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Scripture Reading: Eph. 3:6-11
The contents of our fellowship in this book will be to study the new way for the Lord’s new move. Our desire is to see and enter into the God-ordained way to practice the New Testament economy. Related to this practice, there are two crucial items. The first item is that we go out to visit people in their homes. We are not merely going to knock on people’s doors, but we are going to visit people in the same way that the Lord Jesus did. He came far away from the heavens to this earth to visit people, so He also gives us the order, or commandment, to go to visit people (Matt. 28:19; Luke 10:3). Because we are going to visit people in their homes, we need to knock on their doors. The second thing we have to do in the new way is to set up home meetings with the ones we have just baptized. Two words are very crucial in the new way for the Lord’s new move: go and home. We go to visit people in their homes, and we set up home meetings with them. We need to go to people’s homes and bring the meetings to them.
All of us need to dream about the new way for the Lord’s new move so that God’s New Testament economy can be carried out and practiced. We need to learn to dream for the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s new way is a dream that we all need to be brought into. I have been dreaming this dream, and my burden is to bring you into this dream. We all have to bear the responsibility and the burden to bring this dream to the whole earth. If we are faithful by the Lord’s mercy to practice the New Testament economy according to the God-ordained way, we will see the fulfillment of this dream.
In order for us to practice the New Testament economy, we need to see the divine economy. This economy is clearly revealed in the holy Word (1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:10; 3:9; Col. 1:25; 1 Cor. 9:17). The center of the entire New Testament is God’s divine economy. God’s economy is God’s plan, His divine arrangement, to dispense Himself into His chosen people. Our going out to visit people by knocking on their doors is for this economy and should be linked with the divine economy. Since the Lord brought me to the United States in the early sixties, every message I have given has touched this point of God’s economy. I was sent to the United States by being linked to this economy, and I did not do anything that was independent of this economy.
When we go out, we must hold on to the concept and deep feeling that we are going out to visit people for God’s economy. Without knocking on people’s doors, it would be hard for us to seek the sons of peace for God’s eternal economy (Luke 10:3-6). God’s eternal economy involves and includes millions of sons of peace. These sons of peace need us to go to visit them in their homes. We go to knock on people’s doors by having ourselves linked to the divine economy, linked to eternity, linked to the heavenlies. We need a clear vision and deep impression concerning God’s economy, which involves the completion of Christ and the propagation of the pneumatic Christ for the producing of the church (Eph. 3:6-11).
We need to ask the Lord to grant us a vision of the completion of Christ. Some may ask, “Does Christ need to be completed? Isn’t He perfect?” In answering such a question, we have to differentiate between what it is to be completed and what it is to be perfected. We human beings all need to be perfected, but God’s Christ is eternally perfect. He does not need any perfection. Such an eternally perfect Christ, however, needs a completion. To help us understand this, I would ask, “Before Christ was incarnated, did He have the human nature?” Concerning this matter of having the human nature, He needed to be completed. Before Christ was incarnated, He was eternally perfect but not complete, because He was still short of the human nature. Christ passed through the process of incarnation to possess the human nature (John 1:14).
The four Gospels have many stories about Jesus in them, and when I was young, my mother used to tell me these stories. But very few New Testament readers realize that the four Gospels are not merely composed of stories about Jesus but are books that show us the completion of Christ. The Gospels show us a particular person living on this earth and passing through human living. In order for Jesus to be God’s anointed One, the Christ, He needed to have a human living (Phil. 2:7-8). If He had never passed through human living, how could He be our Shepherd, our High Priest, or our Helper, our Comforter? Because Christ needed to be completed in this matter, He became a man and passed through human living. Luke 2:40 and 52 tell us how the little child Jesus grew and advanced in wisdom and stature. His divine wisdom matched His growth in physical stature. He was a human boy, growing among human beings. He passed through this growth for thirty-three and a half years. This process of human living was necessary for Him to pass through so that He could be God’s Christ to carry out God’s eternal commission to fulfill God’s divine economy.
After passing through the process of human living, Christ went through the process of crucifixion (Acts 2:23). In order for Him to be God’s Anointed to carry out God’s eternal commission, He needed such a death. His death annulled all the negative things and solved all the problems in the universe. After His death He entered into resurrection (v. 24). Christ was not only life but also resurrection (John 11:25). However, it was not until the day of His resurrection that He passed through resurrection and entered into resurrection in His physical experience. He was Jesus in the form of the physical flesh for thirty-three and a half years, but He needed to be in the form of the Spirit. He needed to be not only the physical Christ but also the pneumatic Christ. He passed through resurrection and came out of that resurrection to be in another form, in the form of the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). That He could be such a Christ, with a body of flesh yet resurrected in the divine life, is a wonderful mystery (John 20:19-20). Thank the Lord that in the entire universe there is such a resurrection.
