“Those Incompatible With Christ Are Surely Opponents of God.” This is the word of God as well as the title of this message. The word of God itself is the truth and the fact. Is it important to know this truth? Extremely so! Why is this truth particularly important? To what extent is it so important? Can you give me an idea? It is quite possible that few people have pondered on this truth. How does one please God with his faith? How should one practice his faith in order to be saved and made perfect by God? What are the criteria for God’s salvation? Especially, many people aspire to become overcomers by being made perfect by God. What are the standards for an overcomer? Undoubtedly, most people have not given it much thought. So the word of God we are reading today is all about this aspect of truth. “Those Incompatible With Christ Are Surely Opponents of God.” If this is so, what kind of a man is not an opponent of God? What qualifies a man to be a non-opponent of God? We see from the word of God that in the last days, God wants to perfect those who are of the same mind with Him. Precisely speaking, what does it mean by the phrase “those who are of the same mind with God”? They are the ones who are compatible with Christ. However, if a man does not understand the truth, will he see what this is all about? If you ask him, “How much do you believe in God? Have you received the truth and the life, and with what result? Are you perfected by God?” For most people, these are tough questions that they are afraid to answer. If you have seen through the essence of these questions and discovered the key to be after God’s heart, then you will know how to answer them. By now, there must be a lot of you who say, “Needless to say, we are sure that we have been saved.” What is the criterion for being saved? They don’t know. They say, “I have managed to obey God, and I rarely commit sin.” When you say you have managed to obey God, what is the basis of your claim? This is not easy to answer. If you say you have been saved, how do you back up your word? This question is equally difficult to answer. Nowadays, many people ask, “What does ‘being perfected by God’ mean? What are the criteria for being perfected by God?” Someone says, “A person perfected by God will never sin again.” But that is not a criterion. Whether one sins again or not is not a criterion. Strictly speaking, being perfected by God means that one can absolutely obey God without condition, judgment or resistance, regardless of what God says, and has the ability to obediently accept God’s word. This is a person who obeys God’s will. This is a person who has been perfected by God. What is the most practical way to express the term “perfected by God”? Going by God’s word, we can confirm the criterion for being perfected by God is reaching compatibility with Christ. Is it simple to be compatible with Christ? “To be compatible with Christ,” how do we know what that means? Someone may say, “‘To be compatible with Christ,’ that is easy to explain. That means accepting Christ as the incarnation of God without a scintilla of doubt ever, and following Him to the end. Isn’t that being compatible with Christ?” Is this statement accurate? The statement seems to be reasonable but impractical. In that case, what is being compatible with Christ after all? Someone says, “No matter what Christ does, I have no notions about it and I obey Him unconditionally.” What about this statement? Does it have any sense of practicality? The saying is correct, but did you live it out or just make it up? If you just made it up, that is just reasoning. If you have lived it out, your statement is more practical. Tell me, is it easy to have no notions about Christ? You all say no. Why not? Those of you who have experience can say what made you think it is not easy. Those who have no experience have no idea why it is not easy, and they can only speak some doctrine. Is it so simple to be in accord with Christ? Look at the married couples. How many husbands and wives are in accord? Almost 99% of marriages are falling apart. Husbands and wives are not in accord. Are fathers and sons in accord? What about mothers and daughters? Not at all! Humanity as a whole is not in accord. Are demons in accord with each other? Look at the dog-eat-dog carnage among them for power and positions. Look at the imperial dynasties in China, the bloodbath between fathers and sons, among brothers and among sisters. No need to say.
To be compatible with Christ is the ultimate requirement expected of man by God! God requires man’s obedience and love. How does it end up? What criterion is reached? To be compatible with Christ. If you are compatible with Christ, you are a person who truly obeys God. To be incompatible with Christ is to defy God. Isn’t it the truth? Yes, indeed. This is more than just a simple and practical statement. This is the truth. Are people in the religious world able to appreciate this truth? Never! Because they reject Christ, deny Christ. They even condemn and resist Christ. They don’t just fail to agree with Christ, they are antichrists. The highest decree of the incarnation of God, in His salvation for man, is for man to be compatible with Christ. To be compatible with Christ is to be compatible with God. The person who absolutely obeys Christ absolutely obeys God. If you do not accept Christ, you will never be in accord with God. How do you agree with your imaginary God, the vague God? That is simply empty talk that will never come true. Just like those people in religion who profess to believe in the Lord Jesus. Are they really in accord with the Lord Jesus? Not a single one of them! The word of Jesus Christ has no place in their hearts. Since they have never experienced the word of the Lord Jesus, they do not know anything about the Lord. Frankly speaking, if Jesus Christ were to appear among them, would they believe in Him? No, they wouldn’t, they would flee at the first sight of the Lord. So, exactly speaking, when they believe in the Lord Jesus, they actually believe in the name and label of “the Lord Jesus.” If they met the Lord Jesus in person, and the Lord preached to them and worked among them, they would be running away. Why is that so? These people have no interest in the truth. They only want to eat their fill of the loaves, get rich on the Lord’s name by cheating Him. They want to swindle the blessing of the kingdom of heaven by exploiting the Lord. When Almighty God showed up to express all the truth, they turned around and fled, refusing, denying and resisting God. What does that prove? They disagree with the Lord Jesus. They are at enmity with Him!
