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We have seen that the formation of the universal church took place on the day of Pentecost and in the house of Cornelius and that this formation was accomplished by Christ the Head through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In this message we shall cover some other matters related to the formation of the church.
The formation of the church was with all the believers as the extrinsic form represented by the one hundred twenty believers at Jerusalem on the Jewish side (Acts 1:15; 2:1-4) and by the believers in Cornelius’s house at Caesarea on the Gentile side (Acts 10:24,44-48a). Therefore, 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, “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.” As the Spirit is the sphere and element of our spiritual baptism and in such a Spirit we were all baptized into one organic entity, the Body of Christ, so we should all, regardless of our races, nationalities, and social ranks, be this one Body. It is in this one Spirit that we were all baptized into this one living Body to express Christ. This is the formation of the church with all the believers as the extrinsic form.
The church is formed not only with all the believers as the extrinsic form but also with Christ as the intrinsic constituent. This means that the church is formed with two kinds of materials: the believers as the outward material to be the extrinsic form of the Body and Christ Himself as the inward material to be the intrinsic constituent of the Body.
The church is not an organization, and it is not merely a group of believers in Christ who have been forgiven, cleansed, and made righteous and who regularly gather together. The church is the constitution of Christ. It is Christ constituted into the very fiber of our being. The Christ constituted into us is the church. The church is the constitution of the resurrected Christ, who embodies the reality of the Triune God. Therefore, the church is a living constitution of the Triune God who has been wrought into our humanity. Yes, as believers, we are human beings, but in our humanity we have the constitution of Christ, for He has been wrought, constituted, into us. Hence, we are not merely human beings — we are also the church. We are the church because we have been immersed into the Triune God and have Christ constituted into our being.
Because Christ is the intrinsic constituent of the church, He is every member of the church as the new man. Speaking of the new man, Colossians 3:11 says, “Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman, but Christ is all and in all.” There is no natural person in the new man. There cannot be Greeks, who are for philosophical wisdom, and Jews, who are for miraculous signs (1 Cor. 1:22). There cannot be circumcision, those who observe Jewish religious rituals, and uncircumcision, those who do not care for Jewish religion. Furthermore, in the new man there cannot be barbarian, Scythian, slave, or freeman. A barbarian is an uncultured person, the Scythians were considered the most barbarous people, the slaves were those sold into slavery, and the freemen were those who had been freed from slavery. In the new man there is room only for Christ, not for any kind of natural person, because Christ replaces with Himself the natural life of every member of the church as the new man.
According to Colossians 3:10 and 11, in the new man Christ is all and in all. He is all the members of the new man, and He is in all the members. He is everything in the new man. He is every part of the new man, and He is in every part. Actually, He is the new man.
The word “all” in verse 11 refers to all the members who make up the new man. Christ is all the members, and He is in all the members. For this reason, in the church there is no room for any nationality. Because Christ is all and in all in the new man and we are parts of the new man, then we are parts of Christ. Each member, each part, of the new man is Christ. No doubt, the new man is the church, Christ’s Body. Although many different kinds of people make up the church, all are parts of Christ.
In Colossians 3:11 Paul says not only that Christ is all but also that He is in all. On the one hand, Christ is all the members; on the other hand, He is in all the members. Therefore, we should not think that because Christ is all the members of the new man, we are not needed. Paul does say that in the new man there is no place for the natural person, because Christ is all the members. Nevertheless, Paul says that Christ is in the members. The fact that Christ is in the members of the new man indicates that the members still exist. When we take Christ as our life and live together with Him, we are one with Him and He is us. Simultaneously, Christ is in us. Hence, it is true to say that Christ is both in us and that He is us. We are parts of the new man with Christ in us. We continue to exist, but we do not exist without Christ; rather, we are indwelt by Christ. For this reason, in the new man Christ is both all the members and is in all the members.
Another verse which indicates that Christ is the intrinsic constituent of the church is 1 Corinthians 12:12. “For even as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body being many are one body, so also is Christ.” In Greek Christ here is “the Christ,” referring to the corporate Christ, composed of Christ Himself as the Head and the church as His Body with all the believers as its members. All the believers of Christ are organically united with Him and constituted of His life and element to become His Body, an organism, to express Him. Hence, He is not only the Head but also the Body. As our physical body has many members yet is one, so is this Christ.
The corporate Christ, the Body-Christ, includes not only Christ Himself but also all the believers, who are the members of Christ’s Body, the members of Christ, parts of Christ. According to our natural constitution, we cannot be members of Christ’s Body. Christ Himself is the constituent that makes us parts of Him. Therefore, in order to be parts of Christ as members of His Body, we must have Christ wrought into our being.
Intrinsically speaking, the church is altogether Christ Himself, for He is the constituent, the very being, of the church, whereas we are simply the extrinsic form of the church. As the intrinsic constituent of the church, Christ is not only the Head but also the Body and even every member of the Body and in every member.
