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Scripture Reading: Luke 10:1-6; Matt. 28:19; Eph. 3:8; 1 Cor. 4:15; Rom. 12:5; John 15:16; 1 Thes. 2:7; John 21:15-17
In the previous chapter we saw the crucial need for the Spirit and the Word in the organic building up of the church. In this chapter we want to see that we need to cooperate with the Lord to save sinners and to cherish and nourish the newly baptized ones for the organic building up of the church.
I am burdened for this matter of saving sinners because, generally speaking, many of us do not know its real significance. According to the thought of many, to save sinners is merely to rescue them from hell so that they may go to heaven. Although it is correct to say that to save sinners is to rescue them from eternal perdition, this is not God’s central thought, His eternal intention. The entire Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, unveils that God’s heart’s desire is to build up a Body for Christ. God desires to gain a Body for Christ. Christ is the embodiment of God (Col. 2:9), and He needs a Body for His expression that God may also be expressed in Christ. The thought of rescuing sinners from hell that they may go to heaven is natural and traditional. We are burdened to save sinners for the building up of the Body of Christ. To save sinners is to regenerate fallen people that they may become members of the organic Body of Christ.
In order to save sinners, we have to visit people where they are (Luke 10:1-6). We have to visit people to disciple them. The Lord told us in Matthew 28:19 to go and disciple the nations, baptizing them into the Triune God. There are many debates among Christians concerning the way to baptize people, but we need to see that when we baptize people, we are baptizing them into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The name denotes the person, so we are immersing people into the very person of the Triune God.
We may preach the gospel and baptize people according to our natural thought and concept. Hymns, #921 in our hymnal says,
The thought in this hymn is that the pitiful sinners need to repent. Although they are slighting Jesus, He is waiting for them. He is merciful and will save them. This hymn is very good in the thought that the sinners are perishing and that we need to rescue them, but the divine revelation conveyed in this hymn is too low and too shallow.
To save sinners is to minister Christ in His riches to people. Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:8 that he was given grace to preach the unsearchable, or untraceable, riches of Christ as the gospel. Paul’s gospel was not doctrinal teaching or theology. Paul’s gospel was the untraceable riches of Christ. Paul preached a person, and this person’s riches are untraceable. Our gospel to the nations must be the unsearchable riches of Christ.
To save sinners is also to beget them as children of God that they may become the members of the organic Body of Christ (1 Cor. 4:15; Rom. 12:5). They are enemies of God, and you have to beget them that they may become children of God. Your begetting them causes them to have a great change of life, change of nature, and change of character. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:15, “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.” Paul begot the Corinthians to make them children of God. When someone is begotten by us through the gospel, he is regenerated.
When we are preaching the gospel to people, is our intention to beget them? Do we preach the gospel with the understanding that we are going to make people members of the organic Body of Christ? We may have had only the intention to rescue the perishing, fallen sinners. The Lord’s gospel is not to invite sinners to go to heaven, but the Bible does tell us that we are going to make sinners God’s children. When they become God’s children, they become living members of the organic Body of Christ. We need a vision from the heavens to see what it is to save sinners. Then our understanding and our view concerning the preaching of the gospel will be revolutionized. We are not preaching the gospel to save sinners into heaven but to make them the living members of the Body of Christ. Our concept should be changed.
To save sinners is to bear fruit (John 15:16a). In John 15 the Lord told us that He is the vine tree and that we are His branches. He also said that as the branches of the vine tree, we have to bear fruit. To bear fruit is to have an overflow of the inner life. If the branches enjoy the rich supply of the inner life-juice, the inner life-juice will have an issue, and this issue is fruit. If the branches are very dry, they will not be able to bear fruit. The branches’ bearing of fruit is the impartation of the life from within them. Do we have the thought that our preaching of the gospel is a dispensing of the life element within us to someone else? This truth is not according to our natural concept. To preach the gospel is to impart, to dispense, the very inner life from within us to others for their regeneration.
We all have to build up a habit of preaching the gospel in the prevailing way revealed in the Scriptures, not in our natural way. The prevailing way to preach the gospel is to disciple the nations and baptize them into the Triune God, to minister Christ in His riches to the nations, to beget sinners, making them children of God that they may become members of the organic Body of Christ, and to bear fruit for the glorification, the expression, of the Father.
