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Scripture Reading: 4-10, Eph. 2:14-22
I. Created by Christ — Eph. 2:14-22:
А. In Himself as the sphere and element substantially — v. 15.
B. By slaying the enmity (the issue of the different ordinances in living and worship) through the cross — v. 16b.
C. Putting the two (the Jews and the Gentiles) into one Body — v. 16a.
D. To be God’s household and God’s kingdom — v. 19.
E. Being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit — vv. 20-22:
1. Upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets — v. 20a.
2. With Christ as the joining cornerstone — v. 20b.
II. Enlivened by God — vv. 4-10:
А. With Christ as life organically — vv. 5-6:
1. Making the members (constituents) of the new man alive together with Christ — v. 5.
2. Raising them up together with Christ — v. 6a.
3. Seating them together with Christ in the heavenlies — v. 6b.
B. By grace through faith — v. 8:
1. By grace — by having the processed Triune God dispensed into the believers.
2. Through faith — through Christ moving in the believers as their faith, their substantiating ability to apprehend the divine favor given to them in Christ.
C. To be the poem, the masterpiece, of God — v. 10:
1. To show forth the wisdom in God’s grace — cf. v. 7; 3:10.
2. And to have a new man walk in the good works, which God prepared for him beforehand.
D. That God might display in the ages to come the surpassing riches of His grace toward the believers in Christ Jesus — 2:7.
Prayer: Lord, we thank You that You have brought us back again by gathering us into Your name. We trust in Your blessing. You helped us last night in one way. This morning we look unto You for further help maybe in another way. Thank You, Lord Jesus. You are the One in whom we trust all the time. We needed You yesterday, and this morning we need You again. We need You every moment. Be with us. Show us Your presence. May You be so dear and so near to us. Each one of us needs Your presence. Visit us, Lord. Visit us with Your mercy, grace, blessing, light, life, strength, and power. Thank You, Lord Jesus, You are the Head. You are the Lord of all. You are God’s centrality and universality. You are our center and our everything. We trust in You for this meeting. Amen.
Before going on to see the revelation of the Body of Christ in Ephesians 2, I want to share a further word on this revelation in Ephesians 1. I have shared messages on the book of Ephesians in conferences and trainings probably more than ten times in diverse places. We may feel that Ephesians is a familiar book to us. Some may wonder why we need to come back to Ephesians again. To explain this I would like to use the illustration of our physical body. To know the outward features and appearance of our body is easy, but to know the intrinsic composition and structure of our body is difficult. The medical field is very difficult because there are many intrinsic, mysterious things in a person’s body. It is easy for us to declare that the Body of Christ is the fullness of the One who fills all in all. Even a second grader can say this, but what does it mean? I do not have the confidence that we understand this. We need to see what the Body of Christ is intrinsically. My burden is to help us all to get into an intrinsic view and an intrinsic apprehension of the Body of Christ.
I would like to summarize what we covered in the previous chapter. We saw God the Father’s impartation into His chosen and predestinated people. God the Father’s impartation is of two items. First, God the Father imparted, dispensed, His nature into us. We know this because Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us in Christ “before the foundation of the world to be holy.” The phrase to be holy indicates that God has to put His nature into us. God, however, did not put His nature into us in a wild way. He did it in a planting way. God has planted His holy nature into our being.
In the previous chapter we pointed out that only one in the whole universe is holy. Holiness is nothing less than God Himself. Holiness is God. Then how could we be holy? The only way is for God to plant Himself into us as a small seed. At the moment we believed in the Lord Jesus, God the Spirit planted, or sowed, Himself as a little seed into our being. This little seed is organic. Any organic seed of life grows and increases. It is the same with God as the seed within us. This divine seed grows within us gradually until our whole being is sanctified. Eventually, we will be saturated wholly with God’s nature as the seed. Very few Christians have ever seen this. Some may have seen that God’s choosing is to make us holy, but they have not seen that to be made holy by God implies that God has to plant, to sow, Himself into us as the very seed of holiness. This is a great thing.
God created us without the element of holiness, but He intended to make us holy. In order to make us holy, God had to take a second step after the first step of the old creation. God had to take a second step to make the new creation out of the old creation. Before I was saved, I was a part of the old creation of God. God was not in me. But one day when I was nineteen years old, I turned to God and opened up myself to Him. At that moment God sowed Himself into me. God planted Himself as a small seed into my being. The holy nature of God came into me as a small seed, and that seed is organic.
