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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 4:15; John 15:16; Eph. 3:8-11; John 21:15-17; Acts 5:42; 1 Thes. 2:7; Eph. 4:12; 1 Thes. 2:11
In this chapter and the next chapter, we want to see four crucial matters for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. The church is not a congregation or an organization. The New Testament tells us emphatically that the church is the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23; Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12). A person’s body is not an organization but an organism. A wooden stand is a lifeless organization of pieces of wood that have been put together. Christ’s Body, however, is an organism. A newborn child is not brought into being by organization but is begotten, conceived, and formed organically in his mother’s womb. His birth is altogether a matter of life. The church also was born of God, in Christ, through Christ, and with Christ to be the Body of Christ. Thus, the church is altogether organic.
In the Old Testament there is a type concerning the church as the Body of Christ. This is the type of Eve. God created a man, but He did not create a woman. God took a rib out of Adam, and with that rib He built a woman (Gen. 2:22). This woman became Adam’s counterpart. Adam’s counterpart came out of him and was given back to him to be attached to him. Eve was the second part of this complete human being. A man is a unit but not a complete unit. The wife is the counterpart of the man. The husband and wife make a complete “melon.” The husband is one half, and the wife is the other half. When they come together, they match each other to make a complete unit. This is why the Bible says that it was not good for Adam to be alone (Gen. 2:18). For a man to remain alone is for him to be just half. He needs another half. To get married is to gain a complement, a counterpart.
The relationship of Eve with Adam is a picture showing the relationship that the church has with Christ. The church is not something organized but something that comes out of Christ and grows into His counterpart with His likeness. Paul received the revelation of the church as the Body of Christ. The Body is organic, not lifeless. Christianity in its degradation has made the church a lifeless organization instead of an organism. In human society there are different kinds of organizations or clubs, but the church is not like that. Apparently, the church is merely a kind of gathering, but actually the church is something born of God, with Christ, and through Christ to become Christ’s Body, His organism to express His very being.
A man’s body is his fullness for his expression. Christ is the Head of His Body, and the Body is the Head’s fullness for His expression. Because our physical body is organic, we have to care for it in an organic way. If a wooden stand has been damaged, I may fix it with glue or with nails and a hammer. But when my finger is cut, I cannot care for it in this way. If I keep the cut on my finger clean and protected, it will be healed by the life in my body causing the growth. The cut on my finger is healed by the growth of my body. This is organic. Only something with life can grow.
Because we are organic, whatever we eat must also be organic. When we eat organic food, it is digested and assimilated organically to become the very element in our blood. Eventually, it becomes the very cells and tissues of our body. This is an illustration of what it means to be organic. To be organic means to have life, and life moves, grows, begets, and develops. The church, composed of God’s chosen and redeemed people, is not something organized by God but something begotten by God with His life to make this entity full of life.
Our organic, physical body will not assimilate inorganic things. We human beings have been built up by eating. What we eat must be organic. Whenever we take in organic food, it works together with our organic body to build up our body. This is a good illustration of how the church can be built up. The church cannot be built up by adding something inorganic to it or by organizing it. The organic building up of the Body of Christ is altogether by the growth in life. Because the Body of Christ is an organism, its building up should be organic. In Paul’s Epistles there are four particular books dealing with the building up of the Body of Christ—Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. These four books show that the building up of the Body of Christ must be organic because the Body is altogether a matter of life.
We can make an addition to a physical building or house because it is inorganic, but we cannot make an addition to a tree. The tree increases by growing because it is organic. The church should not have inorganic things added to it. The church needs to grow in life. Anything inorganic that is added to the church is false, like a false denture that has been added to our own body. A person’s teeth were not added to his body but born into his body to be a part of his body organically. Today we must realize that the church can be built up only in the way of life, the organic way.
The inorganic, organizational way does not work, but whatever is organically begotten of the church or for the church really works. Today in the Lord’s recovery there is the need of the increase, but we should not consider that the increase of the church comes by the way of addition. The increase of the church is for the increase of the Body of Christ in the organic way. In order to have the increase of the Body of Christ accomplished, there are four crucial organic matters that we greatly need: begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and prophesying. In this chapter we will fellowship concerning begetting, nourishing, and perfecting, and in the next chapter we will go on to talk about prophesying.