The Lord has shown us that He desires to build up His organic Body in the organic way. For this organic building He needs an increase. We can gain this increase by begetting the sinners to make them living members of the organic Body of Christ. In the past our rate of increase was very low. Furthermore, because our concept was too low concerning the preaching of the gospel, the concept of the ones whom we brought to the Lord was also low. We did not have the concept that the preaching of the gospel is for the organic building up of the organic Body of Christ. Neither the preachers nor the saved ones have the proper concept of preaching the gospel for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. When people get saved through our preaching of the gospel, we should be full of joy that they have become living members of Christ’s organic Body. The Lord desires to build up His organic Body, yet there is a shortage of material. The building is going on, but there is not much material with which to build. We bring sinners into the building by regenerating them. They are grafted into Christ and made alive to be the living members of the Body of Christ. The organic preaching of the gospel is a practical part of the building up of the Body of Christ.
I hope that in the Lord’s recovery, our concept concerning going out to preach the gospel will be altogether revolutionized. If I ask you what you are going to do when you are going to preach the gospel, you should say, “I am going to beget some that they may become the members of the organic Body of Christ.” We should drop the thought of saving sinners from hell so that they can go to heaven. This is according to our natural thought. We have to pick up the thought that we are going to gain some living members for Christ. Then we will have the intention to gain materials for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. We need to have such a change in our concept. We need to tell people, “You have nothing to do with Christ, but I am here to beget you, to regenerate you, to make you a living member of Christ.” If we speak in this way, the Spirit will cooperate with us. Then these new ones will be deeply impressed that they have become living members of the organic Body of Christ. From the first day of their Christian life, they will have received the proper understanding and realization of what it means to be saved.
To come to a sinner and tell him right away that you are here to disciple him and baptize him into the Triune God is not the wisest way to begin to preach the gospel. The wisest way is to say, “I have come here to share the riches of Christ with you, and I have the right and the position to minister some of these riches into you.” Then they may ask, “What are the riches of Christ?” We can tell them that the riches of Christ are different blessings. They may ask, “What are the blessings?” We can tell them: “Peace is a blessing, life is a blessing, light is a blessing, and joy is a blessing. Many times we are miserable. We want to have peace and be joyful, yet we cannot. Christ is life, Christ is joy, Christ is peace, Christ is light, and Christ is everything that we need. I have come here to bring Christ as all these blessings to you.” We need to preach the gospel in this way.
We are too natural in preaching the gospel. We may think that Ephesians 3:8 is too deep to share with unbelievers. Instead, we may want to tell them that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). This word is very rich, but in our natural way of preaching, we make it poor. Jesus Christ’s coming into the world implies a lot. Whether this word is rich or not depends upon how we explain and expound it. We must learn to get out of the natural way and into the proper, spiritual, divine way. To minister the riches of Christ is to bring all the blessings of Christ, with Christ, and through Christ to the pitiful sinners. By doing this, we are imparting Christ in His riches to people. If we preach Christ in this way, the Holy Spirit will be happy with us. He will strengthen us, anoint us, and use our word to penetrate into people’s inward parts. We have to impart, to dispense, whatever Christ is and whatever Christ has into people’s inner being. Then the Holy Spirit will confirm, strengthen, and impress people with our words, and they will be regenerated.
In your preaching of the gospel, you may also share with people what it means to be begotten of God. You may say, “We are human beings born of our parents, but God’s intention is to regenerate us with His life. We have only the human life, not the super life. The super life is the divine life, God’s life. Whether our human life is good or bad, it is still too low. We may want to be humble, but we cannot. We may want to love others, but our love is short and is soon exhausted. Our life is too limited. We need a super life, and this life is God’s life. God’s intention is to give His life to us that we may be reborn. I came here with God’s life so that you can receive this life. While I am talking with you, if you open yourself, this life in the Spirit will enter into you and beget you. Our human life is invisible and mysterious, and the divine life is invisible and even more mysterious. But you can receive this marvelous divine life.” Then you can direct him to pray with you to receive Christ as his life. Such preaching is divine preaching and corresponds with what is unveiled to us of the Lord in the four Gospels. The Lord preached the gospel in a divine way, but many times we preach in a natural way.
In order to bear fruit, we have to abide in the Lord. When the branches are abiding in the tree, the life-juice flows into them. This life-juice is so rich, fresh, and energizing. The issue of the branches being filled with this rich life-juice is their bearing of fruit. We may even tell the ones to whom we are preaching that our speaking to them is a flowing, an issue, of the divine life within us.