I would like to give a testimony as an example of the growth of God’s holy nature within us. When I was young, I was fond of playing soccer. A few years after I got saved, I was playing soccer, and the ball came to me. When it reached me, I stopped. I could not kick the ball. Something within me turned away, so I walked off the playing field. People wondered what happened to me. They may have thought I was sick, but I was not sick. The living, holy seed of the divine nature had been growing within me, and this living, organic divine nature did not agree to kick the ball. I wanted to kick the ball, but another element within me, another person within me, would not go along with me. Instead, I had to go along with Him, so I walked off the playing field. This is the Christian life.
The Christian life is not a matter of outward regulations. We live the Christian life by something organic growing within us. By the growth of the seed of holiness within me, I was sanctified from playing soccer. From that day, when I walked off the playing field about sixty years ago, I never played soccer again. There is not a verse in the Bible that says Christians should not play soccer. But the One who was growing in me would not play soccer. I wanted to play, but He did not. This was the growing of the holy God within me. This is something precious.
Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us to be holy, and verse 5 says that in choosing us, He predestinated us unto sonship. Why did God predestinate us? Why did God put a mark on us to indicate that we belong to Him? This is because God wanted not only to make us holy as He is but also to make us His sons. How could God make us His sons? God made us His sons not by adopting us but by begetting us. He made us His sons by sowing His seed, His divine life, into our being. His divine life was sown into our being along with His nature. This divine life, after getting into us, begets us to make us the sons of God. We were not adopted by God, but we were begotten by Him. Because of His begetting, we all have become sons of God.
Now what is within us? For holiness, the nature of God is within us. For sonship, the life of God is within us. I had been reading Ephesians for many years, but I did not see this until recently. One day I saw that Ephesians 1:4 and 5 show the dispensing of God’s holy nature into us and the dispensing of God’s life into our being. We are human beings, but we have the divine nature and the divine life. We all need to declare, “Hallelujah! I have the holy nature of God, so I am holy. I have the divine life, so I am divine. I am a divine son of God with His divine life and His holy nature!”
Although we are a new creation, much of our being is still in the old creation. We still have the “old cocoon” of our old nature. This old cocoon comes out many times in what we do. In our daily experience we should not forget our status as sons of God. The son of the president would conduct himself with a certain dignity because he realizes his status. We need to realize our divine status, but often we sell our divine status too cheaply. We argue and lose our temper with people. When we do this, we are not living as sons of God. We always need to be kept by remembering that we are sons of God who have God’s life, the divine life, and God’s nature, the holy nature. The Body of Christ is the issue of God the Father’s impartation of His holy nature and of His divine life into His chosen people. This is the initiation of the divine impartation with the Father’s life and nature as the source.
Then God the Son came in to accomplish redemption. Christ redeemed us out of Adam into Himself, out of the world into Himself, out of sin into Himself, and out of death into Himself. Where are we now? We are in Christ. In Christ is a small phrase with a great meaning. Henry Alford, in his notes on the New Testament, says that the phrase in Christ means that Christ is the sphere, the realm, and the element in which and with which we have been redeemed. We have been redeemed into Christ as a sphere for us to stay in and as an element for us to be made something. In Ephesians 1:7-12 we are told that we sinners, after being redeemed into Christ, have become God’s inheritance, His treasure. How could sinners be God’s treasure, God’s inheritance? This is because we sinners are in Christ, having Christ as our precious element. Before we received Christ, we were absolutely worthless. David said that he was a worm (Psa. 22:6). This is what we were before we were saved, but Christ redeemed us through His blood out of what we were and put us into Himself. Now He is not only our sphere but also our element for Him to make us precious with Himself. We all have been redeemed, and now we have Christ as the precious One within us. Christ is not only a sphere where we should stay, walk, and be a Christian but also the precious element for us to be made with Him as a precious treasure to God. Thus, we sinners all have become God’s inheritance. Now we can declare that we have not only God’s nature and God’s life but also God’s element.
Something can be made with an element. Christ has made us something so precious with Himself as the element. This element is also organic. Whatever the Triune God is to us is organic. He has sown Himself into us, and His element is growing within us. Gold as a physical element is not organic, but the gold in the New Jerusalem is organic. This gold signifies the divine nature of God. All the gold in the New Jerusalem is organic and living.
The element is more intrinsic than the substance, and within the element is something even more intrinsic — the essence. God the Spirit came in, following the Father and the Son, to seal us with Himself as the sealing ink (Eph. 1:13). This is to dispense the divine essence into our being. Thus, now we have the divine nature, the divine life, the divine element, and the divine essence. We are so divine, dear saints! I hope that we can see this. I can testify that one day the Lord showed me this. In His choosing, He imparted His nature into us. In marking us out as His sons, He imparted His life into us. Furthermore, when Christ redeemed us, He redeemed us into Himself as an element with which He made us a treasure to God, an inheritance. Furthermore, because we became His possession, His treasure, His Spirit came into us as a seal, to put a mark on us. This mark is also organic.
