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With this chapter we begin a series of messages on the Body. Ephesians 4:4 says, “One Body and one Spirit.” This indicates that the Body is something of the Spirit and that the Spirit has a great deal to do with the Body. If there is no Spirit, there can be no Body. The Spirit is the reality of the Body. The Body issues out of the Spirit and is constituted of the Spirit. If we know the Spirit, we know the Body. If we know the Body, we must have had the experience of the Spirit. Most Christians do not adequately realize that the Spirit is for the Body and that the Body is for the Spirit. Just as our physical life and our physical body are inseparable, so the Body and the Spirit are inseparable. Without life our physical body is just a corpse. The Body and the Spirit are one. The Spirit is the life, the reality, and the constituent of the Body.
Four books in the New Testament are concerned with the Body: Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. Colossians does not say much about the Body because it is a book on the Head. However, as a book concerning the Head, it also refers to the Body, for we cannot have the Head without the Body. Ephesians is a book on the Body. But Ephesians also covers the Head. Therefore, in Colossians, the book concerned with the Head, we have the Head with the Body; and in Ephesians, the book concerned with the Body, we have the Body with the Head. Each of these four books covers a different aspect of the Body. If we would know the Body, we must know the various aspects of the Body. Although Ephesians was written later than Romans and 1 Corinthians, we must consider it first because it reveals how the Body is produced, how the Body comes into existence, how the Body is formed, and how the Body is constituted.
Ephesians 1:19 and 20 say, “What is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the operation of the might of His strength, which He caused to operate in Christ in raising Him from the dead.” We may say both that power has been wrought in Christ and that Christ has been worked upon. In other words, Christ has been processed. This word processed sounds strange to religious ears. The religious ones will wonder how the Lord Jesus could have been processed. Nevertheless, we must take care of the fact. Christ, who is God, one day became a man, a despised Nazarene with no physical beauty. One day He was crucified and stayed there on the cross for several hours. After He died, His side was pierced, and blood and water came forth. Then He was buried in the tomb, and after three days He was resurrected. He was nailed to the cross in the flesh, but He was resurrected in the Spirit. He was crucified with a natural body, but He was resurrected with a spiritual body. Was this not a process? If this is not a process, then what is it? The Lord Jesus certainly underwent a long process. In any kind of cooking, the food is processed. Everything we take into us as food, even if it is raw, has been processed in some way. How could a watermelon get into us without being sliced and processed?
Christ, our Redeemer, has become a life-giving Spirit. Our concept is natural, and we have been too much under the influence of Christianity. Do not think that since Christ has become the life-giving Spirit, He is only great, majestic, and transcendent. Do not suppose that He imparts life into you by coming upon you in some electrifying way. As the life-giving Spirit today, Christ is like a small particle of processed food. This food is life-giving. Every day I am strengthened by eating nourishing food. In like manner, Christ gives us life not from the heavens but from within us. If you say, “O Lord Jesus, I love You,” you will receive life. This life comes to you not from the third heaven but from within you, because Christ, the life-giving Spirit, is in you. According to the religious concept, Christ is a great One. But He is not only great, for the life-giving Christ today is also very small. We need to praise Him for His smallness. How small our Christ is! Anything we eat is smaller than we are. For example, can you eat a large, thick steak whole? No, before you can eat it, you must cut it into small pieces, the smaller, the better.
In Ephesians 1 we see that Christ has been processed through death and resurrection into ascension. Verse 19 says, “What is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the operation of the might of His strength.” The word operation is a translation of a Greek word, which actually means “energizing.” Therefore, this verse and the first part of verse 20 can read, “According to the energizing of the might of His strength, which He [God] caused to operate in Christ in raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavenlies.” Here we see the process that Christ has undergone, from death, through resurrection, to ascension far above all rule and authority and power and lordship and every name. Verse 22 says that God “subjected all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church.” This is the process through which Christ has passed. Having passed through such a process and having obtained so much and having attained to such a high position, He now has all things under His feet, and He is the Head over all things.
The last three words of verse 22, to the church, are crucial. This indicates that whatever Christ has undergone, whatever He has obtained and attained, has all been transmitted to the church. The word to here indicates a type of transmission. Again I say that whatever Christ has gained and obtained has been transmitted to the church. Christ is above all, but His being above all has been transmitted to the church. Hence, the church also is above all.