To fulfill God’s eternal purpose, Christ needed to be divinely equipped with these four items: incarnation, human living, the all-inclusive crucifixion, and the wonderful resurrection. Now we have a Christ with this great and divine equipment. In His resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit. We have to see the four Gospels in the light of the completion of Christ. The four Gospels do not merely tell us stories of Jesus performing miraculous things. We have to see that the greatest miracles are the incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection of the wonderful Jesus. Today Jesus is different than He was before His incarnation. Through His incarnation He partook of blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14) to become a man. Through His crucifixion and in His resurrection He was transfigured from the flesh into a life-giving Spirit.
On the evening of the day of resurrection, the Lord came with a resurrected body (Luke 24:37-40; 1 Cor. 15:44) into the room where the disciples were with the doors shut. We may say that He could do this because He was a Spirit, yet He showed His disciples His hands and His side (John 20:20). After eight days the Lord appeared to His disciples again in the room where the doors were shut. He asked Thomas to touch His hands and His side so that he would believe (v. 27). Our limited mentality cannot comprehend this, but it is a fact. If someone asks you whether Jesus was a physical person when He appeared to the disciples in resurrection, the best response is, “I don’t know.” This Jesus is a person whom we can never know with our limited mentality. In His resurrected body it is hard to say whether Christ is physical or spiritual, but we do know that in the universe there is such a marvelous thing as the resurrection of Jesus.
Now Christ is fully equipped with incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. In resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit, the essential Spirit of life (1 Cor. 15:45; John 20:22). His becoming such a Spirit through His death and resurrection cut a new and living way for Him to impart life into us and for us to receive Him as this very life. Without such a new and living way cut by His death and resurrection, there would be no way for God to impart His divine life into any sinners and no way for any sinner to receive God as his life. The new and living way is the way cut by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Now He is the life-giving Spirit, the very pneumatic Christ, the essential Spirit of life.
The next step in the completion of Christ was His ascension (Acts 2:33-36). He entered not only into resurrection but also into ascension. We have a Christ in ascension, and we are in a Christ who is in ascension. He is in ascension, and since we are in Him, we are also in ascension (Eph. 2:6). Whenever I speak, I have the realization that I am speaking from ascension and in ascension. In resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit, the essential Spirit of life, and in ascension He became a powerful Christ, the economical Spirit of power (Acts 2:1-4, 33b). In resurrection He is the life-giving Spirit in the essence of the Divine Being. But if He had never entered into ascension, He would not have received the authority. As a man, He would have never been enthroned (Heb. 12:2b) and crowned with glory and honor (2:9). Today, Christ is a person in ascension who has been glorified, enthroned, and entrusted with all the authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18).
The first major item in the divine economy is the completion of Christ. When God created the present universe, He spent only six days. But for God to complete Christ, He spent thirty-three and a half years. God went through a long process to finish the completion of His Christ. Today our Savior is such a completed Christ. He has been completed in incarnation, in human living, in crucifixion, in resurrection, in becoming the essential Spirit of life, in ascension, and in becoming the economical Spirit of power. When we go out to knock on doors, we are persons linked to this One. This Christ has linked us to Himself, and by this linking He sends us to people as His ambassadors. When the heretical Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses go to knock on people’s doors, they are not linked to this Christ. There is no incarnation, human living, all-inclusive death, wonderful resurrection, essential Spirit of life, ascension, or economical Spirit of power in their knocking. But when we go out, we go out with all the equipment of the completed Christ.
I was told that when some young saints first went out to visit people by knocking on their doors, they were shaking with fear. If you go out to visit people by knocking on their doors and you shake, that means you have never received the vision that you are linked to the completed Christ. If a vision is imparted into us through the fellowship in this chapter, our hand and our arm will not shake when we knock on the door but will be stronger than steel. The hand with which you knock on people’s doors is not a common hand but a hand with incarnation, human living, the all-inclusive death, the wonderful resurrection, the becoming of the essential Spirit, the ascension, and the becoming of the economical Spirit. Our knocking on people’s doors is a great thing.
Some told me that they were amazed when they went out to knock on doors that the people whom they visited were baptized within a short time. Although this may be surprising to us, it is not surprising to the Lord. He told us that all authority had been given to Him in heaven and on earth, and He charged us to go with this universal authority (Matt. 28:18-19). This universal authority is composed of and with Christ’s deity, Christ’s incarnation, Christ’s human living, Christ’s death, Christ’s resurrection, Christ’s being the life-giving Spirit, Christ’s ascension, and Christ’s being the economical Spirit of power. We are going out with this authority composed of all these items.
This authority makes you a great person. If the president of the United States were to come to your home, his prestige would become his authority and his power to subdue you to the uttermost. You would be subdued by his presidency. In like manner, you have to realize that when you go out to knock on people’s doors, you are the greatest person on this earth. You are a person who is linked to the completed Christ with all the authority in heaven and on earth entrusted to you. To knock on people’s doors, preach the gospel to them, and lead them to be baptized is the way of authority, the God-ordained way to spread the gospel.