The sealing of the Spirit is not once for all. It is still going on, and the divine ink of this sealing never dries. It remains wet. First, as this divine ink saturates us deeply, we are vertically saturated. Then the divine ink spreads within us, and we are horizontally permeated. Thus, our whole being will be soaked with the Spirit as the sealing ink, and this sealing ink is the essence. Now we have the Father’s nature and life, we have the Son’s element, and we have the Spirit’s essence — all divine.
When we are asked the following questions, we must say Amen. Are we holy? Amen. Are we sons of God? Amen. Are we a treasure, an inheritance of God? Amen. Are we sealed by God the Spirit? Amen. This means that we are divine. We have God’s nature, God’s life, God’s element, and God’s essence. I have put out many teachings on Ephesians in the past, but this particular point is new. This is why I am so burdened to share again on the intrinsic view of the Body of Christ in Ephesians.
What is the Body of Christ? The Body of Christ is not only composed of but also constituted with God’s nature, God’s life, God’s element, and God’s essence. The church as the Body of Christ is not a group of poor Christians who are losing their temper, criticizing one another, and fighting one another. This is not the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is one entity constituted with God’s nature, God’s life, God’s element, and God’s essence. I hope we can see this. This is the intrinsic constitution of the Body of Christ — a constitution with God’s nature, life, element, and essence.
In addition to this intrinsic constitution, we need power. We Christians are not common. We are very particular because we have the divine power. Unbelievers cannot overcome their temper, but we can. Paul says, “I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me” (Phil. 4:13). In the One who empowered him, strengthened him, Paul could do everything.
In the past certain ones came to me, telling me that they could not live the Christian life. A brother came to me and said, “As a husband, I am charged by Ephesians 5 to love my wife. I must confess to you, Brother Lee, I just cannot love my wife.” He thought that God might have made a mistake by giving him the wrong wife. He knew that a Christian husband should love his wife and should not divorce, but he said that he could not make it and had no way to go on. When he asked me what he should do, I said, “You have to be a Christian.” Then he said, “But I cannot make it.” I responded, “You cannot make it, but Christ can make it.” I told him that if we are in ourselves, we are through. But we have to realize that we are in Christ. We are in the One who empowers us, strengthens us, to be able to do everything. I encouraged him to take Christ as the One who empowers us and to remain in Him.
Husbands can love their wives in Christ, the One who empowers them. This remedy is very effective. A number of saints were helped by this kind of fellowship. They were helped to love their wives in Christ as the empowering One. Within us intrinsically, we have a divine constitution. We also have the divine power operating upon us and within us. This power is the Triune God.
Ephesians 1 speaks of the impartation of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit, the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity, but it also reveals that the three of the Triune God work together to become a kind of power. The Father is embodied in the Son, and the Son is realized as the Spirit, making the Triune God a power. This power is greater than any other kind of power.
The Triune God caused this power to operate in Christ in raising Him from the dead, in seating Him at the Father’s right hand in the heavenlies, in subjecting all things under His feet, and in giving Him to be Head over all things. Christ was uplifted not from the earth to the moon but to the third heaven to sit in the heavenlies. He overcame the dark power of Satan in the air. All things were subjected under His feet, and He was given to be Head over all things to the church, to the Body. Everything that the Head is, is to the Body, that is, to be transmitted to the Body.
We possess the Triune God not only as our intrinsic constitution but also as our outward and inward power. We are powerful. We have a divine, intrinsic constitution with God’s nature, God’s life, God’s element, and God’s essence. We also have the Triune God, processed and consummated, as the power operating upon us and within us to make us powerful. With this power we can do everything. We can suffer things that others cannot suffer. We can bear a burden that others cannot bear. We can love people whom others cannot love. This is the reality of the Body of Christ.
I am burdened to point out the intrinsic element and essence of the Body of Christ in the book of Ephesians. In chapter 1 of Ephesians, the Body of Christ is the coming out, the issue, of God’s impartation and transmission. In chapter 2 the church as the Body of Christ is the new man (v. 15). For the church as the Body of Christ there is the need of life, but for the new man there is the need of life plus the person. A body has life, but a man has life plus the person. Thus, the church is not only the Body that has the divine life but also the new man who has God as his person. To the Body, God is life; to the man, God is a person. Within us there is not only the divine nature, the divine life, the divine element, and the divine essence but also the divine person. We have a person in us.
