God’s servants, through whom He chooses to help us better understand all that He has accomplished through His Son’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, point us to true hope. It often seems impossible to imitate the courage or service or wisdom of the great heroes of faith. “I’m not too courageous or industrious or wise…”, but thank God, Jesus is. To find Him as my wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption is the goal. (see I Corinthians 1:30)
Watchman Nee (Nee To-sheng) was born in Foochow, China in 1903. After putting his faith in Christ as a teenager, he began to see Jesus as our only hope. Though an exodus of foreign missionaries began taking place in the first half of the 1900’s culminating in full expulsion in 1953, the Gospel was not silenced in China. Multitudes put their faith in Jesus and scores of ‘illegal’ house churches sprung up across the nation.
After the Communist government came to power in 1949, persecution of all Christians increased and in 1952 Watchman Nee was arrested on false charges. He died in 1972, having spent the last twenty years of his life in prison. Many of his writings and translated messages were published and spread throughout the world. His bold exaltation of our Lord Jesus as revealed in the Bible has helped disciples better understand God’s amazing gift.
A short book on Ephesians entitled ‘Sit, Walk, Stand’ has strengthened the faith of Christians since its publication in 1957. Below is a section from the chapter entitled: ‘Sit’.
The Christian era began with Christ, of whom we are told that, when He had made purification of sins, He “sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3). With equal truth we can say that the individual Christian life begins with a man “in Christ” — that is to say, when by faith we see ourselves seated together with Him in the heavens.
Most Christians make the mistake of trying to walk in order to be able to sit, but that is a reversal of the true order. Our natural reason says: “If we do not walk, how can we ever reach the goal? What can we attain without effort? How can we get anywhere if we do not move?”… But Christianity begins not with a big DO, but with a big DONE. Thus Ephesians opens with the statement that God has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (1:3) and we are invited at the outset to sit down and enjoy what God has done for us; not to set out to try to attain it for ourselves.
Walking implies effort, whereas God says that we are saved not by works, but “by grace… through faith” (2:8). We constantly speak of being “saved through faith,” but what do we mean by it? We mean this, that we are saved by reposing in the Lord Jesus. We did nothing to save ourselves, we simply laid upon Him the burden of our sin-sick souls. We begin our Christian life by depending not upon our own doing, but upon what He has done… “I can do nothing to save myself, but by His grace God has done everything for me in Christ” is to take the first step in the life of faith. The Christian life from start to finish is based upon this principle of utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus.
May we see where God has placed us!
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated him at His right hand in the heavenly realms…” Ephesians 1:16-20
“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2:4-7
‘Sit, Walk, Stand’ by Watchman Nee; Gospel Literature Service; ©1957; Bombay, India