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Scripture Reading: Gal. 2:20; Phil. 3:10; 1:19-21a; Rom. 8:4; John 5:30-31; 6:46, 57; 14:19-20
Hymns: #972, #976
Prayer: Lord, we worship You with all our thanks and praises that You have brought us through all these days by Your marvelous mercy and abounding grace. This morning our trust is still You. We enter into You to enjoy You as our trust while we are speaking and listening. Lord, anoint the meeting. Anoint Your speaking, Your oracle, not our speaking, through Your Spirit to reach us and to touch the depths of our being that we may be fully enlightened and unveiled by You for Your eternal economy. Lord, we need You again and again, even the more today, to be our sustaining power and our strengthening. Lord, lead us and guide us to speak with You. We do not like to do anything without You. Lord, we like to speak, to move, and to act with You. Lord, in our speaking we give all our adoration to You. You are the very God, the very Lord, the Master, and the Husband to us. Thank You, Lord. We can never thank You enough. We also ask You to cover us with Your prevailing blood.
In this chapter we come to the highest peak in God’s economy—the reality of the Body of Christ. We know the term the Body of Christ. We may even have seen the revelation of the Body of Christ. Yet we have to admit that thus far, over the past seventy-two years, through such a long time, we can see very little of the reality of the Body of Christ within us and among us. I am speaking not of the revelation, not even of the vision, but of the reality of the Body of Christ.
This reality has nothing to do with any kind of organization or with anything that remains in the nature of organization. Also, the reality of the Body of Christ is not a system in any way, because no system is organic. The reality of the Body of Christ is absolutely and altogether organic.
Today some of the dear Christians are promoting the unification of so-called Christianity. They realize that Christians should not be divided into many denominations. Throughout my Christian life, especially in my ministry, I have been checked again and again by people. When I talked to them, even about the gospel, they would say, “Mr. Lee, what you have been saying to us is good, but there is one thing that we cannot understand. Is Christianity one? If it is, why are there so many denominations? One is called Presbyterian, another is called Southern Baptist, and another one is called Methodist. What is this? We appreciate Christianity, but we are bothered. Why do you have the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches?” I could only say to them, “At any rate, Jesus Christ is unique, real, and true. I am not preaching Christianity to you. I am preaching Jesus Christ to you. Please forget about Christianity, but receive this One, Jesus Christ.” By this we can see the problem of divisions.
Then the Lord raised up the recovery. Yet what a shame that even in the recovery, we were attacked by some who were with us and who became very dissenting and divisive. What is the reason for this? Now I can tell you what the reason is. When I was with Brother Nee for twenty years, I was under him as a big umbrella, and no one attacked me. All the attacks by the dissenting ones in division went to him.
Later, I was sent out abroad. First, I worked in Taiwan and the Philippines. Every year I spent one-third of the time in the Philippines and two-thirds of the time in Taiwan for eleven years. I suffered the same thing as what I had seen with Brother Nee. I was surely expecting to have an umbrella. Instead, I have become the umbrella. All the attacks with the lies and defamation have been aimed at me.
One group of dissenting ones in the Far East said that the leading ones in the recovery had all become old and were good to be buried. They told people that they had the revelation, so they considered themselves the people of revelation, claiming that they had seen the very Christ of glory. When I heard about that, I wondered and said, “Dear ones, since you have seen the vision of Christ, you should minister what you have seen to the saints in the Lord’s recovery. You don’t need to condemn others by saying that they are old and ready for burial.”
After I spent those eleven years in the Far East, I came to the United States. In 1977 and 1978 another trouble took place. That was a case of people who came to us with an ambition to take the lead in the recovery. I used to tell people that the recovery of the Lord is not ours, but it is the Lord’s recovery. Whoever touches it in a negative way will suffer spiritual death. This is like the man at David’s time who touched the Ark with his human hand. That one suffered death (2 Sam. 6:6-7).
Nine years later in 1987, there was another turmoil among us. During those nine years I put out many messages on life, on the economy of God, and on the dispensing of God. The dissenting ones said that Brother Lee’s ministry was all right up to 1984, but from 1984 Brother Lee changed in his ministry, and this changed the nature of the recovery. So they said that they had to do something to rescue the recovery out of the change by the wrong ministry of Brother Lee. They falsely told people that I did not speak as I did in the past on life, Christ, and the Spirit, but instead I would always talk about statistics, budgets, and numbers. Actually, these ones and some who are not among them but like them took the advantage of the recovery to build up a work for themselves. They did their work under the cloak of the recovery’s work.