How should we look for the signs of compatibility and incompatibility with Christ? We should mainly look at the way a person regards the truth. If your heart has fear, obedience and love for the truth, then you can obey, fear and love Christ. If you have no interest in the truth, then you will never regard Christ as God because the appearance of Christ is humanity, not divinity. Judging on the outside alone, no one will know Christ. The appearance of Christ is humanity. His divinity is concealed inside. It will only manifest through His words and work. Who can see it? No one! What is it about those who are incompatible with Christ? First of all, they do not possess the truth. Their hearts are full of corruption, the disposition of Satan, the poison of Satan, the perspective of Satan, and the logics and rules of Satan. In that case, would they get along with Christ at all? Definitely not! With conflicting viewpoints, there will be confrontations and opposition. There is another most basic question—Christ’s lack of divinity in appearance. His lack of divine demeanor makes you unable to recognize Him as God. By appearance alone, no one can see the essence of God in such a modest man, an ordinary man like Christ. Conversely, if miracles flew whenever Christ spoke, people would not miss it. They would say, “Wow! Miracles and wonders pour out when He speaks. He is really God! He has such divine traits.” People would find it easy to accept Him as God. Without the outward show of divine essence and attributes, everything is so normally human, so ordinarily normal. People will take Him as how He appears to them, an ordinarily normal man with a normal humanity. No matter how people look at Him, He strikes everyone as a man, not God. Christ walks with normal and ordinary humanity. He speaks with man in human term. People say, “Everything You say is so man-like, how can You be God?” When Christ’s outward appearance resembles man so much, people doubt His identity as God. “How could He be called God?” When the Lord Jesus spoke, as long as He was not preaching, His tone was so human. He cried when He saw Lazarus die. He cried! When people saw that, they had no doubt it was the behavior of man. “Isn’t it the show of human nature? He is just a common man!” Therefore, when people see Christ speak in human language, they have no difficulty accepting Him as a man. That is why when people come in contact with Christ, first of all, they easily accept Him as a man. They would never see Him as an actual incarnation of God with divine essence. Second, since the flesh of Christ is so modest, unimposing, unspectacular, the satanic nature in man takes over. Man’s arrogance leads him to look down upon Christ. He will say, “Look at a man like You. You are not tall and handsome like me. You don’t even dress as well as me. How can You be called God?” Do you see it? When man looks at the insignificant and unimposing appearance of Christ, he responds by treating Him with disdain and contempt. What kind of disposition is that? It is man’s arrogant disposition. It is the consequence of Satan’s nature in the heart of man. When someone has the nature of Satan in his heart, how does he look at other people? He begins by sizing you up, how tall and handsome you are. If you are tall, rich and handsome, he will respect you. If you are short, poor and ugly, he will look down on you. When someone saw that I am shorter than him by a head, he looked down on me and sneered, “Why you? The man used by the Holy Spirit? I am taller than you. Why doesn’t the Holy Spirit use me?” How did he finally come around to respect me? When he started to work, when he performed his duties, he found that everything went wrong. He started to look up to anyone who performed better, who knew more about the truth. He conceded to reality, in performing his duties, in communicating the truth, and in actual living out. A man will not concede without a fight, will he? When all the cards are laid on the table and he sees that he has losing hand, that is when he will concede. Other than that, he will keep on bluffing, puffing up his chest and looking down on others. Going by someone’s appearance, going by someone’s figure, isn’t that the nature of Satan? With such satanic nature, with such arrogant disposition, is it dangerous for him to come in contact with Christ? Too dangerous!
Without years of judgment, chastisement, trial and refinement happening to him, man’s nature would not return to normal. Upon contact with Christ, he would cause so much ill feeling, resentment and disgust in Christ. When man has endured judgment, chastisement, trial and refinement, he will regain some normal humanity. He will learn to respect others and obey the truth. Even when others have made mistakes, he will not dish out condemnation and judgment but will seek the truth. When his humanity, conscience and reason have returned to normal, and when he approaches Christ again, God finds him acceptable. God says that this person has humanity. Actually, God does not ask too much of man. You don’t have to know much about the truth in order for God to think highly of you. If you have conscience, sense and the ability to speak normally, you will be accepted by God. When you occasionally show minor corruption, God understands. How do I know all this? I say this because I have walked with Christ for a longer time than others. It was how God looked after me when I showed my corruption sometimes. God looks at man’s occasional show of corruption with forgiveness, pity and pardon. However, if your humanity falls short of the standard, God looks at you with disgust. When man’s nature is too arrogant, full of satanic poisons, demeaning, aggressive, judgmental and mischievous manners, he will earn God’s resentment. God’s resentment is always aimed at this kind of men. God calls this kind of men lunatics and animals. God says that this kind of men should be expelled because they have no humanity. Is having minimum humanity good enough to be in accord with Christ? Not at all! Most importantly, one must understand something about the truth. What kind of truth to understand? The truth about how to be an honest man. He must speak honestly, understand how to obey God, know his place in front of God as a creature, have the sense of a man, perform his duty, and know his responsibility. He must be equipped with all these aspects of the truth. This way, his conscience and sense will pass the test of God. He will not be condemned when he comes in contact with God.
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