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Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:2; 5:1; John 3:3, 5-6, 3:29-30; 1:12-13; Gen. 2:21-23; John 12:24; 1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:11-12; John 15:1, 5, 8, 16; Eph. 1:22-23; Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:32; 12:28; Eph. 3:19b; Rev. 1:4a, 11
I. The intrinsic essence of the church:
А. The divine life, which generates the church — 1 John 1:2; 5:1:
1. By the regeneration of the Spirit in the believers’ spirit — John 3:3, 5-6.
2. Making them the children of God as the bride of Christ, who is the Bridegroom, for His increase, as typified by Eve as the counterpart to Adam — 1:12-13; 3:29-30; Gen. 2:21-23.
B. Through the release of the divine life by Christ as the one grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying there for His multiplication — John 12:24.
C. Through the impartation of the divine life by Christ as the firstborn Son of God in His resurrection so that God may have many sons as the many brothers of Christ — 1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:11-12.
D. The many brothers of Christ being His many branches grafted into Him, the true vine in the universe, to bear much fruit for His enlargement in His spreading so that they might express the Triune God as His organism — John 15:1, 5, 8, 16.
E. This organism of the Triune God being the organic Body of Christ, constituted with His many brothers as the many members of His organic Body — Eph. 1:22-23; Rom. 12:5.
II. The organic existence of the church:
А. Existing in the universe as the one universal church of God for His universal expression, the fullness of God — 1 Cor. 10:32; 12:28; Eph. 3:19b.
B. Spreading in many localities on the earth as many local churches to be His local expressions — Rev. 1:4a, 11.
Prayer: Lord, how we thank You for this Thanksgiving weekend conference. May this conference be a real thanksgiving from us to You. Lord, cover us with Your precious blood. How much we need Your blood and Your anointing, the rich anointing with all the unsearchable riches of the Triune God. Lord, we thank You for the past. Thank You for the present. We even thank You for the coming days. Lord, be with us. We need Your presence. Lord, anoint the whole meeting. Anoint every attendant. Lord, open the heavens and give us a clear sky that we may have a clear view under Your oracle. Take away all the veils, take away all the clouds, and give us Your own revelation. We want to see something. We want not only to hear but also to see. Lord Jesus, we love You, and we want to see You in this meeting. We want to be touched by You. Touch us, Lord. Touch each one of us, and give to each one of us the particular word that we need. Lord, we thank You again that You are so sovereign. You are on the throne. We worship You, and we give You all the glory, yet we still remember Your enemy. Lord, we are fighting against him. We are always in the battle. Lord, fight the battle for us. Put him aside, and shame him. May all the glory be to You. Lord, may all the blessings be bestowed upon us. Thank You for the church. Thank You for Your oracle today. Speak in our speaking. Lord, we believe that You are one with us, one spirit with us, and we believe that we are one spirit with You. Thank You for this oneness. We pray in Your mighty name. Amen.
My burden in these messages concerns five intrinsic things. Four concern the church, and one concerns the winds of teaching. The first four intrinsic things of the church are: the intrinsic essence of the church for its organic existence, the intrinsic growth of the church for its organic increase, the intrinsic building up of the church for its organic function, and the intrinsic fellowship of the churches for their organic relationship. The intrinsic essence, the intrinsic growth, the intrinsic building up, and the intrinsic fellowship are all very positive. The last intrinsic factor of the winds of teaching for their evil purpose is a negative item.
When we speak of the essence of anything, we are referring to its most intrinsic part. Regarding the church, the most important positive factor is its intrinsic essence. Many in Christianity have made the church something outward. When some speak of the church, they mean a physical building. If they speak of going to church, they mean going to a chapel or cathedral or some kind of sanctuary. These are material things constructed of bricks, stones, steel, or wood. What a mistake this is! While others are somewhat improved in their concept, they still pay too much attention to the outward aspects of the church, such as its organization. Many Christians are experiencing conflicts with each other today because they are in the realm of the outward factors rather than centering on the intrinsic essence of the church. Instead of being one with one another to fight against God’s enemy, many Christians are divided and even fighting one another. This is similar to the fighting among the nations of the world. The United Nations was formed with the intention to unite the nations, but throughout the years there has only been division and fighting among them.
We need to see that the church is one. It is the only church of the unique God. This church is the unique Body of Christ, and Christ is the Head of this Body. In John 17 the Lord prayed that we all might be one (vv. 11, 21-23), but if we look at Christian history throughout the past nineteen centuries, we will find that the Christians have been fighting one another. The strange thing is that if we Christians had never come together, we would have no fighting. If there had been no marriage, there would be no divorce. Every divorce had its beginning with a dear, sweet, precious marriage.
