This small book was compiled from various writings of Brother Witness Lee concerning the Triune God and from chapter 1 of the book entitled 1993 Blending Conference Messages concerning the Lord’s Recovery and Our Present Need.
The Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the divine truths as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, the holy Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16). The truths as revealed in the Scriptures have been lost, missed, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and wrongly taught throughout the ages. Hence, there is the need of the Lord’s recovery. In the age of the early apostles, in the age of the church fathers, in the age of the church councils, in the age of Catholicism with the papal system, and in the age of the Protestant practice, the Lord has always recovered some of the lost, missed, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and wrongly taught truths through some of His saints who loved Him and His holy Word.
Among the major items in the Lord’s recovery, some points are more crucial than others. In this small book we want to see the crucial points of the major items of the Lord’s recovery today. These crucial points are the Triune God, the all-inclusive Christ, the consummated Spirit, the eternal life, the church, the oneness of the Body of Christ, and the local ground of the church.
The first crucial point of the major items of the Lord’s recovery today is the divine revelation concerning the Triune God. Among Christians the truth concerning the Triune God has been lost, missed, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and wrongly taught. Thus, there is the need to recover this truth.
The first time the Bible mentions God is in Genesis 1:1, which says, “In the beginning God created.” The word for God here in Hebrew is Elohim. In Genesis 1:1 the subject Elohim, used in relation to God’s creation, is plural in number, whereas the verb created is singular. The plurality of the word Elohim implies the Divine Trinity. Furthermore, Genesis 1:26; 3:22; and 11:7 all mention God, using the plural pronouns Us and Our. In Isaiah 6:8 God said, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” I is singular, but Us is plural, showing that God is “uni-plural.” In John 17 the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father, “That they may be one, even as We are one” (vv. 22b, 11b). He also prayed, “That they also may be in Us” (v. 21). God the Father and God the Son are “Us”; They are plural, yet They are one (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14). The title Elohim, denoting the unique yet triune God, is used more than two thousand five hundred times in the Old Testament.
Jehovah, another divine title of God (Gen. 2:4), is used in God’s relationship with man. This title literally means “He that is who He is; therefore, the eternal I Am.” As Jehovah, He is the One who was in the past, who is in the present, and who is to come in the future. Revelation 1:4 speaks of “Him who is and who was and who is coming.” For the past He was, for the present He is, and for the future He is to be. He is the great I Am.
The Lord Jesus told the Pharisees, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24b). Eventually, they asked Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus responded, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Before Abraham came into being, I am” (vv. 57-58). The Lord as the great I Am is the eternal, ever-existing God. Hence, He was before Abraham and is greater than Abraham (v. 53). The name Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior.” Jesus is Jehovah, the eternal I Am.
When Moses was called by God, Moses asked God what His name was. Exodus 3:13 and 14 say, “Moses said to God, If I come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, What is His name? what shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. And He said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.” As the I Am, He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (v. 15). In His person there is the Father like Abraham, the Son like Isaac, and the Spirit like Jacob. As Jehovah, He is the threefold yet one unique God. The title Jehovah, denoting the Triune God as the One who is not only eternally existing but also eternally being, is used more than seven thousand times in the Old Testament.
According to the entire revelation of the sixty-six books of the Bible, the Divine Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — is for God’s dispensing, that is, for the distribution of God into His chosen people. God’s desire with His strong intention is to dispense Himself into His chosen people as their life, as their life supply, and as their everything. To carry out this dispensing, He needs to be triune.
The Father as the origin is the fountain, the Son as the expression is the spring, and the Spirit as the transmission is the flow. The Spirit as the flow is the reaching, the application, of the Triune God for the distribution of Himself into His chosen people. A fountain is the origin, the source, of a stream or river; a spring is the emergence, the expression, of the fountain; and the stream or river is the flow. In Jeremiah 2:13 God refers to Himself as the fountain of living waters; in John 4:14 Christ is the spring of water that gushes up in the believers into eternal life; and in Revelation 22:1 the Spirit is the flow, the river of water of life. The Father is the fountain, the source, and the Son is the spring as the course to express the source. This course, this spring, issues in a flow, which is the Spirit as the reaching, the application, of the Triune God. This shows that God is triune to dispense, or distribute, Himself into His chosen people.
Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Here three things are mentioned: grace, love, and fellowship. This sets forth the reason why God is triune; it is thus that He can dispense Himself into us, work Himself into us for us to enjoy, and be our all. The love of God, that is, the love of the Father, is the source. The grace of Christ, that is, the grace of the Son, is the flowing out of the love of the Father. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the flowing into us of the grace of the Son with the love of the Father for us to enjoy. This is for our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are not three different things but three stages of one thing for us to possess and enjoy. Likewise, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three separate Gods but three stages of one God for us to possess and enjoy. Second Corinthians 13:14 is strong proof that the Divine Trinity is not for the doctrinal understanding of systematic theology but for the dispensing, the distributing, of God Himself into His chosen people.
We must be clear that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist simultaneously from eternity to eternity. Undoubtedly, the Father is God (1 Pet. 1:2; Eph. 1:17), the Son is God (Heb. 1:8; John 1:1; Rom. 9:5), and the Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4). They are not three Gods but one. The Scriptures say clearly and definitely that God is only one (1 Cor. 8:4; Isa. 45:5; Psa. 86:10), yet He is also three — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He is the Triune God.
The Father is eternal (Isa. 9:6), the Son is eternal (Heb. 1:12; 7:3), the Spirit is eternal (9:14), and They coexist simultaneously. John 14:16-17 says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever, even the Spirit of reality.” In these two verses the Son said that He would pray to the Father that the Father would send the Spirit. Hence, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit exist together at the same time. In Ephesians 3:14-17 Paul prays that the Father would grant us to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into our inner man, that Christ may make His home in our hearts. In this passage we have the Father, the Spirit, and Christ the Son, showing again that all three exist together at the same time. We have already mentioned 2 Corinthians 13:14, which speaks of the grace of Christ the Son, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, showing the coexistence of the three of the Divine Trinity.
The relationship among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is not only that They simultaneously coexist but also that They mutually indwell one another. The Father exists in the Son and the Spirit, the Son exists in the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit exists in the Father and the Son. This mutual indwelling among the three of the Godhead is called coinherence. In John 14:10-11 the Lord Jesus said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; but if not, believe because of the works themselves.” Here we have not only the coexistence of the Father and the Son but also Their coinherence. The three of the Godhead — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — are both coexistent and coinherent.
The essential Trinity refers to the essence of the Triune God for His existence. In His essence, God is one, the one unique God (Isa. 45:18b; 1 Cor. 8:6a). In the essential Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist and coinhere at the same time and in the same way with no succession. There is no first, second, or third.
Essentially, God is one, but economically, He is three — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14). In God’s plan, God’s administrative arrangement, God’s economy, the Father takes the first step, the Son takes the second step, and the Spirit takes the third step. The Father purposed (Eph. 1:4-6), the Son accomplished (vv. 7-12), and the Spirit applies what the Son accomplished according to the Father’s purpose (vv. 13-14). This is a successive procedure, or a succession, in God’s economy to carry out His eternal purpose. Whereas the essential Trinity refers to the essence of the Triune God for His existence, the economical Trinity refers to His plan for His move. There is the need of the existence of the Divine Trinity, and there is also the need of the plan of the Divine Trinity.
The Father accomplished the first step of His plan, His economy, by working to choose and predestinate us, but He did this in Christ the Son (vv. 4-5) and with the Spirit. After this plan was made, the Son came to accomplish this plan, but He did this with the Father (John 8:29; 16:32) and by the Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20; 12:28). Now that the Son has accomplished all that the Father has planned, the Spirit comes in the third step to apply all that He accomplished, but He does this as the Son and with the Father (John 14:26; 15:26; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17). In this way, while the divine economy of the Divine Trinity is being carried out, the divine existence of the Divine Trinity, His eternal coexistence and coinherence, remains intact and is not jeopardized.
Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction but no separation. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, and the Spirit is distinct from the Son and the Father. But we cannot say that They are separate, because They coinhere; that is, They live within one another. In Their coexistence the three of the Godhead are distinct, but Their coinherence makes Them one. They coexist in Their coinherence, so They are distinct but not separate.
The Son never did anything apart from the Father (John 5:19). He came in the Father’s name (v. 43) and with the Father (8:29; 16:32). He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him (14:10-11). Furthermore, He was begotten of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20) and did everything by the Spirit (Luke 4:1, 18a; Matt. 12:28).
The Holy Scriptures also reveal that the Son is the Father. Isaiah 9:6 says, “A child is born to us, / A Son is given to us; / ...And His name will be called / ...Mighty God, / Eternal Father.” The Lord Jesus as the child born in Bethlehem is the mighty God, and the Lord Jesus who is the Son is also the eternal Father.
John 14:7-11 says, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and henceforth you know Him and have seen Him. Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how is it that you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; but if not, believe because of the works themselves.” In these verses the Lord clearly revealed the mystery that He and the Father are one (10:30). He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him; when He speaks, it is the Father who works; when men see Him, they see the Father; when they know Him, they know the Father, because He is the Father.
The Scriptures also reveal that the Son (the last Adam) became a life-giving Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45b says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The last Adam, of course, is the incarnated Lord Jesus, and the life-giving Spirit, of course, is the Holy Spirit. There can never be another life-giving Spirit besides the Holy Spirit. The Lord was made flesh and became the last Adam, and later, after death and resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit.
The words spoken by the Lord in John 14:16-20 confirm this point. Here the Lord said that He would pass through death and resurrection to become another Comforter, that is, the Spirit of reality, who would come to abide with us and dwell in us. In verse 17 the Lord said concerning the Spirit of reality, “He abides with you and shall be in you.” Then in verse 18 He said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” The very “He” who is the Spirit of reality in verse 17 becomes the very “I” who is the Lord Himself in verse 18. The Lord said in effect, “When He comes, I come. He is I; I am He.” The Holy Spirit is the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Also, in verse 17 the Lord said, “The Spirit of reality...shall be in you,” and then in verse 20 He said, “I in you.” This also proves that the Holy Spirit who is in us is the Lord who died and rose and now lives in us.
Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” The Lord spoken of here, of course, is the Lord Jesus, and the Spirit, of course, is the Holy Spirit. This verse says clearly and definitely that our Lord Jesus is the Holy Spirit. He is the Father, and He is the Spirit, the very God and the Lord. This clearly shows that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one God, not three; They are distinct but not separate.
We need to see that the God who is dispensing Himself into us is triune. According to the New Testament, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all in us (Eph. 4:6; Col. 1:27; John 14:17). Although the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all in us, in our experience we sense that there is just one in us. This One who dwells in us is the Triune God.
The Lord charged us to baptize the nations “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). There is one name for the Divine Trinity. The name is the sum total of the Divine Being, equivalent to His person. To baptize people into the name of the Triune God is to immerse them into all that the Triune God is. Once we believe into Christ and are baptized into the person of the Divine Trinity, we should daily enjoy the Triune God by participating in the love of God the Father, in the grace of Christ the Son, and in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14). Eventually, we will enjoy the Divine Trinity in His divine dispensing to the fullest in eternity. Revelation 22:1 says that the river of water of life proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. This depicts how the Triune God — God, the Lamb, and the Spirit (symbolized by the water of life) — dispenses Himself into His redeemed people under His headship (implied in the authority of the throne) for eternity.
Martin Luther warned us not to approach the matter of the Divine Trinity by our natural reasoning. He said that those who approach this matter with confidence in their own mental power are “the teachers of God, not His pupils.” No human being can explain the Divine Trinity adequately. We should simply accept and say Amen to whatever is recorded in the pure Word of God. We can only present the divine facts from the New Testament concerning this great truth so that we may be impressed that the Triune God is dispensing Himself into our being. Instead of exercising our mentality too much to try to figure out the Triune God, we should exercise our spirit to experience and enjoy the marvelous dispensing of the Triune God as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit within us.