For the organic building up of the Body of Christ, we first need to beget others, to bear fruit (1 Cor. 4:15; John 15:16a). In John 15 the Lord likened Himself with all the members of His Body to a vine tree with its branches. We the believers are the branches of Christ, the vine tree. This tree is for reproducing and for increasing by its branches bearing fruit. The branches of the tree bearing fruit is not by the way of addition but by the way of growth. When the vine tree bears fruit, it bears clusters of grapes. That is the issue of the rich flow of life from within. The fruit is not something just attached or added but something begotten by the outflow of the life from within. The Lord said in John 15:16 that He chose us and appointed us to go forth and bear fruit. He has chosen us and He has appointed us to go forth. What does go forth mean? This simply means you have to go to reach people. We go forth to beget people so that they become our fruit. In 1 Corinthians 4:15 Paul said to the Corinthians, “Though you have ten thousand guides in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” Because Paul begot them through the gospel of Christ, he was their father, and they were the fruit of the vine tree brought forth by him.
We need to realize that the preaching of the gospel to save sinners is the dispensing of the very elements of Christ into them. To minister, to dispense, the riches of Christ into people is the real and actual preaching of the gospel. In Ephesians 3:8 Paul says that he preached the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel. The gospel Paul preached was the riches of Christ. He did not preach mere doctrine or theology. He preached Christ Himself as the Spirit of life. To minister Christ as life into others, we must be very living. A withering, dying branch cannot bring forth any fruit, because there is not much life within. To be the fruit-bearing branches of Christ, we must be living by the riches of Christ, which we will minister, impart, and dispense to others. Our preaching is to minister a living One, the life-giving Spirit, into others so that others may have the same life that we do. This is what it means to bear fruit. All the fruit that we bring forth will be attached to Christ, or grafted into Christ, organically.
To bear fruit is the initial step for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. Therefore, we all have to bear such a burden. We are branches of Christ, and as branches, we all have the duty to bear fruit. The Lord told us clearly that if we do not bear fruit, we will be cut off from the vine tree (John 15:2a, 6a). This does not mean that we will perish but that we will lose the rich enjoyment of Christ. Branches that have been cut off from the tree lose the riches of the tree as their enjoyment. This is quite serious.
In order to bear fruit, we must be living. It is difficult for branches to bear fruit if they are very old. It is easy for the new branches to bear fruit. In our recent past in the Lord’s recovery, we did not have much increase. This indicates that we had become old and that we were not so fresh or new. Regardless of how many years we have been Christians, we have to be renewed. We have to be new and fresh. The way to be new is to contact the Lord. If a brother who is only sixteen years old does not contact the Lord for a period of time, he will become old. Once we contact the Lord, we will become fresh and new. After we contact the Lord, it will be easy for us to reach people in our freshness and newness to bring forth fruit. I hope that this fellowship will help us to realize our need to bear fruit. We should not excuse ourselves by saying that we are too old because we have been Christians for many years. Regardless of how many years we have been in Christ, we still need to be rich, new, and fresh to bear fruit.
Now I would like to give some practical suggestions concerning how to preach the gospel. Throughout church history, many good saints preached the gospel by knocking on people’s doors. Knocking on doors is not the goal. Knocking on doors is for the preaching of the gospel. Before going out to preach the gospel, it is profitable to consider whom you should go to visit. You have to consider first your in-laws and relatives. You may have been in the Lord for many years, yet still there are people in your family who remain unbelieving. A principle is set up in Acts 1:8 where the Lord charged the disciples to evangelize first Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then the uttermost part of the earth. We have to start our preaching of the gospel from the center to those who are closest to us, that is, to our in-laws and relatives. We owe the gospel to them. First, we have to knock on their doors. Then we can consider our friends, our colleagues, our classmates, and our neighbors. Our friends who get saved also have their in-laws, relatives, friends, colleagues, classmates, and neighbors. In this way the gospel will be spread through personal contacts.