From 1984 to 1986 I called for urgent meetings of all the elders and co-workers at least four times. In my opening word I told them that I called them to these meetings because I realized that among us there were strong signs that division would come in. These messages are now in Books 1 through 8 of a series entitled Elders’ Training. I indicated that some of the brothers were apparently working for the recovery, but actually they were not. They were taking advantage of the recovery to work out their kind of work. They were doing their work within the work of the Lord’s recovery. But I warned them. I said, “According to what I saw with Brother Nee and according to what I have experienced in my period of ministry, no one would be benefited by doing such a work. You will only damage yourself, terminate yourself, and deaden the weaker saints in the recovery.”
Divisions have come in among us just because of ambition. Recently, I have studied 1 and 2 Kings. Among the many kings, probably only David had no aspiration or intention to build up his little empire. But besides him many had the intention to build up their own empire, their monarchy.
Brother Nee ministered on the Body of Christ again and again, but eventually, turmoil arose that forced him to stop his ministry. He himself stopped, telling us he would not minister, and this took place for six years. In 1948 his ministry was brought back and resumed through the recovery among us. We have published a two-volume set entitled Messages Given during the Resumption of Watchman Nee’s Ministry. I would encourage you to read these messages. In one of these messages Brother Nee told us that some of the local churches had been taken by the so-called elders to make their churches “native” monarchies, little empires. This is not a church in the fellowship of the Body but just a little church in their own locality.
It is true to say that according to the Bible, the local churches are distinct from one another to a certain degree, but only in their business affairs, not in the spiritual testimony of Jesus. During the recent rebellion some misused Brother Nee’s book The Normal Christian Church Life to say that the local churches are independent. After the apostles set up the church and appoint the elders, the apostles should take their hands off the church and leave the church to the elders. Further, the elders are the authority of that church. When I heard this, I referred the saints to another book by Brother Nee entitled Church Affairs. Brother Nee said there that after the apostles set up the elders, they have to stay with the elders to teach them, instruct them, and train them in how to take care of the church.
In this chapter I have fellowshipped concerning these negative things because I realize that many saints today in the recovery are not aware of the mistakes that crept into the recovery. They may consider that the recovery is for the recovery of the local churches. I say yes with a but. Yes, Brother Nee did minister on the local churches, but he went on from the local churches to the Body of Christ. The local churches are too much in the expression of physical things. You have to arrange the elders and set up the deacons to take care of so many outward affairs. But with the Body of Christ there are no physical things. The local churches are nearly ninety percent physical, but they should be for something spiritual, and this spiritual thing is the Body of Christ.
Now, what is the reality of the Body of Christ? In brief, the reality of the Body of Christ is a kind of corporate living, not a living by any individual. This corporate living is the aggregate of many saints who have been redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, and transformed by the processed and consummated God within them. By this indwelling consummated God, these redeemed saints have been made actual God-men.
In regeneration a person is made a God-man, but he is not a matured God-man. When some babes are born, they are so small and weak that they have to be put in an incubator. But after much growth these little ones can become tall and husky. We have been regenerated, but many of us are still like these little babes. We need to be nourished and perfected so that we can grow in life and become mature. The procedure in the church work is to beget, to nourish, and then to teach and perfect so that the saints may be mature to be built in the local churches for the building up of the Body of Christ. Thank the Lord that in His recovery a number of seeking ones have been perfected.
We know that God became a man to be a God-man. That little Jesus in the manger was a God-man, but who could realize this? He lived not only a life of man but also a life of God. Thus, His life was a life of a God-man. He appeared to His disciples and to the people as a genuine man. Many who heard Him were astounded and said, “Where did this man get these things? And what is this wisdom given to this man, and how is it that such works of power take place through His hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:2-3). They wondered how a man could do these things, displaying the top virtues among mankind.
Who is He? He is God becoming a man, a real man. Yet this man would not live by Himself, by His own human life. Rather He rejected His human life. He denied Himself. He lived as a man by another life, by the life of God. He told us that whatever He did and whatever He spoke were not of Himself but of the Father who sent Him (John 14:10, 24). He was a real man living there, yet He was dying to His natural life. He was dying to live, dying to His natural man to live by God’s life. That dying to His natural life is the cross, and His living by the divine life is in resurrection.
