Friday

Related Verses
2 Cor. 3:3, 6
3 Since you are being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh.
6 Who has also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Psa. 45:1
1 My heart overflows with a good matter; I speak what I have composed concerning the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

John 7:38
38 He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.

John 6:63
63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

John 16:13-15
13 But when He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality; for He will not speak from Himself, but what He hears He will speak; and He will declare to you the things that are coming.
14 He will glorify Me, for He will receive of Mine and will declare it to you.
15 All that the Father has is Mine; for this reason I have said that He receives of Mine and will declare it to you.

1 John 5:16
16 If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and he will give life to him, to those sinning not unto death. There is a sin unto death; I do not say that he should make request concerning that.

Related Reading
The Spirit is the writing Spirit, and we are the letters of Christ [2 Cor. 3:3]. The Spirit is the ink for writing Christ into us. As the divine ink, the Spirit is the Spirit of the living God. There should be something living within us all the time as evidence that Christ is being written into every part of our inner being. If we are under the Spirit’s writing, we have the deep sensation of being living within. Christ is being written into us with the spiritual ink, the Spirit of the living God. This makes us a letter of Christ. All of us should be such a living letter of Christ, that others may read and know Christ in our being. We are under the writing of the Spirit of the living God, and He is engraving Christ into us. (CWWL, 1969, vol. 1, “The Experience of Christ as Life for the Building Up of the Church,” p. 387) 

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In 2 Corinthians 3:6 Paul said that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. This means that the Spirit inwardly imparts life into us day by day. We need to always return to our spirit because it is in our spirit that we sense and experience the imparting of life. This revives us and makes us living. If we pay attention to the letter of the Bible, we will be killed. We do not need the regulating of the letter, because we have the regulating of the Spirit within us. 

Those in Judaism became stuck to the written code of the Old Testament according to the letter. But Paul came and told them something different from this written code. Their eyes were veiled with this written code, so they opposed Paul. They could not see Jesus, the Spirit, or any of the spiritual things, because they were veiled. So the apostle Paul told them that the letter kills. It is the Spirit who gives life, and the Lord is the Spirit (v. 17). They needed to take away all the veils, which means that they had to get rid of their old knowledge of the written code. 

In principle it is the same today. Today’s Christianity is like Judaism in the sense that the ones there stick themselves to the written code of the Bible, which kills, and not to the living Spirit, who gives life. It is pitiful to keep ourselves under the dead letter, the written code of outward regulations. All the veils of our old knowledge of old doctrines according to the dead letter need to be taken away. We need an unveiled, open face to look at the Lord directly. We care just for the Spirit, not for any doctrinal teaching. 

The more you read the Bible prayerfully, the more you have the deep sense that something within you is flowing, quickening, reviving, enlightening, and strengthening. The Concordant Literal New Testament translation of 2 Corinthians 3:6 says that the Spirit is “vivifying.” The more you read the Word prayerfully, the more you are vivified. When you read the Word mentally, you are mortified, but when you read the Word prayerfully, you are vivified. Whether you will be vivified or mortified depends upon the way you take to read the Bible. 

Even the Bible can be a dead, written code to us if we do not come to Christ Himself to receive life. We need more life, not more knowledge. We need to be more and more vivified. We can be vivified by pray-reading the Lord’s Word. Life is what we need. The Spirit is not the Spirit of doctrine but the Spirit of reality, who is Christ Himself as life. The more we contact the Spirit, the more we are vivified. (CWWL, 1969, vol. 1, “The Experience of Christ as Life for the Building Up of the Church,” pp. 387-388, 391-392) 

Further Reading: CWWL, 1969, vol. 1, “The Experience of Christ as Life for the Building Up of the Church,” ch. 9