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Scripture Reading: Col. 1:25-27; Eph. 3:3-5, 9-11; 1:19-23; 4:4-6, 12-16; Col. 2:19; Rom. 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:12-13, 18, 27
These three chapters on the apostle Paul’s completing ministry are not common. In the two previous chapters we considered God and Christ, and in this chapter we will consider the church. These terms themselves — God, Christ, and the church — are all too familiar. But to speak of God as our contents, Christ as God’s mystery, and the church as Christ’s mystery, surely is to speak in a way unfamiliar to most Christians.
How could the almighty God, our Creator, be our contents? Even the expression is strange. For Him to be our contents, He has to enter into us and take full possession of us, making our entire being His vessel. This may sound simple. We may think that if God wants to do something, He simply does it. Such is not the case. God had to be triune in order to work Himself into our being. There was a procedure He had to pass through in order to have a way to enter into us. This is a most profound matter. It explains why the almighty God became incarnate.
God was born into man. He was born of humanity to be a man. The very God lived on this earth in a poor carpenter’s home for thirty years. Then day after day He stayed with His disciples to pass on the divine economy to those earthly human beings. His way of teaching was altogether different from that of Socrates, Plato, or Confucius.
After He had stayed with them more than three years, He suddenly told them that He was going away (John 13:33). This troubled them. He went on to say that He would not leave them for good, or even for a long period of time. He would not desert them by leaving them orphans; He would be gone just for a short period of three days. He would go through the process of being crucified, buried, and resurrected so that He might be changed into another form, that of the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). By this means He could not only come back to be with them; He would be able to enter into them that He might abide in them and they in Him. He told the disciples clearly that He was going away to prepare a place, to pave a way, to gain the ground, for them to be brought into the Father.
These words that He spoke to the disciples in John 14 have been altogether misinterpreted. The common explanation is that the Lord Jesus told His disciples He was going to leave them, to die and go to heaven, and there He would prepare heavenly mansions for them. When they were finished, He would come back for the disciples and receive them into those mansions. What a tragedy to interpret the Lord’s word in this way!
Actually, His going was His coming back. His leaving them was His walking into them. By taking a few steps He entered into them. What were these steps? His death, burial, and resurrection. He returned to them on the third day not in His original form but like breath, in the form of the Spirit. What we are saying is elusive and mysterious. Christ is a mystery. Do you think He came back physically after His resurrection? If so, how could He enter the room where the disciples were meeting with the doors shut? He did not knock on the door and ask them to let Him in. While they were meeting together, sorrowful and grieving, wondering what to do, wondering where His body had been taken, He Himself came and stood in their midst. If you believe that His coming here was spiritual, how could He have asked Thomas to touch His hands and put his hand into His side (John 20:27)? Theologians, were these appearances spiritual or physical? There is no way to come to a conclusion.
He may have been standing there for quite a while, listening to the words of those pitiful, frightened disciples. In any case, suddenly He became visible to them. He said, “Peace be to you” (John 20:19); there was no need for them to be troubled. Then He breathed into them and said, “Receive the holy pneuma.” Pneuma means both “breath” and “spirit.” By inhaling His breath, the disciples received Him as the Spirit. They had no choice. They were in the same room. They had to keep breathing to stay alive. By inhaling what He breathed out, the disciples experienced His entering into them.
Did He leave after that? No! There is the record of His appearing among them, but nothing is said as to His leaving. He remained with them. Where? He was in them. Once the Lord Jesus entered into them, He never left. If you read John 20 and 21 carefully, you will see that the disciples, including Peter, did not realize this. When He disappeared from sight, He was still with them.
After some time Peter evidently felt he could not tolerate this way of living; he decided to go fishing. The others followed him, since he was their leader. They were not the only ones following; the Lord Himself was following too in each one of them. They fished and fished, but their efforts were futile. Not one fish did they catch. Then the Lord Jesus said to them from the shore, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat” (21:6), and when they did, they had more fish than they could handle. Then they recognized who it was who had spoken to them from the shore.
This story shows how the Lord trained the disciples to appreciate His invisible presence within them more than His external presence among them before His death. This Jesus was now within them.
Who was this One who got into them? The almighty Creator, the Triune God Himself. The Son of God was not separated from the Father. Where the Son was, the Father was also. The same is true of the Spirit: where the Spirit was, the Son was also. Thus, the One who entered into the disciples was the very Triune God. He was not merely the Creator described in Genesis 1. By now He had gone through the process of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.
How qualified and equipped He was to enter into man! He had accomplished redemption. He had destroyed death. He had defeated the devil. He had released His life. He had become the available, life-giving breath, pneuma, Spirit. Satan might say, “God, You cannot enter into these sinful human beings,” but God would reply, “Yes, they were sinful, but I have redeemed them. My blood was shed for them. Let them be! You have been defeated. You have no ground to speak against them. The full liberty is Mine to enter into them!”