For thirty-three and a half years this God-man, Jesus, was a genuine man, but He lived not by man’s life but by God’s life. To live such a life He had to be crucified. The crucifixion mentioned in the New Testament transpired on the wooden cross on Mount Calvary. But you have to realize that before Christ was there in the physical crucifixion, He was being crucified every day for thirty-three and a half years. Was not Jesus a human being, a genuine man? Yes. But He did not live by that genuine man. Instead, He kept that genuine man on the cross. Then, in the sense of resurrection, He lived God’s life. God’s life with all its attributes was lived within this God-man Jesus and expressed as this God-man’s virtues.
Such a life was there originally just in an individual man, Jesus Christ. But this life has now been repeated, reproduced, in many men who have been redeemed and regenerated and who now possess the divine life within them. All of them have been nourished, sanctified, transformed, and perfected not just to be matured Christians but to be God-men. The reality of the Body of Christ is the corporate living by the perfected God-men, who are genuine men but are not living by their life but by the life of the processed God, whose attributes have been expressed through their virtues.
After my thirty-two years of ministry in the United States, I have the assurance that a number of you have been perfected. What is it to be perfected? It is to be matured by continually exercising to reject the self and live by another life. This is according to what Paul says: “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a). Paul lived by dying to live. He was dying to his natural man and living by his new man with the divine life. So he said that by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, he lived and magnified Christ (Phil. 1:19-21a).
We should not live by ourselves. According to God’s design in His economy, we were already put on the cross. We should not call ourselves back off the cross. To remain on the cross is to bear the cross and be under the cross. I have been crucified. There is no more I. I am finished. I am through. But there is a new man with me. That is the resurrected God-created man uplifted with God’s divinity in him. That man is actually God Himself. Now I live by that man. But if I do not practice to keep my old man on the cross, I can never live the new man. This is why in the first chapter of Philippians, Paul tells us he lived such a life by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
In Philippians 3 Paul says that he lived a life conformed to the death of Christ (v. 10). The death of Christ is a mold, and Paul put himself into that death-mold to be conformed there. On this man, Paul, all men could see the mark and the image of the cross (Gal. 6:14, 17—see footnote 171, Recovery Version). His old life was conformed to the image of the death of Christ by the power of Christ’s resurrection. The power of resurrection strengthened him to live the life of a God-man. The Lord expects that many of us would be such ones.
I do believe that among us there should be some like this, maybe not constantly but at least instantly like this. I can testify to you that I am like this. I dare not say constantly but at least instantly. Many times when I was trying to talk to my wife, something within said, “This is not from your spirit. This is from your old man.” Right away I stopped. Sometimes I would go to her, and then right away I returned. This is because my going was by my natural man. While I was doing that, something within turned me. That was the very life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ. The processed Triune God turned me, and that was in resurrection. Such a corporate living is the reality of the Body of Christ, dear saints. This is a corporate living of the conformity to the death of Christ through the power of the resurrection of Christ.
The reality of the Body of Christ is not just a corporate living but a mingling living. If we use the word mingled, this means that this living is consummated, completed. Instead, we use the word mingling because this living is not completed; it is still going on. It is the mingling living in the eternal union of the regenerated, transformed, glorified tripartite God-men with the Triune God in the resurrection of Christ. This Triune God is the very pneumatic Christ as the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God, who is the all-inclusive Spirit as the reality of the pneumatic Christ and as the consummation of the processed Triune God. Such a mingling living is in the resurrection of Christ, and the reality of this resurrection is the Spirit. This resurrection imparts the consummated God and releases the death-overcoming life into the believers.
Dear saints, such a mingling living is the reality of the Body of Christ. If among us there is, if not in full at least in part, such a living, the reality of the Body of Christ is among us. This is the high peak of the recovery in the local churches like Mount Zion in the city of Jerusalem. Such a mingling living as the reality of the Body of Christ will consummate ultimately in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth as God’s increase and expression for eternity.
Anyone who lives such a mingling life would never be a trouble to anyone. They have been delivered out of themselves and have been transformed and perfected. They would not despise or condemn anyone, nor would they be bothered by others. They would not have anything to do with dissension, rebellion, or division. Instead, they would be here in the recovery as the high peak, Mount Zion, in Jerusalem.
