
Scripture Reading: Eph. 4:15-16
Prayer: Lord, we praise You that You are the beginning and the ending. Lord, remember how You have commenced. You should do something to give us a glorious consummation. Do not forget, Lord, that we are so weak. We are nothing. We do not have anything in which You can trust. But we put our trust in You in every way and in everything, not just for this meeting but for the future of Your recovery. We trust in You but not in ourselves. We can do nothing to improve Your recovery or to move Your recovery. Our trust is in You. Do remember that this is Your recovery and impress us that we are not here for anything but Your recovery, Your move, Your testimony, and Your interest on this earth today. We believe that what You are doing here will close this age and will bring You in to have a new age. Lord, remember this prayer that on this earth there is a little group of Your seekers wanting You to be their everything. Lord, day by day, make them God-men, overcomers, for Your interest so that You can have a way to accomplish what You have been unable to do in the past. Lord, remember that You are here and we are here. We tell You from our heart that we love You. We really love You, Lord. You must do what You want. We are so open to You. We are subdued, even conquered by You. Lord, do not forget that You do have such a people on this earth. Amen.
In this chapter we want to see that we need to grow up into Christ, the Head, in all things to build up the Body of Christ. To build up the Body of Christ, we first have to know what the Body of Christ is. Today it is difficult to see the reality of the building up of the Body of Christ. Today even the term the Body of Christ is very rarely used, and when it is used, it is not used properly.
I would like to say an intimate word in fellowship, especially to the co-workers and elders among us. Do not forget that whatever you do in your locality or universally for other countries should be done in a full realization that you are building up the Body of Christ. You may have a real burden to take care of the church in your locality, yet you should always realize that you are not doing a work just for the building up of the work. When you are working to take care of the church, always keep a view of the Body. You should say, “Lord, what I am doing here is not for this but for Your Body. I am under Your sovereign assignment, or arrangement, to work in this locality. It seems that I am doing a work to build up the local church here. But, Lord, actually I am not doing things to just build up the local church here in my locality. What I am doing, Lord, is altogether for the building up of Your Body.”
Now I would like to present to you nine points of what the Body of Christ is.
The Body of Christ is the center, the reality, and the ultimate goal of God’s eternal economy, consummating in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1—22:5). Dear co-workers and dear elders, do you have the assurance that what you are doing in your locality is building up the center and reality of the economy of God and is building up something that can attain to the final goal of God’s eternal economy? For years I have realized that even among us, some have considered that the place where they work is a district of their work. There was such a fact among us about ten years ago. A co-worker checked with some brothers, saying that when they came to his district to work, they should have notified him. This illustration is a real fact. If you have such a feeling, you are off. You are not building up the center, the reality, and the goal of God’s economy. You are building up your little empire. In 1948, after Brother Nee had been working among us for twenty-six years, he was forced to give a message in Shanghai, in which he told a number of the workers that they were building up their little monarchy, or empire. Then he said that the churches that they built up were their own “native monarchies.” You must have the assurance that, wherever you are and whatever you do, you are building up the center, the reality, and the goal of the eternal economy of God, which will attain the New Jerusalem. If you do not have such assurance, it is better to stop; it is better not to do anything.
The Body of Christ is first the church, the congregation, the gathering, the assembly, of the called-out ones. This is the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia. The church appears in many cities to be the local churches as the many local expressions of the one church on the earth, without any division of nationalities, races, and social ranks (Acts 8:1; 13:1; Rev. 1:11). When I came to the United States and saw that there were so-called white churches and black churches, I was shocked. When I was a young man, I wondered how the Church of England could be in my hometown in mainland China. On the other hand, in the Chinese community in Southern California there is a Taiwanese church. What a shame it is for Christians to be divided in such ways! The Body of Christ has no nationality, no race, and no social rank.
Although the local churches are the many local expressions, they still remain “the [one] church” (Eph. 1:22-23), “the [unique] church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32; Acts 20:28) universally in its unique unity, unique oneness. Paul says that we should not become a stumbling block to the Jews, the Greeks, or the church of God. The church of God means all the churches on earth. Do not think that you can build a church that is separated from the other churches. If you have this kind of thought, you are off. The church’s unity, oneness, is universal. The church is not divided and should not be divisive.
The Body of Christ is the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God constituted with the believers in Christ, the many God-men, as the outward human framework; the life-giving Spirit, the compound Spirit, as the divine essence; the all-inclusive Christ, the unlimited Christ, as the divine element; and God the Father, who is over all and through all and in all, as the divine source (Eph. 4:4-6). In other words, this organism of God is constituted with the believing human beings as the outward framework and the Triune God—the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. The Spirit is the essence, the Son is the element, and the Father is the source. The essence is within the element.