I have been a Christian for sixty-four years. From the time that I began to meet with other Christians, I have witnessed much fighting. The closer we are to one another, the more of a tendency we have to fight with one another. Those who love each other can become enemies. Hatred can replace love, and jealousy can replace sympathy. This is today’s situation in Christianity. What a shame this is! Why has so much fighting taken place on this earth among Christians for so many centuries? It is because the Christians have turned from the intrinsic essence of the church to something outward.
There are four intrinsic matters of the church. The first of these is the essence of the church. Then the growth of the church is also intrinsic. If a tree grows, it grows in its intrinsic part. Following the growth is the building up of the church. The fourth intrinsic element of the church is its fellowship. The essence, the growth, the building up, and the fellowship are all very intrinsic. If every Christian remained in these four intrinsic matters, we would have no problems. Whenever we turn from the intrinsic matters to something that we can touch outwardly and that we can see outwardly, we are on the way to “divorce.” This is because all the outward, physical things are dividing factors.
If we learn this lesson and receive the grace of the Lord, we will say, “Lord, save me! Rescue me, and turn me from the outward to the intrinsic.” Then immediately we will be one. This is why I am so burdened to fellowship about these four crucial things: the intrinsic essence, the intrinsic growth, the intrinsic building up, and the intrinsic fellowship.
The divine life — God’s life, the eternal life, the uncreated life, the indestructible life — is the very essence of the church, and this divine life generates the church (1 John 1:2; 5:1). Of course, we cannot see this divine life, just as we are not able to see the structural steel in this meeting hall. This is because the steel is covered by stones and wood, yet the steel is the very essence of this building’s structure.
The essence of the church is the divine life, and the divine life is Christ as the very embodiment of the processed Triune God (John 14:6; Col. 2:9). God was just God in eternity past, but one day the entire God, the complete God in the second person of His Divine Trinity, became incarnated. Incarnation is a wonderful process whereby God entered into man. The Triune God entered into a human virgin’s womb and stayed there for nine months. It was by this wonderful process that He put man upon Himself and that He Himself became a man. God with His Divine Trinity was embodied in a man. That man, by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, was a real, perfect, and genuine man, yet His very intrinsic essence was God. He is both God and man, the God-man. This wonderful man lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. He lived in a carpenter’s home, and He Himself was a carpenter (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3). How wonderful it is that the Triune God in this man sawed wood and did carpentry work! This was His human living for thirty years.
When He was thirty years of age, He came out to minister. In His ministry He had to deal with “troublesome” ones like Peter and the Sons of Thunder, James and John (3:17). I do not know why the Lord Jesus did not choose disciples who were all wise, rich, and educated. Instead, some of those He chose were fishermen from Galilee. They were peculiar and rough like Peter. The Lord even chose Judas Iscariot, who became His betrayer. After the Lord’s betrayal He was arrested, but actually, He voluntarily entered into death (John 10:17-18). He bore the cross, and He went to the cross to die an all-inclusive death to solve all of our problems and all of God’s problems. He resurrected and then ascended to another realm, the third heaven, where He still is today (Eph. 4:10; Heb. 4:14; 1:3; cf. 2 Cor. 12:2).
God passed through all these processes to become someone who can carry out the dispensing. This is why we say that the church is the organism of the processed and dispensing Triune God. The very God whom we worship is a processed God. He has been processed in order to be a dispensing One. Our God is now the processed Triune God to be a dispensing God. Today He does not need to pass through any other process. What He is doing today is dispensing Himself into man. We should not forget that without God being processed, there is no ground for Him to dispense Himself into us. His passing through the processes was for Him to be a dispensing God.
Because He is the dispensing God, He is able to regenerate us, and this regenerating life is the divine life. The term divine life is simple, but the implication of this term is not that simple. The divine life is the dispensing God, who is the very essence of the church. We all can testify that when we were first saved, we were always happy to meet another saved one. Many times we became more intimate with one another than with our fleshly brothers and sisters. We Christians love one another because we have the same essence. It does not matter whether we are American, European, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, white, black, yellow, brown, or red. As long as we are real Christians, we have a loving essence within us. When we turn away from this intrinsic essence to touch other things, we begin to fight one another. After we have been together for a while, problems may begin to arise over outward things. In order to solve the problems between Christians, we must come to the intrinsic matters of the church: first, the intrinsic essence; second, the intrinsic growth; third, the intrinsic building up; and fourth, the intrinsic fellowship. We are safeguarded in these four intrinsic matters.