The Christ who is the intrinsic constituent of the Body of Christ is the embodiment of the processed Triune God (Col. 2:9), with His unsearchable riches (Eph. 3:8). Colossians 2:9 says, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” According to biblical usage, the significance of the word “fullness” surpasses that of the word “riches.” The fullness in 2:9 refers not to the riches of God but to the expression of the riches of God. What dwells in Christ is not only the riches of the Godhead but the expression of the riches of what God is.
“The fullness of the Godhead” refers to the entire Godhead, to the complete God, including the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Because the Godhead comprises the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the fullness of the Godhead must be the fullness of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. As the embodiment of the fullness of the Godhead, Christ is not only the Son of God but also the entire God. The fact that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily means that the Triune God is fully embodied in Him. Furthermore, the fact that all the fullness dwells in Christ bodily implies the physical body which Christ put on in His humanity. It indicates that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ as the One who has a human body. Before His incarnation, the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him as the eternal Word, but it did not dwell in Him bodily. After He became incarnate, clothed with a human body, the fullness of the Godhead began to dwell in a bodily way, and in His glorified body (Phil. 3:21) now and forever it dwells.
As the embodiment of the processed Triune God, Christ is the all-inclusive One with the unsearchable riches. In Ephesians 3:8 Paul says, “To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach to the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel.” Paul preached not the doctrines but the riches of Christ. The riches of Christ are what Christ is to us. As God, He is the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Lord, the Christ. As man, He is the Apostle, the Shepherd, the Forerunner, the Captain of our salvation. There are countless aspects of the riches of Christ, for He is the reality of every positive thing in the universe. The riches of Christ also include both human virtues and divine attributes. Therefore, Christ is the real love, patience, and forgiveness.
We need to know and experience the unsearchable riches of Christ, which are for the producing of the church as His expression. This takes place through the dispensing of Christ into the believers. The church is produced not by teaching nor by organizing but by the dispensing of Christ. The more Christ is dispensed into us, the more uplifted the church life becomes. The riches of Christ produce the church through our experience and enjoyment of Christ. On Christ’s side it is a matter of dispensing; on our side it is a matter of experience and enjoyment. By absorbing the riches of Christ we become the Body of Christ as His fullness to express Him. Therefore, the Body of Christ is constituted of the riches of Christ that have been enjoyed and assimilated by us. The Body is the result, the issue, of the experience and enjoyment of the riches of Christ.
The unsearchable riches of Christ are actually the fullness of the Godhead. With the Godhead there is the fullness; with Christ the fullness becomes the unsearchable riches. How all-inclusive and extensive these riches are! The fullness of the Godhead has become the unsearchable riches of Christ to be dispensed into us for our experience and enjoyment.
Christ, the embodiment of the processed Triune God, with His unsearchable riches, is the life of the church. Colossians 3:4 speaks of “Christ our life.” Christ is not only our objective Savior; He is also our subjective life. The fact that Christ is our life indicates that we need to experience Christ in our daily living. Christ, not our self, our soul, should be our life.
Christ is God and also life (1 John 5:12). The life which is God, the life that God is, is in Christ (John 1:4). Hence, the Lord Jesus said that He is life (John 14:6; 11:25). Therefore, He who has Christ has life (1 John 5:12).
If Christ is not our life in our practical experience, then all that He is as the embodiment of the processed Triune God with His unsearchable riches will remain objective to us. Paul’s use of the expression “our life” indicates that we and Christ have one life. Day by day we need to experience Christ as life, having one life and one living with Him.
For Christ to be our life, the life of the church, means that He is subjective to us to the uttermost. Nothing is more subjective to us than our life. Our life is actually we ourselves. It is impossible to separate a person from the life of that person, for a person’s life is the person himself. If we did not have life, we would cease to exist. To say that Christ has become our life means that Christ has become us. Since our life cannot be separated from us and since Christ is our life, He cannot be separated from us. Because our life is our self and because Christ is our life, we may say that, in this sense, Christ has become us. In a very subjective sense, Christ is the life of the church.
As the intrinsic constituent of the church, Christ is not only the life of the church but also the nature of the church. Second Peter 1:4 indicates that the believers, as members of the church, the Body of Christ, have become “partakers of the divine nature.” The divine nature refers to the riches of what God is; it denotes the constituents of God’s being. Whatever God is, is in His nature. To partake of God’s nature is to enjoy it and to participate in it. Therefore, when we partake of the divine nature, we partake of the divine riches.
Because we, the believers in Christ, are children of God born of Him, we possess God’s life and also His nature for our enjoyment. Although we definitely can never participate in the Godhead or become an object of worship, in life and in nature we, the children of God, are the same as God. In this sense, as those who have been born of God, we are divine. Having received the divine life at the time of our regeneration, we now must go on to enjoy what God is in His nature, continually partaking of the divine nature, which is the nature of the church.
