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Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:26-28; 2:18-24; Eph. 5:30-32; 2:15b16a; 4:24; 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 12:12; John 3:29-30; Rev. 21:2, 9; 22:1-2
We have seen that man has the highest life in God’s creation, a life with the image of God to express God and with the authority of God to represent God to subdue all the enemies of God. In this way man can bring satisfaction and rest to God. By the help of the New Testament, we can realize that the man created by God is a type, a figure, pointing to the real man, who is Christ (Rom. 5:14). The first Adam is a type, a figure, of the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45b), who is the real Adam. He is the Son of God incarnated as a man by the name of Jesus Christ.
Most of the items of God’s creation are also types, figures, of Christ. The heavens, the earth, the plants, and the living creatures are figures of Christ. Eventually, man, the last item of God’s creation, is a figure of Christ. All the things created by God are not the real things. The real thing is Christ Himself. The real heaven, the real earth, and the real light are Christ. The real plant, the real beauty, and the real order are Christ. The real word is Christ; He is the Word. If you do not have Christ, all that you have is false. Christ is everything as reality to us.
We also have to realize that the man created by God was not an individual man. Adam was a corporate man, a collective man, a man including himself and all his descendants. In the same principle, Christ is not only an individual man. Christ is a collective man, a corporate man, composed of Christ Himself and all the members of Christ. Therefore, 1 Corinthians 12:12 says, “Even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” Christ is not only the Head but also the Body. This means that Christ is a collective man, a corporate man. Just as the old man includes Adam and all his descendants, the new man includes Christ and all His believers.
We were made as parts of the first Adam, and now we have been regenerated as parts of the last Adam to be the expression of God in Christ. With the first Adam, everything is a figure and is not real. But with the last Adam, everything is real. If you are merely a person of the first Adam, you do not have anything real. After you have been regenerated to become a part of the last Adam, there is something real within you.
God also created a bride, a wife, to match man, to be the helpmate to man, the counterpart of man, and this counterpart was his increase. A wife is a counterpart and an increase to her husband. A man needs a wife to match him, to be his counterpart. A watermelon cut in two halves is a picture of a wife and a husband. One half is the husband and the other half is the wife, and when you put the two halves together, you have the whole person. As a man, you need a wife to match you to be your counterpart, to make you whole, to make you complete, and to be your increase. The man created by God is a figure of Christ. He needs a counterpart. This simply means that Christ, the new man in this universe, needs a counterpart. The church is the bride of Christ, the counterpart to match Christ.
The Scriptures reveal how much Christ loves the church and desires to have the church. This is why the enemy always does his best to spoil the church. The church is the desire of Christ’s heart. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. We may only have the thought that Christ loves sinners, so He died for us. We forget that Christ loved the church, so He died on the cross for the church, which is His counterpart.
Therefore, in the types in God’s creation, there are the man and the bride, the counterpart, to match the man. This counterpart is something out of man. She is not an addition but an increase. Similarly, the church is not something added to Christ but something increased out of Christ. A man needs a body to express himself and a wife to make him complete. A head without a body is frightening because it is not a real or proper man. Yet today many Christians have the thought that as long as we have Christ as the Head, everything is all right. However, Christ is not only the Head. He also includes the Body, the church. Our Christ must be the Head with the Body.
If we have only a Christian life, that is not good enough. We need the church life. We need to experience Christ as our life, and we also need the experience of the church life. A complete person is a person with a head and a proper body. We need a proper church life to match our Christian life. We need Christ as the Head and the church as the Body.
God created Adam, the husband, but God gave Adam an increase, which was Eve, his wife. Brothers, you cannot live just by yourself as a bachelor. Sooner or later you have to be married. Although some remain unmarried, that is an exception. That is not natural. Spiritually and naturally, you have to marry. This also means that as a Christian, living a proper Christian life, you need the church life. Your spiritual nature within says that you need the church life. A born-again Christian, a spiritual Christian, always longs to have a church life. If you do not have a church life, you have no rest. You are not satisfied. You need both Christ as the Head and the church as the Body.
