«　WEEK 3　DAY 5　»

　　1 Cor. 2:9 But as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not come up in man’s heart; things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

　　Col. 1:18 And He is the Head of the Body, the church; He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that He Himself might have the first place in all things.

　　To realize and participate in the deep and hidden things God has ordained and prepared for us requires us not only to believe in Him but also to love Him. To fear God, to worship God, and to believe in God (that is, to receive God) are all inadequate; to love Him is the indispensable requirement. To love God means to set our entire being—spirit, soul, and body, with the heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30)—absolutely on Him, that is, to let our entire being be occupied by Him and lost in Him, so that He becomes everything to us and we are one with Him practically in our daily life. In this way we have the closest and most intimate fellowship with God, and we are able to enter into His heart and apprehend all its secrets (Psa. 73:25; 25:14). (1 Cor. 2:9, footnote 3)

　　Love issues out of such a wonderful faith and enables us to live out all the riches of the Triune God in Christ with those who have believed into Christ with us, that the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—may have a glorious expression…. Love is for experiencing, enjoying, and living out the immeasurably rich Triune God. Faith is for the believers to be joined to the Triune God, who is everything to them; love is for the believers to minister and transmit the Triune God to their fellow believers so that, in such a wonderful and powerful faith, all the believers may love one another with divine, transcendent love and live a corporate life in Christ. In this way the Body of Christ is realized and the processed Triune God is expressed today on the earth in the all-inclusive Christ through the immeasurable life-giving Spirit.

　　[Faith and love] are the rich grace given to us in Christ by the Triune God (1 Tim. 1:14), not only to be the motivating power and expression of our spiritual life but also to become our breastplate (1 Thes. 5:8), which covers and protects the vital parts of our being. It is by such faith that we receive and enjoy the divine life that is revealed and ministered to us in the entire Gospel of John (John 3:16, 36), and it is by such love that we love the Lord and those who belong to Him (John 21:15-17; 13:34-35). Such faith and love are connected and go together: love comes from faith, and faith operates and works through love (Gal. 5:6). Love with faith enables us to love our Lord in incorruptibility so that we may have an overcoming church life (Eph. 6:23-24) for the fulfillment of God’s New Testament economy in Christ for the church. Therefore, it is in this faith that we are well pleasing to God (Heb. 11:6) and in this love that we are blessed of the Lord (1 Cor. 16:22). May this love with this faith be to the brothers from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 6:23). (Titus 3:15, footnote 1)

　　I appreciate that all of us love the Lord’s recovery. If we did not love the recovery, we would not be here. But we need to see that in the seven epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the first dealing of the Lord is concerning the recovery of the first love (2:4). Do we love Him? Surely we do. But do we give Him the preeminence, the first place, in all things? To give the Lord the first place in all things is to love Him with the first love, the best love. In order to give Him the preeminence, we must be willing to be adjusted, to be broken, to be made nothing, so that the Lord can have a way in us, through us, and among us for the building up of His organic Body. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 3, “Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups,” p. 462)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” ch. 8