Wednesday

Related Verses
John 12:23-24
23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

John 3:5
5 Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

John 7:38-39
38 He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.
39 But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

1 Cor. 15:45
45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul”; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.

2 Cor. 4:11
11 For we who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

1 Pet. 1:3
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Related Reading
For Jesus as the Son of Man to be glorified was for Him to be resurrected, that is, to have His divine element, His divine life, released from within the shell of His humanity to produce many believers in resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3), just as a grain of wheat (John 12:24) has its life element released when it falls into the ground and grows up out of the ground to bear much fruit, that is, to bring forth many grains. (John 12:23, footnote 1)

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Limitation always leads to crucifixion. Husbands and wives not only limit each other; they also crucify each other. Without exception, every husband crucifies his wife. If you are honest, you will admit that you have crucified your wife many times. But how good it is to be crucified! The more we are crucified, the more the wheat grows within us. The way to eat Christ as wheat is to be limited and crucified. If you are not willing to be limited and crucified, you will not have any wheat. There will be no need for you to talk about how to eat the wheat because there will not be any wheat to eat. You must grow the wheat before you can eat it, and in order to grow wheat you must be limited and crucified. Hallelujah for this limitation and crucifixion!

Paul said, “We who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:11). Day after day the wives and the husbands deliver one another to death. Although your honeymoon may have been very sweet, I am sure that it did not last very long…It seems that the honeymoon often becomes a “vinegar-moon.”…During the first few days of your honeymoon you may say, “Dear, I love you.” But after those days you will feel like saying, “I will nail you to the cross and put you to death.” This kind of crucifixion does not take place once for all; it is continual. My wife has crucified me many times. Whenever I think that this crucifixion will be over once and for all, I am crucified again a few days later. This is the experience of the incarnated and crucified Jesus. When we experience Jesus as the limited One and as the crucified One, He grows in us as wheat. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 1, “The Kernel of the Bible,” pp. 220-221)

The New Testament uses the wheat of life to symbolize the believers. Matthew 3:12 tells us that the Lord Jesus will separate the wheat from the chaff and gather the wheat into His barn: “He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing floor and will gather His wheat into the barn, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.” Those symbolized by wheat have life within; they are the living children of God. The Lord Jesus will baptize them in the Holy Spirit (v. 11) and gather them into His barn in heaven by rapture. In order to become children of God, we must be baptized through water into the Spirit. We need to be born of water and of the Spirit (John 3:5). First, we are baptized through water; then we are baptized in the Spirit. In this way we are regenerated to become children of God, the believers symbolized by the wheat of life, which will be gathered into the Lord’s barn. Those symbolized by chaff, like the tares in Matthew 13:24-30, are without life. The Lord will baptize them in fire, putting them into the lake of fire. Chaff in 3:12 refers to unrepentant Jews, whereas the tares in Matthew 13 refer to nominal Christians. The eternal destiny of both will be the same—perdition in the lake of fire (vv. 40-42).

What does it mean to be real wheat? If we realize that we are sinful, fallen, and lost and if we truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—that He is the Son of God incarnated to be a man, that He died on the cross for our sins, that He was resurrected physically and spiritually, and that He is now the life-giving Spirit dwelling in us as our life and everything, we are certainly the wheat of life. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1151-1153)

Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 107