A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts on Watchman Nee’s book The Normal Christian Life. If you liked that book, you will love Sit, Walk, Stand. Both books were published in 1957 and both are largely based on Nee’s sermon notes.

Sit, Walk, Stand is a small book with a big message. It’s sold as a study of Ephesians, but it’s much more than that. In 78 short pages the author describes the three aspects of the believer – to God, to man, and to the enemy. The best summary of the book is the one the author provides on the last page…

“The Christian life consists of sitting with Christ, walking by him and standing in him. We begin our spiritual life by resting in the finished work of the Lord Jesus. That rest is the source of our strength or a consistent and unfaltering walk in the world. And at the end of a grueling warfare with the hosts of darkness we are found standing with him at last in triumphant possession of the field.” (p.78)

This is boot camp Christianity, the sort of book every new believer needs to read.

That said, I have just come away from my latest reading of Sit, Walk, Stand wondering how I could have missed so much good stuff the first time around. About seven years ago I got our church in Hong Kong to study this book. To be honest, we weren’t ready for it. We were wearing the wrong glasses. It is only since I have learned to read everything through the lens of Jesus and His finished work that this book really begins to make sense.

Incidentally, this is a very common experience for me – reading old books as if for the first time.

Perhaps you’re like me – you read Sit, Walk, Stand many years ago and thought it was good but not great. If so, can I encourage you to take another look? To whet your appetite, here are 12 of my favorite sound-bites from the book. (Longer quotes will appear on GraceQuotes.com.)

On Sitting

“All true spiritual experience begins from rest.” (p.27)

“Whereas God worked six days and then enjoyed His sabbath rest, Adam began his life with the sabbath; for God works before He rests, while man must first enter into God’s rest, and then alone can he work.” (p.16)

“God is waiting for your store of strength to be utterly exhausted before He can deliver you. Once you have ceased to struggle, He will do everything.” (p.23)

“Just you stop ‘giving’ and you will prove what a Giver God is! Stop ‘working,’ and you will discover what a Worker He is!” (p.25)

Our Walk

“The all-important rule is not to ‘try’ but to ‘trust,’ not to depend upon our own strength but upon his… Too many of us are caught acting as Christians. The life of many Christians today is largely a pretense. They live a ‘spiritual’ life, talk a ‘spiritual’ language, adopt ‘spiritual’ attitudes, but they are doing the whole thing themselves.” (pp.38-9)

“Too often we think that the actual doing is what matters. We have to learn the lesson of not doing – of keeping quiet for Him. We have to learn that if God does not move we dare not move… The abiding principle of all true Christian work is: ‘In the beginning God…’ … You ask me what I mean by natural power. Put very simply, it is what we can do without the help of God.” (p.67)

“Have we discovered how good the Lord is? Then in us He is as good as that! Is His power great? Then in us it is no less great! Praise God, His life is as mighty as ever, and in the lives of those who dare to believe the Word of God the divine life will be manifest in a power not one whit less mighty that was manifest of old.” (pp.39-40)

“The question is one of practical sonship. True, God has ‘foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ’ (1:5), but we make the mistake of thinking that we have already ‘come of age’ – that we are already mature sons… All will reach ripeness somehow. But the Lamb is seeking firstfruits. The ‘wise’ in the parable (of the wise and foolish virgins) are not those who have done better, but those who have done well at an earlier hour.” (pp.33,44)

Taking a Stand

“Armies march into other countries to occupy and subdue. God has not told us to do this. We are not to march but to stand. The word ‘stand’ implies that the ground disputed by the enemy is really God’s, and therefore ours. We need not struggle to gain a foothold on it.” (p.54)

“Today we do not fight for victory; we fight from victory… When you fight to get the victory, then you have lost the battle at the outset.” (p.55)

“Because victory is His, therefore it is ours.” (p.56)

“If we believe the Lord, we shall not pray so much but rather we shall praise him more. The simpler and clearer our faith in him, the less we shall pray in such situations and the more we shall praise. Let me say again: In Christ we are already conquerors. Is it not obvious then that, since this is so, for us merely to pray for victory – unless that prayer is shot through with praise – must be to court defeat by throwing away our fundamental position?” (p.57)
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Related posts:
- Grace vs law: Top 12 Watchman Nee quotes
- Two religions: Works and blood
- see all E2R’s book reviews here

Rope image from here.

