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Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:17, 22-23; 2:15-16, 18-22; 4:3-4, 15-16, 23-24; 5:29
The book of Ephesians shows us clearly that the church is the Body of Christ, and we have seen that this Body comes out of the enjoyment of all the unsearchable riches of Christ. Most Christians have seen the fact that the church is the Body of Christ. So many Christian teachers talk about the church as the Body of Christ. But very few Christians realize that this Body is the issue of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ. Therefore, if we do not know how to enjoy the riches of Christ, we may have the doctrine of the Body of Christ, but it would be impossible to have the real experience of the Body life.
So we must see that to realize the real church life, the real Body life, we need the experience of Christ as the indwelling One. There is no other way for Christ to supply us with all His riches. Ephesians 5 tells us that just as people nourish and cherish their bodies, so Christ nourishes and cherishes His church. But how can Christ nourish His church? It is by His indwelling. He nourishes His church by His indwelling. As we enjoy all His riches, He makes His home in our heart. This is the way He nourishes His Body.
We all know that the basic need in the church life today is the building. Ephesians tells us that there must be the building up of the Body of Christ, but without the proper enjoyment of Christ, there is no possibility of any kind of building up. Building is something that cannot be easily separated. Do you believe that anything that has been built into a building could be easily separated? It would be very difficult. If the materials were just piled up, it would be easy to separate them, but once they have been built into a building, it is very difficult to pull them out.
To stay with the brothers and sisters for one or two years does not mean that you have the real building. You have to check whether your building up with the saints is real or counterfeit. It may not be a building up but a piling up. To check the kind of building you have is to see whether or not you can leave easily. If you can, it means that you have never been builded in.
In today’s Christianity there is no building. The most that they have is a piling up, and in many situations there is not even a piling up. Today I can meet with you, and tomorrow I can leave. If this is true, it proves that I have never been built in.
Then how can we have the proper building? Do not try to do it by yourself. That never works. The only building that avails comes out of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ. If we do not have the experience of Christ nourishing and cherishing the Body, we cannot be built up with others. Sometimes we think that if the Lord would put us together with Brother So-and-so, it would be easier to be built up. But God’s sovereignty did not put us with him, and if He did, we would find that he is the same as the rest. It is not a matter of the persons we are with; it is a matter of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ.
I can testify of Brother Watchman Nee, for I was with him for such a long time. Throughout his entire life he never changed co-workers. A small number left him, but he never changed. It was so easy for him to be built up with others.
Whenever we feel that it is difficult for us to be built with the brothers surrounding us, we must realize that we are short of the enjoyment of Christ. We are short of the nourishing of the indwelling Christ. If we experience the nourishing Christ through His indwelling, we can be built up with anyone. Do not consider that it is difficult for others to be built up. They are not the problem. We are the problem. If we would enjoy the riches of Christ and let Him nourish us, there would be no problem. The problem comes out of the shortage of the enjoyment of Christ. If we have the adequate enjoyment of Christ, His nourishing through His indwelling will solve every problem.
We have found by experience that rebuking others does not help much. If you are wrong and I come and correct you, I may offend you; I would not help you. I did this in the past, and it never accomplished much. We cannot do much by rebuking people. What they need, and what we also need, is the real enjoyment of Christ. If we would enjoy Christ more and then share what we have enjoyed of Christ with people, this would nourish them, and we would see more building up. Rebuking and correcting may work a little, but there is not much help with life. The help with life always comes from the proper enjoyment of Christ.
To experience the proper enjoyment of Christ, we must experience His indwelling. Only Christ can build. Many people talk today about being Spirit-filled, but there is no real experience of the indwelling Christ. Just look at their daily walk. They know how to talk about the Spirit, but they do not know how to enjoy and partake of all the riches of Christ in their spirit.
In the book of Ephesians, the Body of Christ is clearly revealed in chapter 1: “He subjected all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all” (vv. 22-23). But this chapter does not tell us the essential nature of the Body. The essential nature of the Body is the riches of Christ experienced by us. It is when we experience the riches of Christ that the essential nature of the Body is produced. The Body comes from the experience of the riches of Christ.
Many times I have illustrated in this way. Suppose we have a big American man. What is the essential nature of this man? He is composed of American chickens, beef, apples, oranges, and many other rich items of this rich country. This does not mean that if we put all these items together, we will have a big American man; that would be merely a pile of the items of the riches of America. However, when all these items are eaten and assimilated, a big American man is produced.