Verse 23 says that the church is Christ’s Body. This means that whatever Christ has passed through, obtained, and attained has been transmitted to the Body. Whatever has happened to the Head has happened to the Body. What the Head has gained now belongs to the Body. This transmission is the source of the Body. The Body comes from the transmission of the Head. This transmission took place on the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost everything belonging to the Head was transmitted to the Body. We need to have a vision of this. Neither our belief nor our unbelief alters the fact that all the Head has obtained and attained has been transmitted to the Body. Such an event has taken place in this universe. On the day of Pentecost the ascended Christ transmitted to the Body all His experiences. Out of this transmission the Body came into existence. All that Christ has accomplished, obtained, and attained is not only for the Body but also to the Body.
Consider the case of Peter. On the day of Pentecost Peter, a Galilean fisherman, became another person. I appreciate the Peter we see in the four Gospels because he was frank and honest, although he was selfishly honest. In the Gospels Peter was very natural and fully in the flesh. However, he made no pretense. He was what he was, and he was exposed. It seemed that he never did anything right. Only on one occasion did he speak a clear word, and that was in Caesarea Philippi when he said that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. What Peter said on that occasion was wonderful, but it came not from Peter but from the Father’s revelation. On other occasions Peter spoke nonsense and was rebuked for it. According to Matthew 16, immediately after he confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, Peter told the Lord not to go to the cross. That forced the Lord to rebuke him and say, “Get behind Me, Satan!” Peter also spoke nonsense when he was on the Mount of Transfiguration. He said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here...I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (17:4). What nonsense! Furthermore, when the collector of the half-shekel asked Peter if his Master paid the tax, Peter immediately answered that He did. He was also rebuked for this. But on the day of Pentecost Peter was another person. Prior to that, he was bold in a fleshly way but actually very timid in following Christ, for he denied the Lord three times. But on the day of Pentecost Peter was more mighty than all the powerful people on earth. What happened to him, and what made him different? It was the fact that all that Christ had passed through and experienced had been transmitted into Peter. On that day Peter received a heavenly, divine transmission. To repeat, on the day of Pentecost all that Christ had passed through, obtained, and attained was transmitted from the third heaven to the church. Out of this transmission the Body came into existence.
If we would experience the Body today, we must have a personal experience of the transmission that transpired on the day of Pentecost. There are many genuine Christians who do not have the experience of the Body. Although they are truly saved, they do not have the sense that they are in the Body. The reason for this is that they do not have the vision of the transmission that has taken place from the Head to the Body. They have not seen that whatever Christ is, whatever Christ has accomplished, whatever place Christ occupies, and whatever Christ possesses have been transmitted to the Body. In order to share in this transmission, you need to be part of the Body. My first burden in this chapter is to point out that the existence of the Body depends on the transmission that took place on the day of Pentecost. Ephesians 1 declares this fact.
Ephesians 1:23 says that the Body is the fullness of the One who fills all in all. Apart from the Body, the Head has no fullness. Because Christ is universally great, He needs a great body to be His fullness and to express Him. This Body comes out of the transmission of Christ. All that Christ has obtained and attained and all that He is have been transmitted into the Body.
We may say that the book of Ephesians is a biblical lexicon, for it contains many new terms. One of these new terms is the new man. In Ephesians 2 we see that the Body is the new man. Ephesians 2:15 and 16 put the Body with the new man, telling us that the new man is the Body and that the Body is the new man. In order to create this new man and to produce this Body, Christ abolished on the cross all ordinances, rituals, and different ways of living. Both the Jewish manner of life and the Gentile way of life have been abolished by Christ on the cross in order to create the one new man, the Body of Christ. In order for the Body to come into being, all the ordinances had to be done away with. All the different ways of living—Jewish, British, American, Brazilian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino—must go. As long as we have the Chinese way of life, we do not have the Body. In New York there is a group of Chinese Christians who emphasize the fact that in their meetings they have a Chinese flavor. This is not the Body; it is a Chinese sect. Likewise, if we insist upon having an American flavor, we are an American sect, not the Body. In the Body there is no Jew or Greek, bond or free, but Christ is all in all.
