Dear Friend, Happy Friday! I’ve been rereading a Watchman Nee’s book, The Normal Christian Life. In fact, I gave this book together with another book of his, “Sit, Walk, Stand” to some of my Christian friends for Christmas. I did want to share the gems with them, and I also would like to recommend his books to you and hope they would be a blessing to you in a new season. I even found it worthwhile to reread it. It refreshed my memory, and also opened my eyes on what I didn’t realize in the first reading. For now, I cannot locate a sentence in his book that I want to share, but to my recollection, he wrote something like “Satan’s biggest tactic to make us sin is ‘self-centeredness.’” Reading his book, I thought I must acknowledge satan is clever. His tactics is not to make us worship him, though there are satan worshippers, but not so many yet. You wouldn’t want to worship or look at him. He simply uses the tactics to make us look at us, self, not him, nor Christ. Not only unbelievers, but many Christians are self-centered. I think self-centeredness is not limited to pride, selfishness and self-pity, but to my thought, my feeling such as offense, guilt or condemnation. This is all ME, ME, ME. Sometimes when I got up late, the first thought that came into my mind was “Oh, sorry, I got up late. Ah, I should have gotten up earlier and prayed.” It was about me and my feeling, guilt. So, now I try to say, even when I get up late, “Father, thank You for another new day. Thank You for the good sleep and rest.” I realized my focus should be moved from me to Him. Watchman Nee also wrote on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life: The Choice that Confronted Adam God planted a great number of trees in the garden of Eden, but “in the middle of the garden” - that is, in a place of special prominence - he planted two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was created innocent; he had no knowledge of good and evil. Think of a grown man, say thirty years old, who has no sense of right or wrong, no power to differentiate between the two! Would you not say such a man was undeveloped? Well, this is exactly what Adam was. And God brings him into the garden and says to him, in effect, “Now the garden is full of trees, full of fruits, and of the fruit of tree you may eat freely. But in the very midst of the garden is one tree called ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’; you must not eat of that, for in the day that you do so you will surely die. But remember, the name of the other tree close by is Life.” What then, is the meaning of these two trees? Adam was, so to speak, created morally neutral - neither sinful nor holy, but innocent - and God put those two trees there so that he might exercise free choice. He could choose the tree of life, or he could choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now the knowledge of good and evil, though forbidden to Adam, is not wrong in itself. Without it however, Adam is in a sense limited in that he cannot decide for himself on moral issues. Judgement of right and wrong resides not in him but in God, and Adam’s only course when faced with any question is to refer it to Jehovah God. Thus you have a life in the garden which is totally dependent on God. These two trees, then typify two deep principles; they represent two plans of life, the divine and the human. The “ Tree of life” is God himself, for God is life. He is the highest form of life, and he is also the source and goal of life. And the fruit: what is that? It is our Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot eat the tree, but you can eat the fruit. No one is able to receive God as God, but we can receive the Lord Jesus. The fruit is the edible part, the receivable part of the tree. So - may I say it reverently? - the Lord Jesus is really God in a receivable form. God in Christ we can receive. If Adam should take the tree of life, he would partake of the life of God. Thus he would become a “son” of God, in the sense of having in him a life that derived from God. There you would have God’s life in union with man: a race of men having the life of God in them and living in constant dependence upon God for that life. But if instead Adam should turn the other way, and take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then he would develop his own manhood along natural lines apart from God. As a self-sufficient being, he would possess in himself the power to form independent judgment, but he would have no life from God. So this was the alternative that lay before him. Choosing the way of the Spirit, the way of obedience, he could become a “son” of God, living in independence upon God for his life; or, taking the natural course, he could put the finishing touch to himself, as it were, by becoming a self-dependent being, judging and acting apart from God. The history of humanity is the outcome of the choice he made.” I think our daily life would be kind of a tug of war between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, since Adam ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Do you ask the Lord for every single decision or do you make your own decision? I’m not talking about what vegetable I would pick for dinner or what color I would choose between two jackets. Since Adam’s choice, we think we know quite well and we can judge what’s good and evil. So, even Christians tend to choose from their own judgements, as they believe they are wise and smart enough to do that. Actually, it became reality that human beings can judge what's good and evil to some degree. But, God’s intention was and is for us to depend on Him and have fellowship with Him over every single matter. He is God and His wisdom and ways are unsearchable. He is righteous and true. But since Adam’s choice, many of us have our own opinion on everything. We have to say what we think about abortion, same sex marriage, leadership, finance and so forth, as we think we are wise enough and we know good and evil. But are we asking our Father on His thought and do we choose the tree of life? We call Christ our Lord, but do we really mean it? Though we call Him Lord, we sit on His throne in us and we choose our own way. Do we really know our place? We’re not supposed to be on that throne. I think that to many Christians, it might be a life-time war inside to choose the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Again, satan doesn’t stand in front, to make us choose him. He simply uses the tactics of “self-centeredness,” i.e. my way, my thought, my plan and so on. And he has been very successful, unfortunately. Friend, It’s my prayer that we choose the tree of life, the way of the Spirit. And we become totally dependent on our Father, our Creator, and we remain teachable. May He open our eyes that we may see we died on the cross with our Lord Jesus and now Christ lives in us, not we ourselves. Have a bliss! Yunee Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) (Romans 5:12~17) Comments are closed.
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