Modalism in the second and third centuries passed through several changes and then reached its clearest expression with Sabellius. Modalism teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not all eternal and do not all exist at the same time but are merely three temporary manifestations of the one God. Modalism claims that the Father ended with the Son’s coming and that the Son ceased with the Spirit’s coming. The modalists say that the three of the Godhead exist respectively in three consecutive stages. They do not believe in the coexistence and coinherence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This, of course, is a great heresy.
Unlike the modalists, we believe in the eternal coexistence and coinherence of the three of the Godhead; that is, we believe that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit all exist essentially at the same time and under the same conditions. However, in the divine economy the three work and are manifested respectively in three consecutive stages. Yet even in Their economical works and manifestations, the three still remain essentially in Their coexistence and coinherence.
Modalism stresses the side of God being one to a heretical extreme by denying the coexistence and coinherence of the three of the Godhead. Tritheism, on the other hand, stresses the side of God being three to a heretical extreme by teaching that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three Gods. The Bible is not at either of these extremes; it stands in the center, testifying of the twofoldness of the truth of the Divine Trinity. Regarding the truth of the Triune God, we also should be balanced and avoid the heretical extremes of both modalism and tritheism.
It is a great heresy to say that there are three Gods. The Scriptures clearly, definitely, and repeatedly say that there is only one God (1 Cor. 8:4; Isa. 44:6, 8; 45:5-6, 21-22; 46:9; Psa. 86:10). The tritheists say, “If the Father, Son, and Spirit are not three Gods, then how can They be three persons?” Griffith Thomas, in his book The Principles of Theology, says concerning the Divine Trinity, “The term ‘Person’ is also sometimes objected to. Like all human language, it is liable to be accused of inadequacy and even positive error. It certainly must not be pressed too far, or it will lead to Tritheism.” Because the tritheists hold the side of the three and neglect the side of the one, they have no balance or safeguard.
Both modalism and tritheism go to an extreme, but we are in the middle and are balanced. When we say that the Son is the Father (Isa. 9:6) and the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), we are simply quoting the Bible. Those who deny this fact fall into the danger of being tritheistic. But as we have pointed out, we believe all the verses in the Bible, which reveal the eternal coexistence and coinherence of the three of the Godhead. We condemn both modalism and tritheism as heresies. We believe that God is uniquely one for eternity, yet He is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Some may ask, “How can the Father, the Son, and the Spirit be three and at the same time still be one?” My answer is, “I do not know. I cannot tell you. If you try to understand this, you will be, in Martin Luther’s terms, ‘the teacher of God.’” The Divine Trinity is a mystery that far transcends our mental apprehension.
The Christ revealed in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is all-inclusive and all-extensive. Ephesians 1:23 says that Christ is the One who fills all in all, and 3:18 says that His dimensions are immeasurable, the dimensions of the universe. Christ is not only all-inclusive; He is also all-extensive. He is the God-man through the divine incarnation to be the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) and the centrality and the universality of the eternal economy of God. Throughout the past nineteen centuries He has been missed, misunderstood, wrongly taught, and subtly twisted and misinterpreted by the heresiarchs (the founders of heresies), who included Cerinthus (see footnote 221 in 1 John 2 and footnote 91 in 2 John, Recovery Version), the Gnostics (see footnote 142, paragraph 2, in John 1), and the Docetists (see footnote 31 in 1 John 4) in the first century, the Nestorians in the fifth century, demonic Catholicism in the past thirteen centuries, the so-called higher critics in the past two and a half centuries, and the present modernists. All these denied different aspects of Christ’s person and work. The Cerinthians denied Christ’s divinity, and the Docetists denied Christ’s humanity. Others denied Christ’s redemptive death and His resurrection. According to their heresies, Christ is nothing. Although Protestantism teaches Christ fundamentally, their teaching concerning Christ is inadequate, full of defects, not perfect, and not complete. Under all the devastating heresies and the incomplete fundamentalism, the truth concerning the all-inclusive Christ of God needs a drastic recovery in many aspects. We need to see the all-inclusive Christ as the One who has the preeminence in all things, who fills all in all, who is the centrality and the universality of God’s economy, and who has been allotted to the saints as their redemption, life, life supply, and everything. All these items are exceedingly crucial for all the believers in Christ to partake of for their enjoyment and to be constituted with so that they may become His organic members to live and express Him in this age and for eternity.