According to the Bible, the ordinances are the various ways of living. It is very difficult for Jews to eat pork with Gentiles. All our ordinances must be abolished. This is for the Body. If all the ordinances are done away with, only Christ will remain. This matter of ordinances is not a simple, superficial matter. If some are bothered by the shouting in our meetings, it proves that they have certain ordinances. In their opinion, Christians should be silent in the meetings.
In 1932 I went with Brother Nee when he was invited to speak at a Southern Baptist seminary in China. That was my first experience of attending a Pentecostal meeting. In that meeting some were jumping, some were shouting, and some were even rolling on the floor. I was very bothered; to me, it was like a circus with everybody doing something on his own. Eventually, the pastor rang a bell to stop the meeting, and Brother Nee gave a message on the prodigal son. After the meeting I said to Brother Nee, “I cannot tolerate such a meeting with all that shouting, jumping, and rolling.” I thought that Brother Nee would be in full agreement with me. However, he said, “Brother, in the New Testament there are no ordinances telling us how we should meet.” Although Brother Nee did not care for that type of meeting, he realized that there should not be any ordinances among Christians. If you are troubled by certain types of meetings, it indicates that you still have some ordinances. Although I might not participate in certain activities in a meeting, I would not be bothered about them. We need to give up our ordinances. On the cross Christ crucified all the ordinances. Therefore, we should not be troubled by them any longer.
If you still keep the ordinances, the Body disappears. As long as you have any ordinance, there can be no Body. We have seen that the Body issues out of Christ’s transmission. In this transmission every ordinance is done away with. This matter of ordinances was a problem to Peter. On the day of Pentecost Peter was bold. But when it came to the matter of eating, he had difficulty, for he still observed the eating ordinances. In Acts 10:9 through 16 Peter saw a vision of a great sheet and heard a voice saying, “Rise up, Peter; slay and eat!” (v. 13). This voice seemed to be saying, “Peter, you should not keep your ordinance about eating. If you do, the Gentile believers will be cut off from the Body. You must give up your ordinance and eat what you never ate before.”
We must not make any ordinances. If you know the Body, you will never keep any ordinance or be troubled by any practice. Every practice is permissible as long as there is no sin or idol involved in it. In order to have the proper Body life, we must abandon every ordinance. This, however, is not easy to do. For example, we like our way of meeting. Eventually, our way of meeting becomes an ordinance. If we shout and others do not, or if we call on the Lord’s name in a certain way and others do not, we may be troubled. According to our opinion, the more shouting and the more calling the better. No doubt we have received benefit from shouting and calling on the name of the Lord, but we must never make this an ordinance. Because we are in the Body, we should not have any ordinances.
The Body is also a matter of being fellow partakers (Eph. 3:6). According to the Greek, the word heirs in Ephesians 3:6 has a prefix that should be rendered as “fellow.” The same Greek prefix appears before the words rendered “members” and “partakers.” Hence, we are fellow heirs, fellow members, and fellow partakers. If we would have the Body, we must learn the lesson that the Body is such a joint matter. The more we are joined to others, the better. Never be isolated, for isolation is against the principle of the Body.
We have seen that Ephesians 4:4 says, “One Body and one Spirit.” This verse not only reveals the uniqueness of the Body; it also shows that the one Body is determined by the one Spirit. Because there is one Spirit, there is one Body. There is not another Body, because there is not another Spirit. We must keep the oneness, the unique oneness of the Body, because the Body and the Spirit are unique.
In Ephesians 4:11 and 16 we see that although the Body is produced by the transmission of Christ, it is built up by the gifted persons, by the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. However, the Body is not built directly by the gifted persons; rather, it is built directly by all the members of the Body. Therefore, Ephesians 4:16 says that every part has a measure of function and that the Body is built up by the function of every part in love.
If we put together all the points we have seen in this chapter, we shall have a general view of the Body. The Body is produced by the transmission of Christ. In order to have the Body in practical reality, all the ordinances must be abolished. Furthermore, we must recognize that the Body is a joint matter and that it is altogether in the Spirit. If we have the Spirit, we have the Body. Because there is one Spirit, we are limited to having one Body. We are compelled to keep the oneness of the Body. The Body is now being built up through the gifted persons who perfect the members to function so that the Body may be built directly through them.
