«　WEEK 3　DAY 4　»

　　John 3:15 That everyone who believes into Him may have eternal life.

　　Titus 3:15 All who are with me greet you. Greet those who love us in faith. Grace be with you all.

　　To believe in the Lord means to receive Him (John 1:12). The Lord is receivable. He is now the life-giving Spirit, with His complete redemption, waiting for and expecting us to receive Him. Our spirit is the receiving organ. We can receive the Lord’s Spirit into our spirit by believing in Him. Once we believe in Him, He, as the Spirit, enters into our spirit. Then we are regenerated by Him, the life-giving Spirit, and become one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17)….When we believe in the Lord, we believe into Him. By believing in Him, we get into Him to be one with Him, to partake of Him, and to participate in all that He has accomplished for us. By believing into Him, we are identified with Him in all that He is and in all that He has passed through, accomplished, attained, and obtained. As we become one with Him by believing into Him, we are saved and regenerated by Him as life. It is by believing into Him that we partake of Him as life and are regenerated in Him. (Life-study of John, p. 117)

　　[Faith in Titus 3:15 refers] to subjective faith, the act of our believing, which brings us into an organic union with the Lord (John 3:15; Gal. 3:26) and operates through love (Gal. 5:6). It is in the element and operation of this faith that the saints who were one with the Lord in His concern loved the suffering and faithful apostle.

　　Faith and love are two inseparable, excellent virtues of the believers in Christ. Faith is given to us by God (footnote 5 on 2 Pet. 1:1) that by it we may receive Christ (John 1:12), the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9), and thereby enter into the Triune God and be joined to Him as one, having Him as our life, life supply, and everything…. Faith is for appreciating, substantiating, and receiving the unlimited riches of the Triune God.

　　The Epistle to Titus is the conclusion of the three books, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, and it concludes with the wonderful faith and the super-excellent love. This implies that, in the current of the church’s degradation, in order to be able to effectively stand firm and overcome the downward trend and factor in the church, this wonderful faith and this super-excellent love are indispensable. We should not walk by sight or care for the outward situation. Rather, in this wonderful faith we should enjoy its source, which is the Triune God, to whom we have been joined through this faith, and by this super-excellent love of the Triune God we should love Him and all those who belong to Him. Only in this way can we become, in the current of the church’s degradation, the overcomers whom the Lord is calling and is desiring to obtain in Revelation 2 and 3.

　　This wonderful faith and this super-excellent love are out of the Triune God, who earnestly desires to be joined to us to be our everything. This Triune God passed through the process of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection from the dead, and ascension to the heavens on high and was ultimately consummated as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). This Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), who includes divinity, humanity, and Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension and is the reality of the all-inclusive Christ (John 14:16-20), dwells in our regenerated spirit (Rom. 8:16; 2 Tim. 4:22). When we contact this Triune God through prayer and by looking to Him, by means of our spirit, which was once dead and was made alive, He infuses Himself into us in many ways to become the faith within us toward Him and the love outside of us toward those who belong to Him. Such faith and such love are the reality and expression (1 John 4:8, 16) of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—in whom we believe and whom we worship and receive. (Titus 3:15, footnote 1)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of John, msgs. 9, 36; Life-study of Titus, msgs. 1-3