The term the consummated Spirit implies that the Spirit has been processed and thus has become the consummated Spirit. According to the revelation in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the Spirit of God eventually became the consummated, all-inclusive, and compound Spirit. In this matter the negligence, ignorance, deficiency, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation on the part of Christian teachers have reached the climax.
Concerning the consummated Spirit, there are three major and crucial points. First, the Spirit of God has been compounded to become the compound ointment, as revealed in Exodus 30:23-25. Second, the Spirit was not yet before Jesus’ glorification in resurrection, as strongly referred to in John 7:39. Third, the Spirit is considered to be the seven Spirits of God to function as the seven lamps before the throne of God and the seven eyes of the Lamb, as particularly revealed in Revelation 1:4; 4:5; and 5:6. These three crucial points have been neglected by nearly all the students and teachers of the Bible.
In addition to this, the Spirit of God was considered, by those who translated the New Testament into English, to be the power of God, an instrument for God’s work, not a person who is ranked with the other two persons of the Divine Trinity. This is in contrast to what was emphatically mentioned by the Lord in Matthew 28:19. In that verse the Lord said, “Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” According to this verse, the three of the Divine Trinity are distinct persons. Therefore, the Holy Spirit of God is not only the power, the instrument, of God but also a person. Even up to the time of the publication of the King James Version in the seventeenth century, the pronoun itself was used in reference to the Spirit. For example, Romans 8:16 was rendered “the Spirit itself” by the King James translators. This is a wrong rendering. Since the Spirit is a person, the proper rendering in this verse should be “the Spirit Himself.” All the negligence, ignorance, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation concerning the Spirit have been corrected, and the truth concerning the Spirit has been completed in the Lord’s recovery. Beginning in the nineteenth century the wrong use of itself in reference to the Spirit was corrected and adjusted, Himself being used in the American Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, the Amplified Bible, and other modern versions. In the previous few decades the Lord has revealed the following points concerning His consummated, all-inclusive, and compound Spirit.
Exodus 30:23-25 reveals that the Spirit of God has been compounded with Christ’s divinity (signified by the hin of oil), Christ’s humanity (signified by the four kinds of spices), Christ’s death with its effectiveness (signified by myrrh and cinnamon), Christ’s resurrection with its power (signified by calamus and cassia), and the Divine Trinity (signified by the three units of five hundred shekels, with the middle unit being split into two halves of two hundred fifty shekels, specifying the quantities of the four kinds of spices). Thus, the Spirit of God has become the compound Spirit as an ointment of several elements, not only of oil.
John 7:39 and 1 Corinthians 15:45b reveal that the Spirit of God had not been processed to become the life-giving Spirit before Christ’s glorification in His resurrection. It was in His resurrection that Christ as the last Adam in the flesh became the life-giving Spirit through the process of His crucifixion and resurrection. Later, this life-giving Spirit is called the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7), the Spirit of Christ — the pneumatic Christ (Rom. 8:9) — the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19), and the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). In Revelation 1:4; 4:5; and 5:6 the Spirit of God eventually became the seven Spirits, that is, the sevenfold intensified Spirit, to deal with the degradation of the church in this dark age. After being compounded, transfigured, and intensified, the Spirit of God became “the Spirit” as the processed and consummated Spirit of God and even as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God (22:17a).