In the whole universe there are only two men. One is the old man, and the other is the new man. The old man is the man in Adam, and the new man is the man in Christ. We believers are not the man in Adam but the man in Christ. Now I would like to ask how this could be. How could we become a new man? In Ephesians 2 we are told definitely that Christ created the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers, the two, into one new man (v. 15).
Before we were put into Christ, we were all old men. We need to realize that in Adam we are six thousand years old. We are as old as Adam. When Adam lived in the garden, we were there. When Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we ate it also. We are not only old; we are ancient. We are “antiques.” But in Christ, all these antiques were chosen by God. He has chosen all of us antiques, and He marked us out. Then Christ came to accomplish the Father’s purpose, and He put all these antiques in Himself, using these antiques as materials and creating them, Jews and Gentiles, in Himself into one new man.
We need to see how Christ created us. He put all of us antiques into Himself. First, He brought us, all the antiques, to the cross to cross us out, to crucify us, to terminate us. As the old creation, we all have been crossed out by Christ on the cross. Through His cross He has annulled, abolished, all the differences among the antiques. The ordinances, the forms or ways of living and worship, divided the Jews and Gentiles. One Jewish lady told me that if a kitchen utensil had been used for eating pork, she could smell the pork on that utensil even if it had been washed. Religious Jews, of course, do not eat pork, but the Gentiles eat pork, and many of them are a constitution of pork. Then how could the Jews and the Gentiles be one? The ordinances in the Old Testament law made this, humanly speaking, an impossibility. But Christ on the cross has not only abolished the ordinances concerning pork; He has also terminated all the people who eat pork and all the people who hate pork. All Jews and Gentiles have been terminated. All ordinances have been abolished. In the church life we have people of five colors among us — white, black, yellow, brown, and red. However, we are still one. We are one because we have been terminated. Christ has terminated us on the cross. This was done within Him as the element.
Christ’s death was different from anyone else’s death. No human being works when he is dying, but Christ was different. While Christ was being crucified, He was working. The Jews crucified Him, but the Bible says that Christ abolished and created. Christ abolished the ordinances and created the Jewish and the Gentile believers in Himself into one new man. Christ did a work on the cross. While He was dying, He was working. When He was working there to terminate us, He put into us something of Himself, which is His element of the resurrection life. Resurrection life could never be applied to any natural man. Resurrection life could only be applied to the crucified ones. When we were crucified, Christ as the resurrection life, as the divine element, was applied to us. Now the ones who have been terminated through Christ’s cross have something of Christ as the element in resurrection.
While He was on the cross terminating us, He was also putting something of Himself as the divine element in resurrection into our being. When we passed through termination on the cross, we became a new man with Christ as the element in resurrection. His cross could terminate us, but His cross in itself could not make us one. There must be something in addition to the cross. This is His resurrection life. His resurrection life is the best “glue” that sticks us all together. The cross clears up and terminates all the negative things, and His resurrection life is the best glue to stick us together. Then we all become one new man. Through the cross we became clean, and in His resurrection life we were glued together. Nothing can separate us in resurrection.
On the cross Christ crossed all of us out. He purged us, cleansed us to make us clean. Then He put this clean material into His resurrection life, and this resurrection life glued us together to make us one entity. First, this one entity is the Body; second, it is the new man. This is Christ’s creation. By doing this, He “hit two birds with one stone.” First, He created a new man; second, by creating us, the Jews and Gentiles, into one new man, He reconciled us all, Jews and Gentiles, in one Body (v. 16). This indicates that the one new man is the one Body.
Ephesians 4 says that all the members, all the parts, of the Body are joined together through the joints of supply and knit together through every part functioning in its measure (v. 16). We are doubly stuck together through the joints and the parts of the Body of Christ, the new man. The new man is composed of the Head and the Body. The Head is Christ; the Body is the church. The Head and the Body joined together are the new man.
Ephesians 2:14-22 reveals that the new man was created by Christ. Ephesians 2 has another part, verses 4 through10, which tells us that this new man created by Christ on the cross with Himself as the resurrection element needs a kind of intrinsic constitution. When we were the old man, we were dead in our offenses and sins (v. 1), but we were enlivened by God with Christ as life organically (vv. 5-6). We are speaking of things that the people in the world and even many Christians could not understand. Yet we are talking about the spiritual, divine realities and facts.
When Christ was creating the Jews and Gentiles into one new man, no doubt, He used His resurrection life as a kind of element to join all the parts together. Meanwhile, God also did something. Ephesians 2 tells us that two were working on the cross. First, it tells us that Christ was creating. Second, it tells us that God was imparting the divine life into these dead parts to make them alive. While Christ was creating, God was enlivening.