This One is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the indwelling Christ. This realization goes far deeper than what is commonly understood of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. Many Christians have only an objective, superficial belief that we were fallen sinners; that God the Father loved the world and sent His Son to be our Savior and Redeemer; that He came as the Lamb of God and died on the cross for our sins; that He was buried; that after three days He was resurrected; that He ascended to heaven and is now seated on the throne; that He sent down the Holy Spirit as His instrument to inspire sinners to repent and believe in Him; that this Holy Spirit as the Representative of the Christ in heaven indwells those who thus believe; that when we have problems we pray to the Father about them; and that our Mediator is there on the throne praying for us, taking care of our case, and seeing that our prayers are answered.
To think in this way is not wrong, but it is superficial. It also borders on believing that there are three Gods. In the Vatican there is a floor-to-ceiling painting depicting an old father with a long white beard, a young son standing nearby, and a dove hovering overhead. Such is their concept of the Trinity! Alongside is another painting, with an extra person added. Besides the father, the son, and the dove, there is a young woman, supposedly the son’s mother, the mother of God! This is their God! How repulsive! It shows an ignorance of God’s economy to dispense Himself into His redeemed people by being triune.
Christ is a mystery. While He is abiding in you, He is still seated on the throne. When He comes to you, He comes with both the Father and the Spirit. When one comes, all three come. This is what triune means. We cannot explain the Godhead. But then, there are things about electricity that we cannot understand either; nonetheless, when we turn on the current, we can utilize its power. The Triune God cannot be fully understood. He is called Wonderful (Isa. 9:6) for this very reason. He is a totality of wonder, a mystery impossible to comprehend. This is true more than ever, now that He has gone through incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. There is divinity in Him. There is humanity in Him. There is human life in Him. Who can understand such a One? This is the very One who is within us to be our contents. Some may say that our teaching is heretical, but it is altogether according to the divine revelation in the Bible.
What is the issue of God’s entering into us? It is the Body of Christ. This is also mysterious. To have the church as the Body of Christ, as Ephesians 1 tells us, involves Christ’s resurrection, His ascension, and His headship. It was the divine power that raised Christ from the dead, uplifted Him to the heavens, and made Him Head over all things to the church. The Body of Christ is produced by His ascension and headship.
If the church were simply an assembly of Christ’s believers, there would probably be no need for so many factors to be involved. But for the church to be the Body of Christ is not a simple matter. Even for us to have a physical body is not simple. Yes, we can have false teeth and artificial limbs, but to organically produce a member of the body is another matter. Perhaps a transplant is the best modern medicine can do.
Who can make us dead human beings part of Christ’s living Body? The crucified, resurrected, ascended Christ can! We are not like false teeth; we are organically part of the Body. The Creator could create us as human beings, but without passing through a process, even He could not make us organically part of the Body of Christ. He first had to be incarnated, crucified, and resurrected in order to be qualified to make us the living members of His Body. Creative power was not adequate. It took Jesus Christ — the incarnated, crucified, resurrected One, the One who has been made Head over all — to accomplish this. Because He is now within us, we have become organically members of His Body.
We are also members one of another. The arm and the shoulder, as joint members, are related organically to each other. The building up of the Body is the growing together of the members. The hand is built with the arm and the arm with the shoulder. The relationship is not mechanical like a robot. We do not function in the church like robots, regulated and controlled by the elders. Do we function in the meetings because we are told to by the elders? Do we come to the Saturday morning service because they have told us that we should? We are not parts of a mechanical being but living members of an organism. This living organism is being produced not by a creative act but by the qualified Christ. Whatever He has gone through, whatever He has obtained and attained, whatever He has entered into, is all for the producing of His Body. Ephesians 1:19-23 makes this clear.
In Ephesians 3 the church is called the mystery of Christ (v. 4). Christ is the mystery of God; similarly, the church, this organic entity, is the mystery of Christ. It was purposed, planned, and designed in eternity.
In Ephesians 4:4-6 it is clear that the Body is wrapped up with the Triune God: “One Body and one Spirit, even as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” There is one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one God and Father. All three of the Godhead are blended with the Body. Just as we cannot separate the three of the Godhead, neither can we separate the church as the Body from the three. They are blended together.
Some object to our saying that we are mingled with God. In the preface to Darby’s New Translation, Darby comments on the difficulty of using a large or small s for the word spirit when it is not clear whether the Holy Spirit or our spirit is meant. Three times in this one paragraph Darby uses the word blended. He says that the way spirit is used indicates our state. That is, God as the Spirit is blended with our spirit; this is the state we are in.
Hallelujah that the divine Spirit, having passed through so many processes, has become one spirit with us! Christians like to hear about miracles. Surely this is the top miracle: that God has gone through so much and has accomplished so much that He is fully equipped to be blended with us! What a state we are in! We are the living members of the organic Body of Christ.
There is only one writer in the Bible who tells us of the Body of Christ. The Old Testament writers saw nothing of it. It was a mystery hidden from them. The mystery of Christ, which is His Body, has been made manifest only in the New Testament age. Yet only Paul refers to it. Peter does not. Nor does John, even though his mending ministry was to bring the saints back to Paul’s completing ministry. Even in Paul’s writings, only four of his fourteen Epistles speak of the Body of Christ; the other ten do not mention it. Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians are the only books that refer to the Body of Christ. I tried to see if there is a hint anywhere as to where Paul might have picked up the thought of the Body of Christ. I could not find a hint. Paul received a unique vision that the church is the Body of Christ.