The Christ who is the embodiment of the processed Triune God is also the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit (Phil. 1:19). The Spirit of God in Genesis 1 was not yet consummated. Likewise, the Spirit of Jehovah in the Old Testament was not consummated. Not even the Holy Spirit, by whom Jesus was conceived and born, was the consummated Spirit. Concerning the consummated Spirit, John 7:39 says, “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Spirit of God was there from the beginning (Gen. 1:1-2), but the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ was “not yet” in John 7:39 because at that time the Lord Jesus had not yet been glorified. The Lord was glorified when He was resurrected (Luke 24:26). After His resurrection, the Spirit of God became the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ. This is the consummated Spirit, the all-inclusive Spirit, including the Lord’s divinity, humanity, human living, all-inclusive death, and resurrection. The Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is, therefore, the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit.
The consummated, all-inclusive Spirit is the church’s bountiful supply. In Philippians 1:19 Paul speaks of “the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” Literally, the Greek word translated “supply” here means the supplying of all the needs of the chorus by someone known as the choragus, the leader or director of the chorus. The Greek word Paul uses thus implies a bountiful supply. The choragus supplied all the needs of everyone in the chorus, the needs for food, clothing, lodging, and musical instruments. The supply of the choragus truly was bountiful, even all-inclusive. In using the expression “the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” Paul likens the supply of the Spirit to that of the choragus. Christ as the intrinsic constituent of the church has been consummated as the all-inclusive Spirit to be the church’s bountiful supply.
The all-inclusive Spirit is the church’s bountiful supply in life and power. In Romans 8:2 Paul speaks of the Spirit as the Spirit of life. This life, of course, is the divine, eternal, uncreated life of God. The Spirit is the Spirit of such a life. The Spirit and life are one and cannot be separated. He is of life, and life is of Him. Life is His content, and He is the reality of life, even life itself. Life is of the Spirit and issues from the Spirit. The Spirit is the source, whereas life is the flow that comes from the Spirit. Because the Spirit is the Spirit of life, when we contact the Spirit, we contact life.
Acts 1:8a says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Here we see that the all-inclusive Spirit as the church’s bountiful supply is also in power. To receive power is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5). The Holy Spirit was breathed into the disciples on the day of Christ’s resurrection (John 20:22) to be the Spirit of life to them essentially. The same Holy Spirit came upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost to be the Spirit of power to them economically. On the day of Pentecost the ascended Christ poured Himself upon His disciples to empower them. Therefore, on the day of Pentecost the disciples had both the Spirit of life within them and the Spirit of power upon them. Within and without, they were permeated, saturated, and filled with the Spirit.
The formation of the church is actually a mingling of humanity with the consummated Spirit. This is illustrated by the type of the meal offering. The main aspect of the meal offering was an oiled cake, a cake made of wheat flour mingled with oil. Oil was also poured upon the cake. We may say that the oil mingled with the flour was essential oil and that the oil poured upon the cake was economical oil. Eventually, the cake of flour, with oil mingled with it and poured upon it, became a loaf, and that loaf is a type of the church. “We who are many are one bread, one Body; for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). This is the formation of the church through the believers being mingled with the Spirit. Inwardly, we have the essential Spirit intrinsically, and outwardly we have the economical Spirit. In this way we are the church.
We have seen that the church is formed by the mingling of human beings with the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit. As members of the church, the Body, we have the Spirit of life within us as the essence for our spiritual existence, and we have the Spirit of power upon us as power for carrying out God’s economy. For our spiritual existence, the Spirit is the essential Spirit; for the carrying out of God’s economy. He is the economical Spirit. On the day of His resurrection, the Lord Jesus breathed the essential Spirit into the disciples. This caused them to be qualified to be mingled with the Spirit for the formation of the Body of Christ.
In forming the church, Christ was both the Breather and the Baptizer. After His death and resurrection, He became the Breather. As such, He breathed the essential Spirit into His disciples for their essence, life, being, and existence. After He ascended to the heavens, He became the Baptizer. On the day of Pentecost He, the Baptizer, baptized the disciples in the economical Spirit.
As the Breather, the Lord Himself was the breath breathed into His believers. This means that He was the essential Spirit entering into them to be their essence, life, being, and existence. As the Baptizer, He was also the Spirit in which He baptized His members into the one Body.
The essential Spirit was the base, just as the oil mingled with the fine flour was the base for the meal offering. Then upon this base, the mingled cake, the oil, signifying the economical Spirit, was poured. From this we see that the formation of the church first required the base: the essential Spirit entering into the believers to produce the wonderful mingling of humanity with divinity. Then upon this base Christ poured the economical Spirit typified by the oil poured upon the cake of the meal offering. The result of the breathing of the essential Spirit into the believers and the pouring out of the economical Spirit upon them was the formation of the universal church as the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all.
We all need to see that the formation of the church as the Body is altogether a matter of the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit mingled with and poured out upon the believers. This is the church, the totality, the aggregate, of the processed Triune God mingled with chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed humanity. Eventually, such a church will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