If you’ve been following this blog, you will know that I am a big fan of Joseph Prince’s message. He preaches radical grace, which is the only kind of grace there is. Yet I can understand how the message of grace appears scandalous to those who still think their salvation or holiness depends on their own performance. Since the time of Paul self-righteous people have been mistaking grace for a license to sin (see Rm 6:15). Even sincere believers have been seduced into thinking the grace of God needs fleshly additives (see Galatians). But even so, I would have thought that Chinese Christians, of all people, would have been receptive to Joseph Prince’s message. Afterall, many of them grew up on the teachings of Watchman Nee.

Is it a stretch to say that Watchman Nee (1903 – 1972) was the most influential Chinese Christian of the 20th century? I confess I am not familiar with many Chinese preachers and authors, but I lived in Hong Kong for 15 years and I cannot recall anyone ever saying a bad word about Watchman Nee. He is generally acknowledged as gifted and articulate preacher of the gospel. It is well known that he spent the last 20 years of his life imprisoned for his faith.

Watchman Nee’s most famous book is probably The Normal Christian Life. If you haven’t read it, you’ve probably heard of it. It’s a best-seller (over 1m copies sold). It is also one of the best expositions of the gospel of grace that you’ll ever read. From chapter 1 (The Blood of Christ) to chapter 9 (The Meaning and Value of Roman’s Seven), Nee preaches pure grace based on the finished work of the cross. He says things like this:

“Let me tell you, You have died! You are done with! You are ruled out! The self you loathe is on the Cross in Christ. And ‘he that is dead is freed from sin’ (Rom 6:7). This is the Gospel for Christians. Our crucifixion can never be made effective by will or by effort, but only by accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the Cross.” (p.52)

In Nee’s understanding, the choice is simple: you can try or you can trust. If you try to make yourself acceptable, you are walking in the flesh but the Christian life is lived by faith alone. In The Normal Christian Life Nee says a lot about walking in the Spirit, dealing with soul-power, and the nature of Christian ministry. But all of that is based on nine solid chapters outlining the good news of God’s grace. To give you a flavor of Watchman Nee’s message of radical grace, here are 12 of his best quotes from The Normal Christian Life.

Top 12 Watchman Nee Quotes

1.    “Grace means that God does something for me; law means that I do something for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands which he places upon me: that is law. Now if law means that God requires something of me for their fulfillment, then deliverance from law means he no longer requires that from me, but himself provides it.” (pp.155-6)

2.    “So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us the Law to keep: he gave us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not keep it.” (p.158)

3.    “The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea even more (Matt. 5:21-48), but what he requires from us he himself carries out in us. The law makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but he himself fulfills in us the very demands he makes.” (p.161)

4.    “What does it mean in everyday life to be delivered from the Law? At risk of a little overstatement I reply: It means that henceforth I am going to do nothing whatever for God; I am never again going to try to please Him. ‘What a doctrine!’ you exclaim. ‘What awful heresy! You cannot possibly mean that!’ But remember, if I try to please God ‘in the flesh,’ then immediately I place myself under the Law.” (p.164)

5.    “God’s requirements have not altered, but we are not the ones to meet them. Praise God, he is the Lawgiver on the Throne, and he is the Lawkeeper in my heart. He who gave the Law, himself keeps it.” (p.166)

6.    “Though the Law in itself is all right, it will be all wrong if it is applied to the wrong person. The ‘wretched man’ of Romans 7 tried to meet the claims of God’s law himself, and that was the cause of his trouble. The repeated use of the word ‘I’ in this chapter gives the clue to the failure.” (p.169)

7.    “We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’ but it is not that. What God offers us is an ‘exchanged life,’ a ‘substituted life,’ and Christ is our Substitute within.” (p.180)

8.    “From start to finish, he is the One who does it all.” (p.172)

9.    “It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it be a hundred and one different things, God has always one sufficient answer, His Son Jesus Christ, and he is the answer to every need.” (p.182-3)

10.    “Many Christians endeavor to drive themselves by will-power, and then think the Christian life a most exhausting and bitter one.” (p.189)

11.    “God must bring us to a point – I cannot tell you how it will be, but he will do it – where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves… At length there comes a time when we no longer ‘like’ to do Christian work – indeed we almost dread to do things in the Lord’s Name. But then at last it is that he can begin to use us.” (p.261)

12.    “We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the two. Believe me, it is the difference between heaven and hell.” (p.183)

Finally, to all my Chinese readers and those living in Asia, Happy Lunar New Year!
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