This revelation has been lost, overlooked, or neglected by Christians. Consider all the practices that came in after the Reformation. There were the practices of the Puritans, of the Mennonites, of the Amish, and of the various kinds of Brethren. In Germany there were different kinds of Orders with their particular rules. Then there were the Presbyterians with their practice and the Baptists with theirs. I must tell you that no matter what practices you follow or what kind of Brethren or Order you belong to, these groups are not the Body. All these practices are off.
When I was in Ohio, I visited an Amish community. I saw nothing of Christ. I saw old wagons. I saw drab clothing; they could wear only black, white, gray, and dark blue. Such practices are other than Christ.
Today the term communal life has been popularized. Even to have a communal life based on Acts 2:44-45 is not the Body. When Paul got saved, the communal life was over. Even by Acts 6 the communal life was almost over because of the murmurings. Then Paul came on the scene. He told the Corinthians to bring their offerings to the church meetings on the Lord’s Day to take care of others (1 Cor. 16:1-2). Here is a strong indication that communal living was at an end. There may be a communal life without the Body of Christ. A communal life can be set up, but not so with the Body of Christ. The Body requires the resurrection, ascension, and headship of Christ.
In 1933 some young men from the British Navy who were with the Brethren in England heard of our meeting in Shanghai and came to visit us. They were well trained. They knew how to baptize, who could baptize, whom to baptize, and how to accept a believer at the Lord’s table. I was young then, only about twenty-eight. I admired them and thought we should learn of them; they were so clear about how things ought to be.
Now I think differently. That kind of knowledge is helpful only to a robot. A mechanical man is programmed to know just what to do. A living person, in contrast, is not quite sure. He does not know what is best for his situation. He does not know what to do, but he is living! Suppose you are asked how we baptize people and whom we accept at the Lord’s table. If you have a ready answer to every question, you are acting like a robot. If you simply reply, “We have no way. We just walk according to spirit,” they will press you further. “Do you mean the Holy Spirit?” When you explain that you are referring to the mingled spirit, they will ask, “What? Mingled spirit? What is that? We want to know how you have the Lord’s table. Do you use leavened or unleavened bread? Do you have wine or grape juice?” If you say, “I have nothing to tell you. We simply seek to walk according to spirit,” you can be sure that they will be through with you.
Is not today’s Christianity made up of robots? Look at the pitiful robots belonging to the Catholic Church, the small robots following the big ones. There are cardinal robots and archbishop robots. Is the Lord’s recovery like this? I am concerned about this question. We must not make the saints robots.
The Body is an organism. We are organic members of this organism, not robots. Read again the description in Ephesians 4:12-16. The Body is built up directly by every member. Verse 16 says, “Out from whom all the Body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.”
You may have an evangelical work but with no intention to build up the Body. You may have a communal life, but that may not be the Body. For the Body to be built up, you must first have a clear vision of the Body. Then as you live in the Body, you will grow. That growth of yours spontaneously builds the Body. Verse 16 says that all the members grow to build up the Body (cf. Col. 2:19).
When will the Lord gain what He is after? There is a groaning in me about this. Not only is there a lacking of the Body life; even the meaning of the words is misunderstood. Nonetheless, the Lord has His way. The way is organic. It is by life, and life is through death and resurrection. We all need to see this central point of Paul’s completing ministry.
“Just as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom. 12:4-5).
In Romans 12 what is said about the Body is quite simple. This is because Romans 12 is preceded by Romans 8, which is surely not simple! What do we find in Romans 8? There is death and resurrection. There is the Triune God in death and resurrection all wrapped up with the tripartite man. There is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, then Christ. God, Christ, the Spirit — with His death and resurrection — now indwells us, to make our spirit life (v. 10), to make our mind life (v. 6), and to make even our mortal body life (v. 13). Is this not a mingling? Is this not an organic wrapping up of the Triune God and us, the tripartite man? I tell you, this is the way the members of the Body will be produced.
“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. For also in one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and were all given to drink one Spirit...But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, even as He willed...Now you are the Body of Christ, and members individually” (1 Cor. 12:12-13, 18, 27).
These verses tell us that this organic Body is also Christ, the corporate Christ. All the members have been baptized in one Spirit into one Body. The Body, then, is altogether something in the Spirit.
In summary I remind you of these three crucial points in Paul’s Epistles: God as our contents, Christ as God’s mystery, and the church as Christ’s mystery. Without these three points, Paul’s writings are an empty shell. These are what the Lord is going to recover. Without them, nothing is meaningful. Our God today is in us to be our contents. The mystery of God is Christ as the embodiment and manifestation of God, making God so real and so enjoyable to us. The mystery of Christ is that the Triune God through death and in resurrection is mingling Himself with us, making us the living members of His organic Body. This vision must direct us. It will keep us in the central lane, walking according to the mingled spirit and being in the Body life. This is what the Lord is after.
