Free The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee Page B

upon ourselves. We need to dwell upon the objective—“abide in me”—-and to let God take care of the subjective. And this He has undertaken to do.
    I have illustrated this from the electric light. You are in a room and it is growing dark. You would like to have the light on in order to read. There is a reading-lamp on the table beside you. What do you do? Do you watch it intently to see if the light will come on? Do you take a cloth and polish the bulb? No, you get up and cross over to the other side of the room where the switch is on the wall, and you turn the current on. You turn your attention to the source of power,and when you have taken the necessary action there, the light comes on here.
    So in our walk with the Lord, our attention must be fixed on Christ. “Abide in me, and I in you” is the divine order. Faith in the objective facts makes those facts true subjectively. As the apostle Paul puts it, “We all . . . beholding . . . the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image” (2 Cor. 3:18). The same principle holds good in the matter of fruitfulness of life: “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit” (John 15:5). We do not try to produce fruit or concentrate upon the fruit produced. Our business is to look away to Him. As we do so He undertakes to fulfill His Word in us.
    How do we abide? “Of God are ye in Christ Jesus.” 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, and 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).

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    The Divide of the Cross
    T HE KINGDOM of this world is not the kingdom of God. God had His heart set upon a world system, a universe of His creating, which should be headed up in Christ His Son (Col. 1:16–17). But Satan, working through man’s flesh, has set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as “this world”—a system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in fact become “the prince of this world” (John 12:31).
Two Creations
    Thus, in Satan’s hand, the first creation has become the old creation, and God’s primary concern is now no longer with that, but with a second and new creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world, and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and of which realm we belong to.
    The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, “delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love” (Col. 1:13). Our citizenship henceforth is there.
    But in order to bring us into His new kingdom, God must do something new in us. He must make of us new creatures. Unless we are created anew, we can never fit into the new realm. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”; and, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (John 3:6; 1 Cor. 15:50). However educated, however cultured, however improved it be, flesh is still flesh. Our fitness for the new kingdom is determined by the creation to which we belong. Do we belong to the old creation or the new? Are we born of the flesh or of the Spirit? Our ultimate suitability for the new realm hinges on the question of origin. The question is not “good or bad?” but “flesh or Spirit?” “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and it will never be anything else. That which is of the old creation can never pass over into the new.
    Once we really understand what God is