We all need to pay our utmost attention to pick up this point, for the consummated Spirit is one of the crucial points of the major items in the Lord’s recovery. Christ today is all-inclusive, and the Spirit of God today is the consummated Spirit. The consummated Spirit — the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, compounded with Christ’s divinity, humanity, death with its effectiveness, and resurrection with its power, to be the life-giving and indwelling Spirit — is the reality, the realization, of the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ and the ultimate consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God. All the above points that the Lord has revealed in the last few decades are great and crucial items in the Lord’s recovery today.
In general, among Christians the eternal life, which is called everlasting life, has been understood not as a kind of life but as a kind of blissful environment for the believers of Christ to enjoy for eternity in heaven after they die. Even today the teaching in Christianity concerning the matter of “going to heaven” is very strong. Christian teachers do not teach people the proper understanding of the eternal life, but they interpret the eternal life to be a kind of blissful environment in which the believers will enjoy certain good things for eternity in heaven after they die. They say that this is everlasting life. What a blunder this is! But thank the Lord that in the last seventy years He has recovered among us the scriptural view and the proper realization of the eternal life of God, which we have received of God through our believing in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is a life on the highest plane, being the divine life of God and even the complete Triune God Himself, uncreated, incorruptible, indestructible, and also eternal. To be eternal means to be perfect and complete in quality, quantity, time, space, and existence. The eternal life that we received through our believing in Christ is perfect and complete in its quality, in its quantity, in time, in space, and in its existence. It is eternally perfect and complete. It exists eternally in time and in space. It is not transient but everlasting in all aspects. It is with this eternal and everlasting, perfect and complete, incorruptible and indestructible, wonderful and marvelous life that we have been regenerated, that we are being transformed, and that we will be glorified with the consummated Triune God Himself as our eternal glory. This is eternal life.
According to the revelation and pattern of the New Testament, the church is the gathering of the believers in Christ, who have been called out from the world by God. Such a gathering is considered, on the one hand, the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15) for Him to dwell in and to carry out His will according to His desire and for His pleasure and, on the other hand, the organic Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23) for Him to have a counterpart in the organic union with Him for His expression. This church is the new man as God’s new creation (Col. 3:10; Gal. 6:15). Such a church, as both the house of God and the Body of Christ, is universally one to appear and be expressed on the earth in many localities as many local churches. The fellowship in life of this church is uniquely one, both universally and locally.
Such a church remained in such a genuine condition for only a short time. Near the end of the first century, at the time of the early apostles, divisions, sects, crept in to damage the genuine church and created the degradation of the church (1 Cor. 1:10-13; Rom. 16:17; Titus 3:10). Such divisions grew worse and worse in the succeeding centuries, including the time of the church fathers, and the church attempted to solve the problem of divisions by holding councils with the leading teachers in the leading cities, such as Nicaea, Ephesus, etc. This did not work out as well as expected. Such a confused situation remained until the end of the sixth century, when the papal system was established to deform the church by forming the universal Catholic Church under the pope to keep a false unity throughout the world.
In the Reformation that took place in the sixteenth century, through Martin Luther’s teaching, many gave up the Catholic Church under the pope, but they did not receive the proper revelation and the enlightening help to recover the genuine practice of the church according to the New Testament revelation and pattern. They were sidetracked first to form the state churches, such as the state church of Germany and the Church of England, and then to invent the private churches, the private denominations, such as the Baptist Church and the Presbyterian Church. In the meantime, in the eighteenth century Zinzendorf recovered the practice of the church to some extent but not in full. Then in the nineteenth century the British brothers recovered the practice of the church very much, even to the extent of having the local assemblies as the church in Philadelphia (Rev. 3:7-13). However, regrettably, that glorious situation did not remain very long. The British brothers were divided, even in their first generation, into the so-called closed Brethren and open Brethren, with an addition — the Newton Brethren. Up to the beginning of the twentieth century, after they had existed for only a little over half a century, they were divided into hundreds of divisive assemblies, even having several assemblies in the same city. Under that kind of situation the Lord was forced to raise up a recovery as a new beginning in the pagan and conservative China as the virgin soil for the church practice from the third decade of this century. In this fresh action the Lord has recovered among us in the last seven decades the proper understanding and definition of the eternal life; the genuine understanding of the church of God; the boundary of the local church; the genuine ground of the church; Christ as the overcoming life; Christ as the all-inclusive One who has the preeminence in all things both in God’s old creation and in His new creation and who is the centrality and universality of God’s eternal economy; the church as the Body of Christ; the all-inclusive, compound, and life-giving Spirit; God’s eternal economy concerning Christ and the church; the Triune God’s dispensing Himself into the tripartite man; the ultimate issue of God’s chosen people as the New Jerusalem; the full view and the full definition of the New Jerusalem as God’s ultimate manifestation and expression in His mingling with all His redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified elect for eternity, etc. In such a recovery we practice the genuine church, caring for the all-inclusive Christ, the consummated Spirit, the eternal life, and all the divine truths of reality, not of vain letters, and endeavoring to escape from organization, dogmatic regulations, rituals, the clerical system, and traditions, that we may practice the universal priesthood, the universal function of all the members of Christ in the church life for the building up of the Body of Christ in God’s eternal economy.