In recent years many of us have been helped to preach the gospel by using the booklet The Mystery of Human Life. That booklet is written according to the divine thought that we are containers, and God wants to be our content. We were made to contain God. The use of this booklet has been prevailing because it has such a thought. This booklet shows the three parts of man, the crucial part being the spirit of man, and touches the very center of the gospel preached according to God’s economy. In our preaching of the gospel, we do not need to be limited to using this booklet, but we need to keep the principle of preaching the gospel in a divine way according to the divine thought. My fellowship here may be considered as some training on how to preach the gospel. We must learn to preach the gospel in the biblical way.
If we speak with people about ministering Christ in His riches, begetting sinners that they may become God’s children and the members of the living Body of Christ, and bearing fruit, we can go on to speak concerning discipling the nations. We cannot disciple dogs to be men because dogs do not have the human life. If we were able to regenerate dogs with the human life, we would be able to disciple them in such a way. To disciple others implies that they have been regenerated with the divine life. The nations do not know anything concerning God, so we have to disciple them first by putting God’s life into them. Then we can train them in the way that we would raise up our own children. To raise them up, to perfect them, is to disciple them.
The Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is today the consummated Spirit. After His resurrection the Lord came back to the disciples and told them to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the Triune God, the processed, consummated God who is the all-inclusive Spirit. As those who are speaking by God, with God, and in God, we are qualified and able to put people into the consummated Spirit. We have to change the way of our preaching, and we need to have our concept revolutionized. When we go to preach the gospel, we have to speak with the understanding that we are speaking in the Triune God and with the Triune God. Because we are in the Triune God, who is the consummated Spirit as the air, we can put people into the Triune God. What we have fellowshipped above is the proper way to preach the gospel to save sinners in the Lord’s new way for the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
After we beget new believers and baptize them, they become our little children. Now we must be like mothers to nourish and cherish them. To nourish is to feed, and to cherish is to nurture with tender love and foster with tender care. The most effective way for a mother to cherish her babe is for her to hold him in her bosom. When the mother does this, the little one is warmly cherished and comforted. Many times when a little one cries, he is “praying” to his mother, asking her to cherish him. When she picks him up and puts him in her bosom, he will soon stop crying because he has been fostered with tender care. When we go to the home meetings to take care of the newly baptized ones, we need to have the realization that we are going to nourish and cherish them. This way of taking care of the home meetings is very effective. The new ones will feel cherished, comforted, and warmed up. They will lose any feeling of loneliness.
Paul told the Thessalonians, “We were gentle in your midst, as a nursing mother would cherish her own children” (1 Thes. 2:7). Paul likened himself to a nursing mother in his care for the new believers. We need to preach the gospel and take care of the newly baptized ones in the organic way, not in the old way. The organic way is the prevailing way. I hope that we can study these matters in small groups. This will revolutionize our way of preaching the gospel. We must preach the gospel in the organic way to beget sinners as children of God, making them the regenerated members of the Body of Christ. Following this we must exercise to cherish the new ones in their homes week by week. Within the first month after they are baptized, it is good to visit them ten times. After one month of this cherishing, the new ones will become settled and established. In the past we were short in caring for the new ones after we baptized them. As a result, many of the new ones disappeared after a few months. This was not Paul’s way. Paul cherished the people whom he had begotten through the gospel. In addition to being like a nursing mother, Paul was also like an exhorting father to the new believers (v. 11).
In the full-time training in Taipei, we baptized thirty-eight thousand people in about eighteen months. We then realized that we had baptized too many because we did not have the manpower to take care of them. We should not beget more children in the gospel than we are able to care for. We need to cherish, nourish, feed, and raise up the new ones. After six months of this care, we can go out to beget a few more. If each of us bears two remaining fruit yearly, this will be wonderful. With so many people around us and related to us, we can surely bear two remaining fruit a year. If we have a will to do this, there will be a way.
We should not trust in our fluctuating feelings in our labor in the gospel. We should just do our duty. Regardless of how they feel, mothers nourish and cherish their children day by day. Whether a mother feels well or not, she still does her duty to bring up her children. We have to consider that it is our daily duty to preach the gospel to make sinners the members of Christ and to raise them up by cherishing and nourishing them. One day we all will have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give Him an account (2 Cor. 5:10). Can we tell the Lord in that day that we did not feel like preaching the gospel or taking care of new ones? If we say this, the Lord will call us an evil and slothful slave, and we will be cast into outer darkness (Matt. 25:26, 30). As the branches of Christ, our duty is to bear remaining fruit.
