on Western Christians — and indeed of his contribution to world spiritual culture. It is sad that the works of Watchman Nee are officially banned in China — even as they are being discovered afresh by a new generation of Western Christians. “It is my hope that Watchman Nee’s collected works can be freely published and distributed within China. After Watchman Nee’s death, when his niece came to collect his few possessions, she was given a scrap of paper that a guard had found by his bed. What was written on that scrap may serve as Watchman Nee’s testament: ‘Christ is the Son of God Who died for the redemption of sinners and was resurrected after three days. This is the greatest truth in the universe. I die because of my belief in Christ. Watchman Nee.'”

13. “The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my ‘old man.’ It needs the cross to crucify me … the sinner… Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon; … the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.” (The Normal Christian Life, pp. 31, 32) Part One: Principles of Spiritual Growth, Chapter 8, Identification, pp 32-33

14. “Can we now see where the failure began in our Christian walk? We had the knowledge of the justification truths for our new birth, and upon this ‘milk of the Gospel’ we sought to grow and serve. But there was defeat, because the foundation truths are for beginning only. Further knowledge was our need. We had simply gone beyond our teaching! We know the Lord Jesus as our Foundation, but not as our Life.” Part Four: The Realization of Spiritual Growth, Chapter 42, Knowledge of Reckoning, p 193

16. “Sonship is something more than being born again. It represents growth into fulness. It is quite a good thing to be a babe while babyhood lasts, but it is a bad thing to be a babe when that period is past. This is the condition of many Christians. While sonship is inherent in birth, in the New Testament sense sonship is the realization of the possibilities of birth.” (T. Austin-Sparks, What Is Man?) Part One: Principles of Spiritual Growth, Chapter 18, Continuance, pp 72-73

17. “In general, Christians focus upon the death of the Lord Jesus—He died for me. But for the growing believer, His life must be the focal point of faith… Growth comes from life, resurrection life. ‘That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection’ (Phil. 3:10). My position is in Him at the Father’s right hand, and it is there that I find life and fellowship. Christians who dwell mainly upon His death know little of life—His life… “Dead and crucified with Thee, passed beyond my doom; Sin and law forever silenced in Thy tomb. Passed beyond the mighty curse, dead, from sin set free; Not for Thee earth’s joy and music, not for me. Dead, the sinner past and gone, not the sin alone; Living, where Thou art in glory on the Throne.” Part Three: The Ground of Growth, Chapter 35, Transplantation, pp 165, 166

18. “God’s way of deliverance is altogether different from man’s way. Man’s way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to overcome it; God’s way is to remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger all would be well. The idea that, because failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, something more is therefore demanded of us, leads naturally to this false conception of the way of deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of sin and with our inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain the victory over sin we must have more power. ‘If only I were stronger,’ we say, ‘I could overcome my violent outbursts of temper,’ and so we plead with the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control. “But this is altogether wrong; this is not Christianity. God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. This is surely a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the Divine way. 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.” Part One: Principles of Spiritual Growth, Chapter 16, Help, pp 66-67