The Body of Christ is the wife of the processed and consummated Christ. She is Christ’s counterpart, typified by Eve as the counterpart to Adam (Gen. 2:21b-24; Eph. 5:29-33; Rev. 21:2, 9; 22:17a). Eve was produced out of Adam, typifying that the church is produced out of Christ through His death and resurrection. When Adam was sleeping, God opened up his side, took out a rib, and built that rib into a woman. When Adam awoke, his wife Eve was presented to him. This signifies death and resurrection. Eve came out of Adam and was joined back to Adam to be one flesh with Adam. This shows that the church was produced out of Christ through His death and resurrection and joined back to Christ to be one entity with Him in life and in nature.
Christ is God Himself. The processed and consummated God, not the original God, has a wife. In eternity God was merely divine; He had not yet been processed and consummated. He did not yet have a wife. But when the very eternal God was processed and consummated through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection, something came out of His pierced side (John 19:34). The Lord’s pierced side was prefigured by Adam’s opened side, out from which Eve was produced. Christ’s death released the divine life from within Him, and His resurrection life produces the wife of Christ.
The Body of Christ is also the new man (Col. 3:10-11; Eph. 2:15; 4:24). How could the church be both a wife and a man? This is not according to our human logic, but in the biblical logic, Christ’s wife is the new man.
The new man is the corporate God-man. The first God-man, the firstborn Son of God, is the Head of this corporate God-man—the new man. The many God-men, the many sons of God, are the Body of this corporate God-man—the new man.
Both the Head and the Body of this new man are in resurrection: The first God-man, Christ, became the Head of the corporate new man in resurrection, in which He became the Firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18). The many God-men, the believers in Christ, became the Body of the corporate new man in resurrection, in which they, the natural men in race, in religion, in culture, and in social rank, became the regenerated sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3a).
In the natural life we belong to different races, such as Chinese, American, and Japanese. But all the believing Chinese, Americans, and Japanese were regenerated to be something new, and this is the new man. In the new man there is no more race. Christ is not only the Head but also every member of this new man. Colossians 3:10 and 11 say that in the new man Christ is all and in all. In other words, Christ is everyone and is in everyone. He is not only the Head but also all the members of the new man.
The Body of Christ is the new creation of God (Gal. 6:15). This new creation is the believers in Christ, the corporate new man, the aggregate of the many God-men. They all are in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). In the old creation they were in Adam. But they have been transferred from Adam into Christ by regeneration. They are also in the resurrection of Christ. The new creation of God was produced out of the old creation of God in the resurrection of Christ through the death of Christ (Eph. 2:15). Ephesians 2:15 reveals that Christ on His cross put the old creation to an end and created in Himself in resurrection a new creation. The processed and consummated Triune God consummated a new creation, out of His old creation, with Himself as the creating element. We must keep in mind the difference between the old creation and the new creation. The old creation has no element of God in it. But the new creation is full of the element of God. God has constituted Himself as the element into the new creation.
The Body of Christ is the household of God (v. 19b). This is the household of the faith—the universal family of God (Gal. 6:10), composed of God as the Father and the believers in Christ, the many sons of God. God the Father has a great family of many sons. The Father is God, and the sons are “small gods” in life and nature but not in the Godhead. If a father is a man, are not his sons men? Since the father is a man, the sons all must be men. In the divine family the Father is God, so all the sons are gods, the many God-men, in life and nature but not in the Godhead. First Timothy 3:15-16 reveals that the church is the manifestation of God in the flesh.
The Body of Christ is the mingling of divinity with humanity. The processed and consummated Triune God is mingled with the regenerated and transformed tripartite men. God abides in man and man abides in God, coinhering and living as one person (John 15:4-5). This is a mingling. Some in the early history of the church heretically taught that the mingling of God and man produced a third nature. But in the mingling of God and man, the two entities become one, with their own respective natures remaining distinct and without a third nature being produced. This is the truth.
Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 that we are the masterpiece of God. The Greek word for masterpiece is poiema, a poem. The Body of Christ as the new creation, as the organism of God, is the poem of God. This masterpiece of God was created in Christ through His death and resurrection with His divine element in its all-inclusiveness. This is why this masterpiece is a poem. As God’s masterpiece, we should walk in the things prepared by God for the accomplishment of His eternal economy.
We need a vision of the above nine items of the Body of Christ. This is what we are working on and building up. When we see this vision, our seeing will revolutionize us. It will change us, change our concept, change our attitude, and change our realization of God’s work.
The tenth item of the Body of Christ is in Ephesians 6, which reveals that the church is the warrior, fighting against God’s enemy, Satan, for the establishment of God’s kingdom (vv. 10-20). The nine items listed above speak of the nature, the element, and the essence of what the Body of Christ should be. The church as the warrior is not in this category, so I purposely did not include it in the outline.
Our work must be a work that builds up such a Body of Christ (4:12, 16). This will change our idea. This will change our view. If you have such a view, you cannot carry out any piece of work that is not a part of the Body of Christ.
