How Spacious is Your Christ?

“How spacious is your Christ?”

Does this sound like a strange question? It shouldn’t…if we’re enlightened to see God’s desire from His word.

God wants Christ to be everything to us. But unfortunately, many believers today have only a limited appreciation for Christ’s vast dimensions.

That’s why the apostle Paul prayed for our strengthening. In Ephesians 3:18-19 he prayed that we,

“May be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ.”

We need to be strengthened to apprehend the vast dimensions of Christ–the breadth, the length, the height and the depth of Christ. Only by our experience of such a spacious Christ can God reach His goal with us.

How spacious is your Christ in your daily experience?

Is Christ your redeeming Lamb to begin your Christian journey?

First,  we need to experience Christ as a small lamb,  the Lamb of God who takes away our sin. John 1:29 says,

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Christ is our real Passover lamb who accomplished redemption for us. This small Lamb accomplished a great redemption to satisfy all the righteous claims of God upon us, as sinners.

From the moment we believe into the Lord Jesus, He, as God’s redeeming Lamb, applies to us all that He accomplished in dying on the cross to us.

But in the scope of God’s eternal plan, this is only the initial step.

Consider the Old Testament picture. The feast of Passover was only the first day of the week long Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:4-8). It was simply the beginning.

Christ is our real Feast of Passover (1 Cor. 5:7) as the beginning of our Christian journey. If you have never received Christ, the Lamb of God, as your Redeemer and Savior, please take a moment to pray,

“Lord Jesus, Thank you for becoming the Lamb of God to take away all my sins. I receive you right now as my Redeemer and Savior. Thank you for Your forgiveness and cleansing. For opening a new and living way for me to enter into your complete salvation.”

But is your Christ only a small lamb to you–forgiving you of your sins and justifying you before God?

Is Christ also your heavenly Manna, your bread of life?

The picture of the children of Israel doesn’t stop with redemption by the Passover lamb in the land of Egypt.

God led His people out of Egypt (signifying the world) through the Red Sea (a picture of the believers’ baptism – 1 Cor. 10:1-2). So If you’ve never been baptized you may also want to read this post on baptism.

They entered into the wilderness where God fed them with manna for forty years (Exo. 16:14-21). In this way God changed their diet from something Egyptian to something heavenly, to make them a heavenly people.

How wonderful! Christ became small enough for us to eat (John 6:57).

In John 6 we can see a complete picture of how Christ became our food abiding to eternal life by being: incarnated (vv. 32-51a),   crucified (vv. 51b-55), resurrected to indwell us (vv. 56-59), ascended (vv. 60-62), becoming the life-giving Spirit (vv. 63-65), and embodied and realized in the word of life (vv. 66-71).

This view is clearly presented in the outline of the Gospel of John in the Recovery Version Study Bible with outlines and notes by Witness Lee.

If you would like help on how to practice feeding on Christ as your daily bread, I recommend this post on pray-reading the Word.

However, God desires that Christ would be much more to us than heavenly Manna!

Is Christ the spacious land in which you live?

God wants us to enter into Christ as our all-inclusive land typified by the good land of Canaan.

In Deuteronomy 8:7-10, Moses said,

“For Jehovah your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of waterbrooks, of springs and of fountains, flowing forth in valleys and in mountains; a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees with oil and of honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity; you will not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and from whose mountains you can mine copper. And you shall eat and be satisfied, and you shall bless Jehovah your God for the good land which He has given you.”

It was in this good land, as a full picture of Christ, that God could fulfill His purpose to have a people for His kingdom on earth, with His dwelling place.

God wanted His people to live in this land, to build up His dwelling place the temple, and be His kingdom on earth.

In Colossians 2:6-7 Paul reflects on such a picture when he says,

“As therefore you have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in Him, having been rooted and being built up in Him, and being established in the faith even as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

An enlightening footnote on the word “walk” in this verse in the Recovery Version says,

As we have received Christ, we should walk in Him. Here to walk is to live, to act, to behave, and to have our being. We should walk, live, and act in Christ that we may enjoy His riches, just as the children of Israel lived in the good land, enjoying all its rich produce. The good land today is Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit (Gal. 3:14), who dwells in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16) to be our enjoyment. To walk according to this Spirit (Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:16) is the central and crucial point in the New Testament.

So how spacious is your Christ? Is He your Lamb, your manna or spacious good land?

First, we need to see the spaciousness of Christ! He is a spacious good land in which we can walk, live, and enjoy all His riches! We need to realize that in Christ our Land we have everything that we need.

Second, we need to learn to walk in Him every day, living according to Him as the all-inclusive Spirit who now dwells in our spirit.

It is only by our experience of such a Christ, that the real temple of God, the church (1 Cor. 3:16), can built up for God’s expression and dominion on this earth.

It is only by our being built together in Him that we can apprehend the vast dimensions of such a spacious Christ.

Third, if we want our experience and enjoyment of Christ to be enlarged, we need to ask for it (Matt. 7:7). We need to make the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:10 our prayer also,

“And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, Oh that You would richly bless me and enlarge my border…”

May God answer our prayer for the enlargement of the borders of Christ as our good land, giving us more experience of such a spacious Christ.

Footnote 1 on this verse in the Recovery Version says,

The enlarging of the border of the good land in the prayer of Jabez signifies the enlarging of the border of the gaining of Christ and the enjoyment of Christ (cf. Phil. 3:8-14), who is the reality of the good land …We all should have such a prayer, a prayer that God would enlarge the border of our enjoyment of Christ (cf. Eph. 3:14-19).

If you’ve been helped to see and experience Christ as your spacious good land, take a moment to share your enjoyment in a brief comment.

For Further Reading:

If you’d like to have a richer appreciation of such an spacious Christ, I’d recommend a prayerful reading of the book by the title, The All-inclusive Christ by Witness Lee. You can find it at ministrybooks.org, order a free copy of this book from Bibles for America (in the US) or download a free PDF here.

Here are a couple of hymns that also strengthens the point of this post:

• Jesus, the all-inclusive land
• Laboring on Jesus, the good land so real