THE VISION, PRACTICE, AND BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST
Scripture Reading: Eph. 4:12-14, 16, 18, 20-21, 24, 27, 29-30, 32
I. If we would practice the church life as a living in the Body of Christ, the one new man, we need to experience the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity—Eph. 4:12, 16, 18, 21, 24, 30:
A. The divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity is the base for our daily living as believers and members of the Body of Christ and parts of the new man—2 Cor. 13:14.
B. The life of God is for the supplying of His children with His riches in His divine dispensing—Eph. 4:18.
C. The reality in Jesus is the practicality of the life of God, that is, the practicing of the life of God that took place in Jesus while He lived on earth—v. 21:
1. This is the divine life realized and practiced as the reality in Jesus' humanity.
2. The reality in Jesus is for infusing the believers with Christ's godly living in His humanity.
D. Ephesians 4:30 speaks of "the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption":
1. This Spirit is the sealing Spirit, even the sealing "ink" with which we all have been sealed—1:13.
2. The contents, the elements, and the essence of the sealing Spirit are the divine life plus Jesus' practical humanity—4:18; Acts 16:7.
3. The sealing Spirit saturates, permeates, and soaks us with the processed and consummated Triune God—2 Cor. 13:14.
E. The Father's life is the reality in Jesus, and this reality as the practicality of the life of the Father becomes the sealing Spirit—Eph. 4:1, 21, 30:
1. The sealing Spirit saturates, permeates, and soaks us with the divine life in the practicality of Jesus' daily life, making our life a reproduction of Jesus' life.
2. Through the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity with the Father's life, the reality in Jesus, and the Spirit's sealing, we may have a daily life that is a living in the Body of Christ, the new man—vv. 12, 16, 24.
II. For the church life as a living in the Body of Christ, the one new man, we need to arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God—v. 13:
A. The oneness of the Spirit in Ephesians 4:3 is the oneness of the divine life in reality, and the oneness in verse 13 is the oneness of our living in practicality:
1. The oneness of reality needs to be practiced and thereby become the oneness in practicality—vv. 3, 13.
2. The word arrive in verse 13 indicates that a process is required for us to arrive at the oneness of our living in practicality; the oneness of reality is the beginning, and the oneness in practicality is the destination.
B. The oneness in practicality is the oneness of the faith—v. 13:
1. The faith in verse 13 refers not to our act of believing but to the things in which we believe, such as the divine person of Christ and His redemptive work accomplished for our salvation—1 Tim. 1:19; 6:10, 12, 21; Jude 3.
2. In the church life we have only one thing that is special—the faith; for receiving the believers, to insist upon anything besides the faith is to be divisive—Rom. 14:1; 15:7.
C. The oneness in practicality is also the oneness of the full knowledge of the Son of God—Eph. 4:13:
1. The full knowledge of the Son of God is the apprehension of the revelation concerning the Son of God for our experience—Matt. 16:16.
2. The oneness of the faith altogether depends on the full knowledge of the Son of God; only when we take Christ as the center and we focus on Him can we arrive at the oneness of the faith, for only in the Son of God can our faith be one—John 20:31; Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:4, 6; 1 Cor. 2:2.
III. In order to preserve the church life as a living in the Body of Christ, the one new man, we must discern the intrinsic factor of the winds of teaching for their purpose—Eph. 4:14:
A. The winds of teaching are the devilish blowings of the evil one that bring storms into the church—Matt. 13:19.
B. Any teaching, even a scriptural one, that distracts believers from Christ and the church is a wind that carries believers away from God's central purpose—1 Tim. 1:3-4; Eph. 3:9-11, 17, 21; 5:32.
C. The intrinsic factor of the winds of teaching is the sleight of men, man's subtle ways of cheating, the craftiness of men with a view to a system of error—man's plotted deception to induce people into the satanic system of error; the system of error is of the enemy, Satan—4:14.
D. The purpose of the winds of teaching—the evil purpose of Satan versus the economy of God—is to overthrow the faith of some believers (2 Tim. 2:18), to devastate the church (Acts 8:3), to frustrate and tear down the building up of the organic Body of Christ, and to divide the members of the Body (1 Cor. 1:10-11), instead of keeping the unique oneness of the Body in love and kindness.
IV. In the church life as a living in the Body of Christ, the one new man, we all need to learn Christ—Eph. 4:20:
A. To learn Christ is to be molded into the pattern of Christ's death, that is, to be conformed to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God—Rom. 8:29:
1. Christ is not only life to us but also an example—John 13:15; 1 Pet. 2:21.
2. In His life He set up a pattern, as revealed in the four Gospels, and then He was crucified and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit so that He might enter into us to be our life—1 Cor. 2:2; 15:45b; Rom. 8:10; Col. 3:4.
3. We learn from Christ according to His example, not by our natural life but by Him as our life in resurrection—John 11:25; 1 John 5:11-12.
B. The basic elements in our learning Christ are reality and grace—John 1:14; Eph. 4:21, 24, 29:
1. Reality is the truth, the principle, the pattern, the standard; we have been placed by God through baptism into the pattern, the standard, the principle, set up by the living of the Lord Jesus; this is the reality in Ephesians 4.
2. As members of the Body of Christ, we are learning Christ as the reality is in Jesus—vv. 20-21.
3. In order to live out such a standard, we need grace—Christ as our enjoyment and supply—v. 29.
C. On the positive side, the basic factors of learning Christ are the life of God and the Spirit of God; on the negative side, the basic factor is the devil, who is al-ways seeking an opportunity to gain an advantage over us and to damage us— vv. 18, 27, 30.
V. In order to maintain the church life as a living in the Body of Christ, the one new man, we should be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven us; in the Spirit and by the divine life, we can forgive as God forgives—v. 32.