When we preach the gospel, we also need to consider how many people we will be able to care for. We may be able to save many people, but can we take care of them all? We do not need to save more than we are able to care for. We can get three or four saved and then begin to take care of them. We will be like mothers with these newborn babes. If we have too many children, who will cherish and nourish all these little ones? If we save many people and are not able to care for them, they will die. If we have twenty cousins, we should get only three or four of them saved and baptized. Then twice a week we can go to feed them. We should not expect, however, that all four under our care will remain. It may be that only one will be remaining fruit, but we should not be disappointed. We can go further to visit our classmates or colleagues to get two or three more saved. If we practice in this way, we will always have three or four new ones under our care. If we do this faithfully, we can gain two remaining fruit every year. The Lord Jesus chose us and appointed us that we should go forth and bear fruit and that our fruit should remain. When four people get saved through our gospel preaching, we do not need to knock on more doors. We should take care of these four new ones. We should expect to bear two remaining fruit in a year.
Perhaps one-third of the saints will be able to go out to preach the gospel. When they get many baptized, they can share these new ones with others who cannot go to knock on doors. They can let the other saints “adopt” some of the new ones they have begotten. Perhaps we begot five children, but we can take care of only three. Then we can ask some other brothers and sisters to care for the remaining two. If the church does well in bearing fruit, it will be doubled yearly. Although we may have baptized many in the past, not many of them remained, because we did not spend adequate time to nourish them, to take care of them, and to raise them up. After mothers give birth to children, they have to spend time to cherish them, nourish them, and take care of them for a long time. If we devote two days a week, three hours each day, to the Lord for the gospel and the care of new ones and do this regularly all year, each of us will gain two remaining fruit yearly.
We may think that bearing two fruit yearly is easy, but it depends upon our labor. This is why we need a revival every day. We need to go to the Lord every morning. A morning is a new start. According to the natural law, the sun rises every twenty-four hours. We also need to rise with the sun every morning to be revived by the Lord. There is a big boulevard in San Francisco named Sunset Boulevard. I do not particularly care for the name of this boulevard because I do not want to live in the “sunset” but in the “sunrise.” Every morning we need to go to the Lord to enjoy Him as a new sunrise (Luke 1:78). Every morning we can have a new start with the Lord. It is possible for us to have three hundred sixty-five new starts each year. Proverbs 4:18 says, “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, / Which shines brighter and brighter until the full day.” We must have a new start every day. We should not start our day without first going to the Lord in the morning. If we contact the Lord, we will be fresh, new, and rich. Then we can separate two evenings a week, three hours each evening, to visit people for the preaching of the gospel, to have home meetings to nourish the new ones, or to have small group meetings to teach and perfect them.
We must look to the Lord for the salvation of our in-laws, relatives, friends, neighbors, classmates, and colleagues. We do not necessarily need to knock on “new doors” when so many of those related to us and around us need the Lord’s salvation. The point is that we need to beget others, to bear fruit, by preaching the gospel to save sinners for the organic building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 3:8-11). If we preach the gospel in this way, the ones saved through us will be organic. Once they have been begotten, we need to be like nursing mothers to nourish them so that our fruit will remain. If we bear fruit yearly, we will live a joyful life. To see people saved is a real joy. Furthermore, when we see the new ones under our care growing in small things and in great things, we will be very happy.
We need to do our best to go to visit people to save them and to go to the homes of the saved ones to meet with them. Our meeting with them should not be in a legal, dead way but in a living and flexible way, which is the organic way. When we go to a home meeting, we must be full of life, singing, praising, and praying. Perhaps you will be singing a hymn while you are knocking on the new ones’ door. When they open the door, they can join your singing. Then the home meeting will start in a living way. We do not need to be set on what we would share in the home meeting. We need to be flexible and allow them to ask questions. The new one whom we have recently baptized may say, “It is so strange. It seems to me that since I was baptized, someone or something is within me telling me to do this and not to do that. What is this?” Then we can tell him, “That is the Lord Jesus within you. Before you were baptized, you did not have this experience, but now you do.” We can take this opportunity to fellowship with him for about fifteen minutes, teaching him that as a saved person, the Lord Jesus is living within him and is telling him what to do and what not to do. We can fellowship with him, cherishing him and encouraging him to go on. After six months of meeting with this new one on a regular basis, he can be established.
