Sit. Walk. Stand.

Watchman Nee, best remembered for his leadership of an indigenous church movement in China, once wrote a book on Ephesians called Sit, Walk Stand. Though brief, it offers a compelling argument that the letter to the church in Ephesus contains three basic principles for the Christian life. Even more, each can be summarized with a verb.

Sit. Walk. Stand.

Nee writes, “the life of the believer always presents these three aspects.” The Christian life, therefore, is incomplete if we forget any of these three.

The opening chapters of Ephesians (chapters 1-3), where the author offers his doctrinal argument undergirding the whole letter, reveal the secret of a true Christian experience. The verb Nee identifies is “sit.” “God has made us to sit with Christ in the heavenly places, and every Christian must begin [his/her] spiritual life from a place of rest.”

Like Paul, Nee then moves to the practical application. His second verb is “walk.” Guided by the opening of Ephesians 4, “We are challenged to display in our Christian walk conduct that is in keeping with our high calling.” We’ve dwelled in this section of Ephesians for several weeks now, exploring what it means to live worthily, that is to live and walk in response to what God has done in Christ.

Finally, as the letter draws to a close, Nee writes of the third verb, “stand.” It is perhaps the one that makes us the most uncomfortable. “Christian experience begins with sitting and leads to walking, but it does not end there. Every Christian must learn to stand.”

Ephesians reads, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power; put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

But that Greek verb “stand” with the preposition “against” that comes after, is perhaps best understood as “hold your ground.” Nee writes, “It is not a command to invade a foreign territory. Warfare, in modern parlance, would imply a command to ‘march’…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…We need not struggle to gain a foothold on it.”

The truth is all of creation is God’s. Therefore, we aren’t responsible to “win” it, it has already been won. We are, however, called to proclaim the good news in all the earth.

Grace and peace,

Kimmy