GENERAL SUBJECT
THE RECOVERY OF THE CHURCH
Message Seven
The Status of the Church—the Body of Christ
Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:22-23; 4:16; Rom. 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:12-13; 14:26
I. Ephesians 1:22 and 23 reveal that the church is the Body of Christ:
A. The church is not an organization but an organic Body constituted of all the believers, who have been regenerated and have God's life, for the expression of the Head—John 3:3, 5-6, 15; 1:12-13; 1 John 5:11-12.
B. The Body is the fullness of the Head, and the fullness is the expression of the Head—Eph. 1:22-23.
C. Christ, as the One who fills all in all, needs the Body to be His fullness; this Body is the church to be His fullness—3:10; 1:22-23; 4:10.
D. The church is the Body of Christ, and Christ is the Head of the church (Col. 1:18; 2:19); hence, the church and Christ are one Body, the mysterious, univer-sal great man (3:10-11; Eph. 2:15; 4:24), having the same life and nature:
1. Christ is the life and content of the Body, and the Body is the organism and expression of Christ—Col. 3:4; 1:18; 2:19; Rom. 12:4-5.
2. As the Body, the church receives everything from Christ; therefore, every-thing of Christ is expressed through the church—Eph. 1:22-23; 3:8, 10.
3. The two, Christ and the church as His Body, are mingled and joined as one, with Christ being the inward content and the church being the outward ex-pression—vv. 16-21.
II. We need to see clearly how the Body of Christ has been formed:
A. In Christ's resurrection the processed and consummated Triune God has been wrought into His chosen people—John 20:22; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17; 1 Pet. 1:3.
B. In Christ's ascension the all-inclusive, compound Spirit, as the consummation of the processed Triune God, descended upon His chosen people—Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8; 2:4, 32-33.
C. Within them God's chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people have Christ as the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God, and upon them they have the consummated Spirit—John 20:22; Luke 24:49.
D. In this way the believers in Christ become the Body of Christ, an organism produced through the mingling of the processed and consummated Triune God with the transformed tripartite man—1 Cor. 12:13, 27; Eph. 5:30.
III. The reality of the Body of Christ is the Spirit of the reality of the Triune God—4:4; John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13-14; 1 John 5:6:
A. Reality refers to the real condition of persons and things.
B. The Body of Christ is the church, and all its reality is the Spirit of the reality of the consummated Triune God—Eph. 1:22-23; 4:16; John 16:13-14:
1. The reality of the processed Triune God is His consummated Spirit of real-ity—14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1 John 5:6.
2. The reality of all that the Triune God is, has, and can do is this Spirit of reality—John 16:13-14.
3. The reality of the death and resurrection through which the Triune God has passed is also in the Spirit of reality—Eph. 2:5-6.
4. The Spirit of reality makes everything of the processed Triune God a reality in the Body of Christ—1 John 5:6; Eph. 4:4.
5. All that the Triune God is, including righteousness, holiness, life, light, power, grace, and all the divine attributes, are realized by the Spirit of real-ity to be the real attributes of the Body of Christ—Rom. 15:16b; 14:17; Eph. 3:16-17a.
6. These attributes have been realized in the church by the Spirit in the Body of Christ; the church therefore possesses the reality of the divine attri-butes—4:24; Col. 3:12-15.
7. All that the Triune God in Christ experienced, including incarnation, cruci-fixion, and resurrection, are likewise realized by the Spirit of reality to be the real experiences of the Body of Christ—Rom. 6:3-6; Phil. 3:10.
IV. The church as the Body of Christ is the corporate Christ—1 Cor. 12:12:
A. In 1 Corinthians 12:12 the Christ is not the individual Christ but the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ, composed of Christ Himself as the Head and the church as His Body, with all the believers as its members:
1. The Bible considers Christ and the church as one mysterious Christ; the two have been joined together to become one mysterious Christ, the Body-Christ—Eph. 5:32.
2. All the believers of Christ are organically united with Him and constituted of His life and element to become His Body, an organism, to express Him— Rom. 12:4-5; Col. 3:4, 15.
B. As a vine includes not only the stalk but also the branches, so the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ, includes not only Christ Himself but also the members of Christ's Body, who are the members of Christ, parts of Christ—John 15:1, 4-5; Eph. 5:30; 1 Cor. 12:27; Rom. 12:5:
1. Christ is the element, the factor, that makes us parts of Him—Col. 3:10-11.
2. In order to be parts of Christ, members of His Body, we must have Christ wrought into our being—Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:19; Eph. 3:16-17.
3. The church can be the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ, only as the members are constituted of Christ, possessing His life and nature—Col. 3:4, 10-11.
C. The baptism into the one Body has positioned us all to drink of the one Spirit, and by drinking of the Spirit, we are constituted to be the Body, the corporate Christ—1 Cor. 12:13:
1. By drinking the Spirit, we experience the dispensing of the Divine Trinity into our being and are constituted to be the Body.
2. Themorewedrink theone Spirit, the more thedivineelement becomesour constituenttomakeusthe oneBody, theBody-Christ—vv. 12-13.
V. For the building up of the Body of Christ, we need to practice the scrip-tural way to meet and to serve—14:26; Heb. 10:24-25:
A. Without the biblical way for us to meet and to serve, the way that is shown in the New Testament, the Lord's words concerning the building up of the church cannot be fulfilled—Matt. 24:35; 16:18; Eph. 4:11-16.
B. If 1 Corinthians 14:26 and Hebrews 10:24-25 are not fulfilled, there is no way for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
C. Thescriptural waytomeet andtoserve, withall thesaintsfunctioningas living members of the Body of Christ, is versus the traditional way, the natural way, to meet and to serve, which is in the principle of the clergy-laity system— Rev. 2:6, 15:
1. The traditional way fits man's natural and fallen condition, is religious, and accommodates the dead man's taste—cf. Matt. 25:23-30.
2. The traditional way binds and annuls the organic function of the living members of Christ and chokes and kills the members of Christ—Rev. 2:6.
3. The scriptural way is spiritual, fits the taste of the living and spiritual man, and requires us to be living and in the spirit—John 4:23-24; Acts 13:52; Gal. 5:16; Rom. 8:4; 2 Tim. 1:6-7.
4. The scriptural way is able to develop the organic ability and function of the members of Christ and able to build up the Body of Christ—Eph. 4:12-16.
D. The Lord desires to recover the organic building up of the Body of Christ:
1. The organic building up of the Body of Christ is the increase of the Triune God in the believers for their growth in Christ—Col. 2:19; Eph. 4:15-16.
2. The Lord desires to recover the church meetings in mutuality with all prophe-sying (speaking for the Lord) for the building up of the church; prophesying is the excelling way to dispense the riches of Christ into God's people for the organic building up of the Body of Christ—1 Cor. 14:4b, 12, 31; cf. Matt. 16:18.