The second part of Ephesians 2 tells us only that Christ created us into one new man by crossing out the dirt of the old man and by sticking together all the parts with His resurrection life. But how did the divine life get into the new man? The first part of Ephesians 2 shows that while Christ was creating, God was enlivening. We were dead in trespasses and sins, so God made us alive together with Christ (v. 5). He raised us up together with Christ and seated us together with Christ in the heavenlies (v. 6). He subjected all things other than Christ under our feet and gave Christ to be Head over everything for us, making us a part of the Head. This is God’s enlivening. While Christ was creating, God was enlivening for the creation of the new man. This new man has been raised up and uplifted. All things have been subjected under the feet of this new man, and the Head of this new man is over all things. The new man in resurrection as the new creation is full of newness and full of life.
If we are the church, we should have nothing old. The church is altogether a new item. The oldness has all been crossed out, purged away by Christ’s death, and Christ has put Himself as the resurrection life into the crossed-out ones to be their divine element. Thus, all of us old antiques have become a new man. While Christ was creating, God came in to inject, to enliven, to dispense, Christ as life into us. Christ was creating, crossing out the old man, and God was putting in the new element, that is, Christ’s resurrection life. While Christ was creating, God was enlivening by dispensing the resurrection life of Christ.
On the one hand, Christ crossed the old man out and created the new man in Himself as the sphere and element. On the other hand, God was working to inject, to dispense, the resurrected Christ as life in order to enliven the dead ones, to raise them up from the dead, to uplift them to the heavens, to subject all things under their feet, and to make them one with the Head, Christ, who is over all things. What is the church? The church is the new man. The old man has been crossed out, and Christ as the resurrection life has been added into us to make us a new man, not only having Christ as our life but also having Christ as our person. We are now one with Christ as a new man. He is our life, and He is our person.
We may understand this doctrinally, but we need to practice taking Christ as our person. When we are going to the department store, we should realize that we are not the person. We should not make a decision. We should not make a choice. We have to say, “Lord, I am not the person. You are my person. Lord, do You want to go to the department store today?” We may feel that the Lord is going with us. But we should say, “Lord, if You are going with me, I don’t like this. I like to go with You. If You go, I go. It should not be that if I go, You go. It has to be — if You go, I go.” The Lord may then impress us that He is not going. If He is not going, we should not go.
The sisters should follow the Lord in their shopping. A sister may feel that the Lord went and she followed. When she gets into the department store, she may find something very attractive that is on sale. At this point she should check with the Lord, “Lord Jesus, I want to buy this, but do You want to buy it? If You buy it, I will follow You.” The Lord may respond, “I would never buy this.” Then the sister may say, “Lord, what shall I do?” The Lord would then tell her to go back home. This is what it means to take Christ as our person. If a sister practices this, she is a new man. Otherwise, she may be labeled a new man, but she is still old. Shopping is a big test to show us what we are and where we are.
When I lived in mainland China, I wore a long Chinese gown according to the custom of dress in China. When I came out of mainland China, I needed to change the way I dressed to the Western style. I discovered what an exercise it is to dress as a member of the new man. It was not easy to buy a necktie. As I went shopping for a necktie, I took the Lord as my person, and I had to drop so many of the ties I looked at. The Lord impressed me, “If you wear this tie, you cannot speak on the platform.” This shows that we have to take Christ as our person in all the details of our daily life.
Saints, are we really a new man? If we are, we have to live a life not only with Christ as our life but also with Christ as our person. Sometimes I have expressed something to my children in myself. After that I was rebuked by the Lord. The Lord impressed me that although I was a father, I was also a new man. For a new man to be a father, he must be a father in the “new man way.” The children may be naughty, but a father should not respond to their naughtiness in himself. A father must be a “new man father.” A “new man father” should act as a new man, taking Christ as his life and taking Christ as his person as well. The church must act as a new man. Maybe some of the leading ones in the churches argue, quarrel, and debate; that is not the new man. The leading ones should pray and fellowship together as a new man, taking Christ as their life and taking Christ also as their person. This is altogether through the cross and unto resurrection life.
Resurrection is our home. Resurrection is Christ to be the sphere where we should stay. Then we can bear the responsibility of the church. Then we can serve God and serve the saints through the cross and in resurrection. If we live in this way, we will grow up into Christ, the Head, in all things. We can then take the lead in the church as a new man reconciled to God. Then God is living Himself out of the church. The church as the Body of Christ is the new man, taking Christ as the life and as the person.
