I recently reread one of my favorite books from my early days of ministry—Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, written posthumously by his son. Taylor was the legendary missionary of the 1800s, whose bold labors almost single-handedly opened up inland China to the gospel. Eventually in his ministry, he became exhausted, frustrated with a lack of growth and overwhelmed by the enormity of the task in front of him. It was at this breaking point that God revealed to him the secret (for which the book is titled)—“Not I for Christ, but Christ in me.”
Taylor says,
[For years I had tried to imitate Christ] … but there was no thought of imitation now! It was the blessed reality of “Christ liveth in me.” And how great the difference! Instead of bondage, liberty; instead of failure, quiet victories. Instead of fear and weakness, a restful sense of sufficiency in Another. Not even a striving to have more faith … but a looking off to the Faithful One who is all that we need.
Taylor’s revelation helps us understand three ways we think about our relationship with Christ—two wrong and one right.
First, “Us for Christ.” This is where we think of the Christian life as us doing things for Jesus and being rewarded and blessed for those victories. I often call this “do-do religion,” because all the focus is on what we “do-do” for Jesus. (And, you know, “do-do” sounds like, well, doo-doo.) It’s artificial and exhausting.
Second, “Us and Christ.” This one sounds better, but at root, it’s essentially the same. Doing ministry with Jesus implies we’ve learned we can’t live the Christian life in our own strength—so that’s good. But it’s still a hybrid of us and Jesus, tag teaming, so to speak. He’s there to rescue us when we fail—flying in off the ropes with an epic elbow drop on the devil—but we still think of ourselves as doing the majority of the work.
Third, and the right one, is “Christ in us.” Paul says that Christ in us is the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Not us for Christ. Not Christ with us. Christ in us. The prophet Zechariah puts it this way: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).
Look: The Christian life is hard—so hard, in fact, that only one person in history has ever been able to do it. And he was so good at it, they named it for him. Now he offers to come and live it through us. That’s the only way the Christian life works.
Early on in my Christian life, I was discouraged. Like Hudson Taylor, I was overwhelmed at the difficulty of God’s work in front of me. The only difference was, the difficulty I faced wasn’t a lost continent: It was all of the jealousies and selfishness that filled my heart toward people. I had tried forcing myself to be kind to them, to be nice to them. But inwardly, I didn’t love them, and I knew I didn’t love them.
One day, I knelt beside my bed in utter defeat, and said, “God, I just can’t do this.” In that moment, I heard God say (clearly, though not audibly), “Finally you’re in a place I can work with you. Because at the end of your ‘I can’t’ is where my ‘I can’ begins.” I learned that day that I would never hear God say, “I AM” until I was thoroughly convinced of my own “I AM not.”
I had to make the shift from me-for-Christ to Christ in me. And I’m so thankful I did.