To cherish and nourish the newly baptized ones is to feed the lambs (John 21:15-17). In the Gospel of John we are charged to do two things: to bear fruit and to feed the lambs. To bear fruit is our daily duty. Abiding in the Lord is the condition for us to bear fruit. If we do not abide in the Lord, we cannot bear fruit. To feed the lambs, we need to love the Lord. To bear fruit is a matter of abiding, and to feed the lambs is a matter of loving. In John 21:15-17 the Lord asked Peter three times if he loved Him. When Peter told the Lord that he did love Him, the Lord told Peter to feed His lambs, shepherd His sheep, and feed His sheep. We have to abide in the Lord that we may bear fruit, and we have to love the Lord that we may have a heart to take care of His flock. The shepherd of a flock does not labor according to whether or not he feels like it. He does his duty to shepherd the flock and to feed the lambs day by day.
The Lord has shown us His biblical way to serve Him for the organic building up of the church. We have to gain more members for the Body of Christ by preaching the gospel, and we have to cherish and nourish the newly baptized ones to raise them up. This is our duty. If we fulfill this duty, I believe that the church can be doubled every year. As we endeavor to cooperate with the Lord, we will increase in number and grow in life. We all have to endeavor to do our daily duty to produce the living members of Christ’s organic Body and to feed the young ones in Christ, to raise them up. In the next chapter we will see that we need to go further to perfect them to do what we are doing to serve the Lord. Then they will do what we are doing, and they will perfect others. This will be repeated again and again from generation to generation, and we will see the increase of the Body and the growth in life of each member of the Body.
In Acts 20 we can see that after Paul established the church in Ephesus and appointed the elders there, he did not leave that church alone. At one time he stayed with them for three years. During those three years he taught them publicly (in big meetings) and from house to house (in home meetings), admonishing each one of the saints with tears day and night (vv. 20, 31). This indicates that he made himself available to the saints according to the times that were convenient for them, whether it was day or night. Paul said that he did not shrink from declaring to the saints all the counsel of God (v. 27). In those three years he perfected the Ephesian saints with all the knowledge concerning the things of God. We have to do the same kind of perfecting work that Paul did. Through this perfecting, everyone is enabled to do the work of an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, and a shepherd-teacher.
The Lord charged us to go forth to bear fruit and that our fruit should remain (John 15:16). To preach the gospel so that sinners can be regenerated to be the members of Christ is to bear fruit. To nourish the newly baptized ones in the home meetings is so that this fruit will remain. We also need to take care of the spiritual need of the new ones and their need in practical affairs, sicknesses, and other afflictions. In other words, we need to take care of them in any way and in all ways. We also have to pray for them. If we do these things, each of us will bear two remaining fruit every year.
When some hear this fellowship, they may think that there is too much demand upon them and that all they want to do is to enjoy Christ. We need to enjoy Christ, but we have to be balanced. We have to enjoy physical food every day, but if we eat and do not exercise, we will not be healthy. We need the working, the acting, and the exercising to balance our enjoyment. The Lord’s word in John 15 is clear. He says that if we abide in Him, we will bear much fruit. To bear fruit is to exercise. We need to be charged and burdened to exercise.
We have seen in chapter 1 that the good pleasure of God’s will is to gain a Body for Christ so that God can be expressed in Christ (Eph. 1:9-11, 22-23; 3:9-11). Furthermore, God’s will was for Christ to come and replace all the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings with Himself so that He could be everything to us for our enjoyment (Heb. 10:5-10). John 15 goes on to show that our enjoyment of Christ issues in fruit-bearing. The Lord said that every branch in Him that did not bear fruit would be taken away (vv. 2, 6). This is serious. The Lord will cut off branches that do not bear fruit. This cutting off is not eternal perdition but the loss of the enjoyment of Christ. We may think that we are enjoying Christ and be self-deceived. Our enjoyment of Christ may not be genuine or normal. If it is genuine and normal, we will have the issue of fruit-bearing. A healthy branch of a vine bears fruit.
Our enjoyment of Christ issues not only in fruit-bearing but also in lamb feeding. We have to bear fruit to produce life, and we have to take care of the lambs by feeding and nourishing them for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. Fruit-bearing and the feeding of the lambs must balance the enjoyment of Christ. Without such a balance, we are off in some aspects of our experience of Christ. We are not normal. Our physical exercise should balance our physical eating. Otherwise, we will not be healthy. If I exercise by walking every day, this helps my digestion and maintains my health. We should not be deceived into thinking that we can enjoy Christ and do nothing. Our enjoyment must have some result. The enjoyment of Christ issues in fruit-bearing and lamb feeding. We all have to do these two things for today’s living and for tomorrow’s judgment seat. At the judgment seat we will have to give the Lord an account concerning these two things. For the building up of the organic Body of Christ, we need to enjoy Christ to bear fruit and feed His lambs.