We need to exercise to nourish the new believers for our fruit to remain (John 21:15-17; 15:16b) by having home meetings with them. In these home meetings we can cherish the newly baptized ones as a nursing mother (1 Thes. 2:7) for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. All the steps of the way to practice the Lord’s present recovery are for this organic building. We may bring people to Christ for their salvation, but they may not have anything to do with the church organically. However, when we preach the gospel organically and nourish the new ones organically, the result will also be organic for the building up of the Body in the organic way. Our practice is not only to help the church to increase but also to build up the organic Body of Christ.
We need to go on from nourishing the new ones in the home meetings to perfecting the saints, to equipping them (Eph. 4:12). In these small group meetings we need to teach the believers as a father (1 Thes. 2:11) so that they can carry out the practical church life for the work of the New Testament ministry—the organic building up of the Body of Christ. We can bring three or four new families together to form a group. The perfecting of the saints can take place in the small groups. Ephesians 4:11-12 says that Christ, the Head, has given some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints. We may have thought that the evangelists were just for the preaching of the gospel, but Ephesians 4 tells us that they are for the perfecting of the saints. The perfecting carried out in the small groups is by the way of fellowship, prayer, and mutual care. We can fellowship with the newly baptized ones to know their condition so that we can take care of their spiritual, physical, or financial situation and pray for them. We can also take about fifteen minutes to teach them the truth. If we teach the truth to them for fifteen minutes a week, they will accumulate the proper knowledge of the truth. We also have to help them to seek after the growth in life. In these meetings are fellowship, prayer, mutual care, the teaching of the truth, and the encouragement to seek after the growth in life.
After six months of these kinds of meetings, the new ones will be equipped to carry out the practical church life. Actually, the practical church life is carried out in the small groups, not in a big congregation. The practical church life cannot be carried out with a big congregation. With the traditional church meetings in which one person speaks and the rest listen, general teaching can be released but no particular perfecting can be carried out. For people to be productive in human society, they must receive some particular training, or perfecting. In colleges, students study a particular major. Others may go to trade schools to learn a particular trade. In the past we mainly had general teaching without particular perfecting. Nearly every Lord’s Day a message was given, but the teaching was too general. By having the small groups, however, everything will be particular. Everyone in the small group meetings will be perfected to do what the gifted persons do. They will be perfected to go to preach the gospel to gain new ones, to take care of home meetings, and to take care of small group meetings. The twenty in one group may eventually become ten groups. In this way the saints will be perfected and the church will be increasing all the time.
We need the begetting through preaching the gospel, the nourishing of the new ones for remaining fruit, and the perfecting for the teaching, instructing, and educating of the saints. This will afford us a very practical church life that is full of life, altogether organic. Such a church will grow fast not only in numbers but also in life. If a church of one hundred saints doubles every year, this church can grow to one million within thirteen years. This is a thousand-percent increase. We had little increase in the past because we did not have the proper, scriptural practice. Now we need to rise up to take this organic way. In order to take this organic way, we need more prayer and even fasting. We need to have a thorough dealing with the Lord concerning our daily walk. We must be living persons, right persons, and dealt with persons. Then the power and the life will be with us, and all the riches of Christ will be our portion. Surely we will be living, strong, and full of the uplifted Christian virtues. This will make us prevailing in our service to the Lord.
To visit people with the gospel, to have home meetings with the new ones, and to have small group meetings with them should be considered as a part of the meetings of the church. The unbelievers spend their leisure time on worldly entertainment and amusement, but the best entertainment and amusement is the church life. We have to reconsider our situation. These crucial matters for the organic building up of the Body of Christ—begetting, nourishing, and perfecting—are not just the responsibility of the elders. They are the duty of all the saints. If we would devote two three-hour sessions a week to the Lord for the purpose of begetting, nourishing the new ones, and perfecting, equipping, the saints, we will see the positive results. All of us will be able to bear two remaining fruit yearly.