The oneness of the Body of Christ is the oneness of the Spirit (Eph. 4:3) and the oneness of the divine constitution by the Divine Trinity (John 17:21-23). This is the constitutional aspect of the unique oneness for the church ground. This divine oneness separates all the believers in Christ from the unbelievers and unites all the believers together to be the one Body of Christ.
There is also the practical aspect of the oneness of the church for the church ground. All the believers in Christ are the components of the Body of Christ. Practically, they are scattered in many cities on the earth. Spontaneously, they are separated into many units in each city, respectively, according to their dwelling. According to the New Testament pattern set up and ordained by God and according to the principle of the New Testament revelation concerning God’s economy of the church, in each city in which the believers dwell, it is not allowed to have more than one unit as a local expression of the unique Body of Christ, nor is it permitted to have a local church in a certain city without the proper fellowship in the Body of Christ with the other local churches. All these limitations of the church ground in its oneness are the safeguard in the church life to avoid any kind of division in the Body of Christ.
The local ground of the church is basically the unique oneness of the Body of Christ practiced in the local churches. Both the universal Body of Christ and the local churches are uniquely one. There is one unique Body of Christ in the universe, and there is one unique local church in each locality. This unique oneness is the basic element of the church life. Since the oneness of the Body of Christ is the oneness of the Spirit (Eph. 4:3), the oneness practiced in a local church must be in the move of the Spirit and under the government of the Spirit. Hence, this Spirit is also a basic element of the church ground. In addition to this, since a local church is very much involved with its locality, the locality of the local church is also a crucial element of the church ground. So, the church ground on which a local church is built must be constituted with and prevail in the oneness executed by the Spirit and the oneness safeguarded by the locality.
In addition to the oneness of the Spirit and the oneness practiced in the locality of a local church as mentioned above, there is another aspect of the oneness, which is “the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God,” as revealed in Ephesians 4:13. Concerning this, footnote 132 in Ephesians 4, Recovery Version, says, “In v. 3 the oneness of the Spirit is the oneness of the divine life in reality; in this verse the oneness is the oneness of our living in practicality. We already have the oneness of the divine life in reality. We need only to keep it. But we need to go on until we arrive at the oneness of our living in practicality. This aspect of oneness is of two things: the faith and the full knowledge of the Son of God. As revealed in Jude 3, 2 Tim. 4:7, and 1 Tim. 6:21, the faith does not refer to the act of our believing but to the things in which we believe, such as the divine person of Christ and His redemptive work accomplished for our salvation. The full knowledge of the Son of God is the apprehension of the revelation concerning the Son of God for our experience. The more we grow in life, the more we will cleave to the faith and to the apprehension of Christ, and the more we will drop all the minor and meaner doctrinal concepts that cause divisions. Then we will arrive at, or attain to, the practical oneness; that is, we will arrive at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” To keep this aspect of the oneness we need to endeavor to “drop all the minor and meaner doctrinal concepts [the winds of teaching] that cause divisions. Then we will arrive at, or attain to, the practical oneness; that is, we will arrive at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