The intrinsic essence of the church is the divine life that the processed Triune God has dispensed and is now dispensing into us. The divine life generates us by the regeneration of the Spirit in our spirit. The divine Spirit begets the human spirit (John 3:3, 5-6). How wonderful it is that these two spirits are mingled as one (1 Cor. 6:17)! John 3 does not use the term Holy Spirit. It only says “the Spirit.” The Spirit is mingled with our spirit as one spirit. The Spirit becomes one with man, and this regenerated man becomes one with God. Is this not wonderful? Within us is a part that is mingled with God. God is so high, yet He has become one with us. I feel honored that I am one with God and that I have God one with me. This is the significance of regeneration. I hope that all the new believers could have this kind of uplifted understanding regarding regeneration. As soon as we were saved, we became mingled with God.
When we are regenerated, we are made the children of God as the bride of Christ, who is the Bridegroom, for His increase, as typified by Eve as the counterpart to Adam (1:12-13; 3:29-30; Gen. 2:21-23). Regeneration makes the believers the children of God. Because we are God’s children, we may say that our last name is “God.” We all know that our last name is our family name, and we all have become God’s family. This is why we call each other brothers and sisters. We are of one Father with one family name.
Individually, we are children of God, but corporately we are one entity, the bride of Christ. In the first part of John 3 the Lord Jesus spoke concerning regeneration. Later in the same chapter John the Baptist referred to the regenerated ones in totality as the one bride of Christ (vv. 29-30). John seemed to be saying, “I am not the Christ. I am not the one who comes to take the bride. Rather, He is the One, and you who are regenerated are the bride for Him. The One who takes the bride is the Bridegroom, and this Bridegroom has to increase, while I, who am not the Bridegroom, have to be reduced to nothing.” Eventually, John the Baptist was reduced to nothing, even to the point of his physical death by being beheaded. When the Lord Jesus was put to death, however, He did not remain in death; He resurrected. In His resurrection He brought many saved ones with Him and brought them forth to become parts of Him. When all these parts are put together, they become a bride as His counterpart.
The church is the bride of Christ, and according to typology, this bride is typified by Eve, who was Adam’s counterpart. Eve was first a part of Adam. While Adam was sleeping, God opened his side and took out a rib. Then God built that rib into a woman by the name of Eve and brought her to Adam to be his counterpart (Gen. 2:21-23). Before this, Adam had given names to all the animals, but he had never found his counterpart. When he saw Eve, he declared, “This time this is bone of my bones / And flesh of my flesh” (v. 23). Eve is a picture of the church. The church came out of Christ as a part of Christ. The intrinsic essence of the church is the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ. He is the essence of the church because the church was His part. The church is not only composed of children born of God, but the church is also the bride, the counterpart of Christ, a part of Christ as Christ’s increase.
Before Eve came into existence, she was a rib of Adam, a part of Adam. According to this revelation, we can say that before the church came into existence, she was a part of Christ. We may feel that this is too deep and beyond our comprehension, but even our physical body created by God is a wonder that we cannot comprehend. We should not trust in our mere mental comprehension of things. We need a revelation of the divine facts. The fact is that the church was a part of Christ before she came into existence. This is why every believer is a member of the Body of Christ. Just as the members of our physical body are parts of us, the members of Christ are parts of Christ. The divine life, the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ Himself, is the essence of the church.
Christ became the essence of the church through the release of the divine life. This divine life had to be released from His Divine Being. If the divine life had only remained in His Divine Being, concealed in His human body, it could have never been our life. For this life to be yours and mine, it had to be released. The divine life was released by Christ as the one grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying there for His multiplication (John 12:24). The life of a grain of wheat is confined within the shell of the grain. When the grain falls into the earth and dies, the shell is broken and the inner life of the grain is released. Christ went through such a death. He was like a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying in order to be released. With His death the divine life was released from one grain into many grains.