We build up the Body of Christ by growing in life (v. 15). How much a co-worker can build up the church depends upon how much he grows in Christ. Actually our work to build up the Body of Christ is not a kind of work. It has to be a growth in the life of Christ. In other words, our building-up work should be the increase of the measure of Christ in us. We must grow up into Christ, the Head, in all things. Today in many things we are not in Christ but outside of Him. We need to grow up into Christ in everything, small or great.
This growing is the living of a life conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection and by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:10; 1:19b).
Such a growing affords a corporate building to the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:16). When we all grow together in everything into Christ, this is a corporate growing, so it affords a corporate building up of the Body of Christ.
Then all the members of the Body of Christ are joined together through every joint of the rich supply. The joints are the gifted members—the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherds and teachers (v. 11). Without their joining the members together, there can be no building. Let us consider the illustration of a big building. This building is strongly joined together by steel beams, which are a steel frame. In the Body of Christ we are joined together through every joint of the rich supply.
The Body is also knit together through the operation in the measure of each one part. Once the frame of a building is in place, there is the need of an interweaving, a compacting together, of material to fill in the gaps. The material is knit together by being compacted together in a solid way. In the Body of Christ, to be knit together is to be built together through the operation in the measure of each one part. This includes every member of the Body of Christ. Each one part refers to each member of the Body. Through the growth in life and the development of gifts, each member of the Body of Christ has its own measure, which operates for the growth of the Body.
I would now like to intimately share what is on my heart. I want to fellowship concerning what the entire Bible shows us. The Bible has sixty-six books with many chapters, but what does such a book show us? I want to present a very intrinsic view of what the Bible tells us.
In an intrinsic way the Bible unveils to us that the eternal God, who is divine, triune, holy, self-existing, and ever-existing, had a good pleasure (Eph. 1:5, 9). One day according to the good pleasure of His desire, He came out of eternity and into time. That was only about two thousand years ago. He came into time to become a man and to live as a man on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. He passed through such a human living. Eventually, for the need, He entered into a death, which I would call the all-problems-solving death, the all-inclusive death, which solves all problems. He entered into that death, He traveled through that death, and He had a good “sightseeing” in that death.
On the third day He came out of that death and entered into resurrection, the all-conquering resurrection. In this resurrection His human part was born into divinity to produce the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33). At the same time, in that big birth, He regenerated all His chosen, fallen, redeemed, and justified people to be the many sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3). So, in this resurrection the firstborn Son and the many sons of God were produced. Also, in resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), who is the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God.
Then He ascended far above all the heavens. This was an all-transcending ascension. In this transcending ascension He was made the Head of the Body, the church, even the Head of all things, having the first place in all things (Col. 1:18). He was also made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36) and the Leader of all the kings and the Savior (5:31) to be our High Priest in the New Testament economy (Heb. 4:14; 7:26; 9:11), the Mediator of a new covenant (v. 15), the surety of a better covenant (7:22), the Minister in the heavenly Holy of Holies (8:2), the Paraclete (Advocate) of the New Testament believers (1 John 2:1; John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7), and the New Testament believers’ Intercessor at the right hand of God and within them as well (26, Rom. 8:34).
In the first step of the process He went through, the first God-man was produced. At the conclusion of His process in resurrection, the firstborn Son of God was produced, the many sons of God were regenerated, and He Himself became the life-giving Spirit. He did all of this within thirty-three and a half years on earth. He is the embodiment of the Triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit) who became the first God-man and then the firstborn Son of God and the life-giving Spirit. As such a One, He transcended to a place above all the heavens. He transcended above four layers: Hades, the earth, the air, and the third heaven (Eph. 1:20-21; 4:8-10; Heb. 4:14; 7:26). He ascended there with all the many sons (Eph. 2:6).
From the day of His ascension He began as the consummated Spirit, as the consummation of the processed consummated Triune God, to sanctify the many sons regenerated by Him (Heb. 2:10-11). They were regenerated but not grown up yet. So He still works as the all-inclusive consummated Spirit to sanctify them, making them holy unto God. He also renews them from the old creation into the new (Titus 3:5), transforms them to change their constitution from the constitution of the old creation to the constitution of the new creation to have a constitution of the redeemed and regenerated human beings with the divine element (2 Cor. 3:18). Following transformation, He conforms them to the image of the firstborn Son of God to make them the real God-men, the real sons of God, and the real brothers of the first God-man, the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29). Eventually, He will bring all of them into glory, to glorify them in the glory of the processed and consummated Triune God (Phil. 3:21). This will consummate in the New Jerusalem, which will be the mingling of divinity with humanity to be the very expansion, enlargement, increase, and expression of the processed and consummated Triune God in humanity forever. This is all that the Bible tells us. We all need to see this. This will become a very controlling vision, directing our life, our move, and our action on this earth so that we can be real sons of God, real brothers of Christ, and real God-men, that we may overcome as He has overcome (John 16:33; Rev. 3:21) to bring in the kingdom age.