In the same way, if we put all the riches of Christ together, that is not the Body. The Body comes out of the experiential enjoyment of the riches of Christ. This is why it is so difficult to find the Body of Christ today in a practical way. In a sense, doctrinally speaking, there is the Body of Christ, but where is it practically? Throughout all the centuries there has been no shortage of teachings, doctrines, and gifts, but there has been a shortage of the real experience of the riches of Christ that bring forth the Body of Christ in a practical way.
Some people tell me, when they read all the books we have put out in Chinese and in English, that all we talk about is Christ and the church. Once, when I went to Texas, a lady asked me why I did not say anything about the home life. My answer was that there is too much talk about the home life but very little about Christ and the church. We must realize that the Lord has a shortage on the earth. I have been staying in this country for twelve years, yet I still have the same burden to tell everyone that they need the enjoyment of Christ in order to produce the Body of Christ. We have to come back to the book of Ephesians again and again to see that only the riches of Christ experienced by us can produce the Body of Christ.
We have seen already, in chapter 3 of Ephesians, that the Lord must make His home in our heart. Then in chapter 4 we see that we all must be perfected into a full-grown man. We must grow up into Him as the Head, that out from Him the whole Body might be built up. “For the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ, until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ...But holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ, 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” (vv. 12-13, 15-16). This is altogether a matter of His indwelling. Out from His indwelling, we will be perfected and grow up into Him, that out of Him the Body might come forth.
All mothers know that the perfecting of their children is not mainly a matter of teaching them. All the little babes have complete organs, but the functions are not developed. They have ears, but they cannot hear properly. They have eyes, but they cannot see so well. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They really need the perfecting work of the mother. If you try only to teach them to hear, to see, and to walk, you will kill them. This is not the perfecting they need. Real perfecting is to feed them, to nourish them, and to cherish them. Then they will grow into the proper function of all these organs.
This is the need of the church today. The church needs the proper nourishing, not with doctrines and teachings but with the living Christ as the life-giving Spirit with all His riches. The leading ones in the churches must realize that it is not simply a matter of taking the lead. There are many good leaders in the world. But what the church needs is some leading ones who know how to enjoy Christ themselves and how to minister this Christ to others in a living way. Then all the members will be perfected to build up the Body.
I am so happy to see that in these past few years so many have been brought into the real enjoyment of Christ. Nothing else could make me so happy. Even if we had one hundred thousand people coming to our meetings, yet very few of them experienced the real enjoyment of Christ, it would mean nothing. We would have a crowd, but we would not have the Body. The Body of Christ can only come out of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ.
This is why, in all these past years in the churches, we have not practiced much correction. In a sense, some things are not good, yet we do not like to touch them. The church life is something living. It is not like chair arranging. We can arrange the chairs in a very good way, but if we go to an orchard, it is different. In an orchard you have to let them grow. You cannot say that one tree is too high, so you must cut it off; or another tree is too short, so you must pull it up. This may work in arranging chairs, but if you do this in an orchard, you will kill everything. The trees of the orchard need watering, nourishing, and fertilizing so that they may grow.
Likewise, there is no other way to help the saints to be perfected but by helping them to get the proper nourishment from the riches of Christ, and this is by His indwelling. Therefore, the key point in the book of Ephesians is that Christ would make His home in our heart. The building up of the Body of Christ comes out of this. It is thus that we will have a strong and enriched church life. Correction will produce little. What the church needs is the nourishment of Christ. It is only by enjoying His nourishment that He will spread within us to make His home in our heart. By His nourishment, He will grow in us, and by His growing, He will make His home in us. Then, though some may try to separate us, they cannot succeed, because we have all grown together into Him. We have grown up into Him by the riches of His indwelling. This is the real building, the real oneness, and the producing of the full-grown man.
When Christ makes His home in our heart, our whole being will be saturated by Christ. We will be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we will put on the new man. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man, which was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the reality” (Eph. 4:23-24). By Christ spreading within us, our mind is brought under the control of our spirit. So our spirit is called the spirit of our mind. Now every part of our being — mind, emotion, and will — is under the influence of the Spirit. In this way we put on the new man, which is the church life.
The church does not need organizing but growing, and the growing comes out of the nourishment of the indwelling Christ. If we know how to receive the nourishment of Christ, then He will take over our mind, saturate our emotion, and subdue our will. We will grow because He is growing within us. In His growing, we grow up into Him. The way we grow up into Him is to let Him grow in us. But this is not an individual matter. When we grow into Him, we all grow into one another. Therefore, no situation or circumstance can separate us, because we have the real building up in the Body of Christ.
This is what all the churches need. We must learn to enjoy the indwelling Christ by taking Him as our person, that He may grow within us to be our everything. Then He will spread Himself into our being, and we will all grow up into Him to have the proper building.