We were made the children of God as the bride of Christ through the impartation of the divine life by Christ, as the firstborn Son of God in His resurrection so that God may have many sons as the many brothers of Christ (1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:11-12). The release of the divine life is one thing, but the impartation of the divine life is another. The divine life was released out of Christ’s human shell. Now this released divine life has been imparted into us, the believers of Christ. This took place at the time Christ was resurrected. His resurrection included us (Eph. 2:6). We all were resurrected in Him, with Him, and by Him. Before we were born, we had already been resurrected nearly two thousand years ago (1 Pet. 1:3). The church is a resurrected item. Before resurrection God had only one Son, His only begotten Son (John 1:18; 3:16). In His resurrection He became the firstborn Son with many brothers. Now He is our big Brother, and we are the many sons of God. The divine life imparted into us in Christ’s resurrection is the intrinsic essence of the church, the organic Body of Christ.
The many brothers of Christ are His many branches grafted into Him, the true vine in the universe, to bear much fruit for His enlargement in His spreading so that they might express the Triune God as His organism (15:1, 5, 16, 8). This universal vine tree is our essence. God is our essence, Christ is our essence, and the vine tree is also our essence. The vine tree with its branches, the intrinsic and organic spreading of Christ, becomes Christ’s enlargement. In London, England, there is a vine tree that is called the Queen’s vine. Someone took me to see this vine tree in 1958. When he remarked about how large this vine was, I replied that this vine did not surprise me because I had seen a much bigger one. I am a branch of that big vine. The Queen’s vine is very small in comparison to the true vine. The vine of which I am a part is so long that it encircles the whole earth. This is the real great vine, which is the essence of the church. As the branches of the true vine, we are the multiplication of Christ, the duplication of Christ, the spreading of Christ, and the enlargement of Christ. This multiplication, duplication, spreading, and enlargement, the true vine with its branches, is the organism of the Triune God.
This organism of the Triune God is the organic Body of Christ constituted with His many brothers as the many members of His organic Body (Eph. 1:22-23; Rom. 12:5). The intrinsic essence of the church as the organic Body of Christ is the Triune God. It is by this intrinsic essence that the church can be held together as one. Our oneness is not in agreeing with one another’s doctrines. Our oneness is the processed and dispensing Triune God. Hallelujah for this oneness! If we have any problems with one another, it is because we have departed from the intrinsic essence, the processed and dispensing Triune God. If we stay with Him, forgetting all the different doctrines, there will be no problems.
The church exists in the universe as the one universal church of God for His universal expression, the fullness of God (1 Cor. 10:32; 12:28; Eph. 3:19b). Even the existence of the church is organic. Where the Triune God is, this living, organic church is, because this church is now one with the processed and dispensing Triune God. The church and the processed and dispensing Triune God are not two entities; they have become one entity. It is impossible for such a church to be divided.
The church is spreading in many localities on the earth as many local churches to be His local expressions (Rev. 1:4a, 11). Universally, the church exists in the universe. Locally, this church is expressed in many localities as local churches. To say that all the local expressions should be different from one another is a wrong teaching. This kind of erroneous teaching comes from not seeing that the churches are organic, with an intrinsic essence. Does the church in Anaheim have a particular, intrinsic essence different from the church in another locality? This is impossible! In the time of Peter and Paul every local church had the same one intrinsic essence. All the local churches on the earth today also have only one intrinsic essence, so the church cannot be divided, or split.
Not only the universal church but also the local churches are one. They are intrinsically one in the processed and dispensing Triune God. To solve our problems today, we must come back to the intrinsic essence of the church. If today we all limit ourselves to the one intrinsic essence of the church, every problem will be solved. To talk about whether all the churches are one or separate is to talk in darkness. This is talk without a vision of the intrinsic essence of the church. This chapter should be used by the Lord to “open the window” for us to look into and see the very intrinsic essence of the church and all the churches.
In 1 Corinthians 12:28 Paul says, “God has placed some in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then works of power, then gifts of healing, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.” First, God placed the apostles, who are universal in function. Second, He placed the prophets, who are not just universal in function, because prophets were a part of the church in Antioch (Acts 13:1). Third, He placed teachers, who were also present locally in Antioch (v. 1). Helps refers to the serving ones, the deacons, who help the saints in a local church, and administrations refers to the management of the elders in a local church. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, Paul puts apostles (who are universal), prophets and teachers (who are both universal and local), and deacons and elders (who are local) all together. This means that the word church in this verse implies the universal church and all the local churches.
In the eyes of God, the universal church and all the local churches are just “the church.” The processed and now-dispensing Triune God is one, and He is the very essence of the church. Therefore, this church, in both its universal and local aspects, is one church. When we come back to the intrinsic essence of the church, we will not talk wrongly about the differences of the churches. All the churches are the unique, one organism of the processed and dispensing Triune God.