Now we have to see how the church comes into being and how the church can be built up as an increase to Christ, a living bride to match Christ, a counterpart of Christ. In order to see this, we need to pay full attention to how Eve, the wife of Adam, came into being. God took a part, a rib, out of Adam, and God built that rib, that piece of bone, into a woman, the increase of Adam to be his wife (Gen. 2:22).
After God created Adam, He saw that Adam as a bachelor, as a single person, was not good enough. Adam needed someone to match him. God had the intention to make a wife for Adam, but He first put Adam to a test. God wanted Adam to realize his need, so He brought all the living creatures to Adam to test him. Adam, by his wisdom, gave every creature a name, but he did not see anything that was good enough to match him. Adam did not find his helpmate among the creatures. None of the created things was qualified to match Adam, because none of them was something out of Adam. They were outside of Adam. God caused Adam to sleep, took a rib out of his side, and built that rib into a wife for Adam. When Adam awoke, he looked at Eve and said, “This time this is bone of my bones / And flesh of my flesh” (v. 23). Thus, Adam found a wife to match him, and the two became one flesh, one body.
In the whole universe there are thousands of items created by God. It is as if God brought all these things to His Son, Christ, and Christ said, “There is none good enough to match Me. I have to go to the cross and be broken by God.” When He was nailed on the cross and broken, blood and water came out of His side (John 19:34). Blood is for redemption, and water is for giving life. On the one hand, He redeems us by His blood, and on the other hand, He generates us, gives life to us.
The bone taken out of Adam signifies the resurrection life of Christ, a life that can stand any kind of opposition or attack. On the cross none of the Lord’s bones were broken (v. 36). His flesh, which typifies the human nature, was broken, but His bone, which typifies the divine life, the resurrection life, could never be broken. It is from this resurrection life, from this bone, that the church comes into being. This resurrection life of Christ becomes the church, just as the bone of Adam became the wife of Adam. The church is something produced out of the resurrection life, the divine life, the eternal life, the uncreated life of Christ.
The church is not of the old creation. The church is of the crucified and resurrected Christ. The church is something out of Christ Himself. The resurrection life has been imparted into us. Within us there is a part of Christ, and that very part is a part of the church of Christ. All the parts of Christ in the real believers added together equal the church. The church is something out of Christ, a part of Christ, the increase of Christ, the counterpart of Christ, the one who can match Christ.
The church must be like Christ because the church is a part of Christ. We have to realize, by this revelation, that the church is nothing less than Christ. Anything that is less than Christ cannot be the church. The church is a part of Christ increased as the Body to match Christ. Anything in the old creation, regardless of how good it is, cannot be added to the church. It is foreign to the church. None of us has the right to bring anything that is outside of Christ into the church. The real church is something of Christ as a part of Christ.
This vision will control us and keep us from trying to bring anything outside of Christ into the church. Whenever you are going to suggest or bring something to the church, you have to ask yourself before the Lord, “Is this something of Christ as a part of Christ?” If it is not, you have to forget about it. This is vital. The church has been corrupted and divided by foreign elements. Many foreign things that were brought into the church have damaged, spoiled, and even disembodied the church.
No foreign, inorganic element can be put into our physical body or it will damage our body, yet this is what many have done to the church. The church is something out of Christ and a part of Christ. None of us has the right to bring something that is not Christ or that is less than Christ into the Body of Christ. If we try to bring something foreign into the Body of Christ, that will damage, kill, and divide the church.
We need to bring Christ as the life supply, the food, to feed the members of the Body for the growth, the building up, of the Body. The church will be increased in life by feeding on Christ. The church is absolutely something out of Christ, as a part of Christ, so the church is the increase of Christ, a counterpart, a bride, a wife, to be married to Christ. We need to pray for the Lord to show us the central thought of God and how the church comes into being. If we are going to allow the Lord to recover His testimony, we have to see all these things in the spirit.