I received some negative reports from some, telling me that knocking on doors does not work. One person told me that he went out for twenty days without one being baptized. This is like Peter going fishing for the whole night and not catching one fish (John 21:3). For Peter to fish all night at the right time for fishing and catch nothing was amazing. If he had caught one hundred fish, that would not have been amazing but normal. For us Christians, the ambassadors of Christ, to go out and knock on people’s doors for twenty days without one being baptized is amazing. When I was in Taipei, some were ecstatic when they told me that they baptized five in one evening. Such an occurrence, however, should be normal to us because we are great persons who are linked to the completed Christ, the processed Christ. To visit people by knocking on their doors and getting many baptized may be a wonder to us. To the Lord, however, it is not. To Him it is normal.
Who is going to visit people by knocking on their doors so that millions can get baptized? We have to be the ones to bear this responsibility, but we need to ask ourselves what kind of persons we are. Are we linked to such a completed Christ, or are we linked to ourselves? We need to go out as persons linked with this completed Christ.
Without completing this Christ, God could do nothing. We can see how God’s anointed One was being completed in the four Gospels in incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. At the end of the four Gospels He came back with all these qualifications as the life-giving Spirit to breathe Himself into His disciples, who received Him as life. Then this Christ entered into ascension so that He could clothe the believers with Himself as the economical Spirit of power. God needed to complete Christ so that He could carry out His eternal purpose through this Christ, in this Christ, and with this Christ. Christ has gone through such a marvelous process, and today we are in the processed Christ, the completed Christ. I have the burden to pass this vision on to every Christian.
Some have said that knocking on people’s doors may work in Taiwan, but it will not work in other countries and areas of the world. I do not agree with this. Our success depends upon whether or not we have been linked to this completed Christ. If we are linked to this completed Christ, we can break through any barrier. All the authority in heaven and on earth has been given to this Christ, and He commissioned us to go to disciple the nations. The completed Christ of God is in us and with us. By being linked to this wonderful One, we can fulfill His commission.
The next major item in the divine economy is the propagation of the pneumatic Christ. In the book of Acts the completed Christ was being propagated, multiplied; on the day of Pentecost three thousand were baptized (2:41). To knock on people’s doors and to preach the gospel to them is to make them the multiplication of the pneumatic Christ. The gospel will make sinners a multiplication of the pneumatic, completed Christ.
This pneumatic Christ is the essential Spirit of life to impart the divine life of resurrection into God’s chosen and believing people (John 3:3, 5-6). We are not able to impart Christ to everyone. We will be able to impart Christ only to those who were chosen by God. In Luke 10 the Lord told the disciples that He was sending them as lambs in the midst of wolves (v. 3). However, among these wolves there are a good number of sons of peace who are God’s chosen people (v. 6). Our trainees in Taipei have the experience of being able to discern whether or not a person is a son of peace within a few minutes. A person may not be a son of peace on your first visit to him. But after a second or third visit, he may become a son of peace.
The pneumatic Christ is also the economical Spirit of power to baptize the regenerated believers into one Body (1 Cor. 12:13). When we preach the gospel to the people whom we are visiting, and they open themselves up to the Lord by praying to Him and calling upon His name, two things immediately occur: they get regenerated, and they get baptized into one Body with millions of believers. We need such a clear vision to see what a great thing it is to go out by being linked to Christ so that people can be regenerated with the essential, pneumatic Christ and baptized not only into the Triune God but also into the Body of Christ. These two things occur immediately when a new one calls on the name of the Lord. At that time these new ones may not be able to apprehend this much, but gradually as they grow in life, they will enter into the real vision of these wonderful truths.
We have seen some newly baptized ones enter into the full realization of these truths within half a year. In Taipei we first set up meetings in people’s homes, and then we combined three or four homes together as a group. Finally, we combined a number of groups together for a community meeting. These communities set up their own hall by renting a place. They set up their own meeting and an offering box. These new ones in the communities are the elders, the deacons, and the attendants who do all the functioning. I would like to see this repeated in all the cities in the United States. We do not want to see anything of degraded Christianity.
Through our going out to knock on people’s doors, we bring them God’s completed Christ as the very pneumatic One, who is the essential Spirit of life and the economical Spirit of power, to produce regenerated and baptized believers. The church is produced organically by imparting God’s completed Christ into sinners to make them regenerated and baptized members of one Body. This one Body is the church, which is produced with the unsearchable riches of the processed Christ (Eph. 3:8). The unsearchable riches of this processed Christ are divine, heavenly, spiritual, and mysterious, yet they are so real and practical. By enjoying the unsearchable riches of this processed Christ, we all become members of His Body, which is the church. The Body of Christ is the fullness of Christ, the expression of Christ (v. 6), and the organism of the Triune God (John 15:1-5).
When we enjoy the riches of Christ, we become the fullness of Christ. This means that when we experience Christ, we will become His very expression. The husky, young American men, who assimilate so much of the rich American food, are the fullness of America. They are the expression of the riches of America, and this expression is the fullness produced by the riches. Christ possesses unsearchable riches. If we enjoy these riches, we will become His very expression, His fullness. The church today must be the fullness of the One who fills all in all. This is according to God’s eternal plan (Eph. 3:11) to accomplish the mystery hidden in God from the ages (v. 9). We need to practice the new way as persons who are linked with Christ and who go out with Christ to impart this Christ to people as life and as power so that they might be regenerated and baptized for the producing of the church.
