LIVING IN THE REALITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST BY KEEPING THE PRINCIPLES OF THE BODY
Message Five
Living Christ for the Reality of the Body of Christ
Scripture Reading: Phil. 1:19-21a; 3:8-14; Eph. 3:1; 4:1, 11-12, 16; 6:18, 20; Rom. 8:2, 29
I. The church as the Body of Christ is a pure product out of Christ; only that which comes out of Christ with His resurrection life can be His complement and counterpart, the Body of Christ—Gen. 2:22-23; Eph. 5:28-30:
A. The Head of the Body is Christ, and the Body of the Head is Christ, so the Body of Christ with Christ as the Head is "the Christ," the corporate Christ— Col. 1:18; 1 Cor. 12:12; Col. 3:10-11.
B. Anything other than Christ is not the Body of Christ, and anything other than Christ is a foreign element in the Body of Christ; thus, we must be desperate as Paul was to live Christ for the reality of the Body—Phil. 1:19-21a; 3:8-14.
C. All things other than the pure element of Christ are ruled out by this vision; this vision "paralyzes" us from exercising anything of our natural man—v. 3.
II. To live Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ is to be imprisoned in our spirit as a "prisoner of Christ Jesus," a "prisoner in the Lord," and an "ambassador in a chain"—Eph. 3:1; 4:1; 6:20; 2 Cor. 5:20, cf. vv. 4, 9, 14, 16:
A. hen we are imprisoned in Christ, we receive a revelation of Him to experience Him in His unlimited dimensions as the church-loving Christ, the new-man-creating Christ, the all-things-heading-up Christ, the gift-making and gift-giving Christ, and the home-making Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ—Eph. 3:18; 5:25-27; 2:15-16; 1:20-23; 4:7-8, 11-12; 3:17a.
B. person who lives Christ as an ambassador of Christ no longer has his own freedom and can no longer do things according to his own convenience; where he goes and what he does are not according to his choice but are under and according to the leading and directing hand of God—Ezek. 1:1-3; John 7:6, 8.
C. o live Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ is to be a captive of Christ in His triumphal procession, doing everything in the person of Christ in our spirit for the celebration of His victory in the work of the ministry to speak in Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ—2 Cor. 2:13-17.
III. The Body of Christ is the issue of the experience of Christ, so we need to pray desperately that we would live Christ for the Body of Christ to be a reality; the secret of how to live Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ is in Romans 8, which is a definition, description, explanation, and presentation of the law of the Spirit of life—v. 2:
A. Romans 8 uses this term—the law of the Spirit of life—to describe how the Triune God, after having been processed and consummated to become the life-giving Spirit, has been installed into our spirit as a law, a spontaneous, automatic principle and power within us; this is one of the biggest discoveries, even recoveries, in God's economy—vv. 2-3, 11, 16.
B. We need to cooperate with the installed and operating law of the Spirit of life by "switching on" the spontaneous and automatic power of the installed and automatic God, the indwelling Spirit as the "current" of the Triune God; to "switch on" this law is to remain in touch with the Lord, to stay in constant contact with Him, to have habitual fellowship with Him, and to be under His constant infusion by walking according to the spirit—Eph. 6:18:
1. To behave, act, move, and live in the mingled spirit, which is the law of the Spirit of life mingled with our spirit, is to behave, act, move, and live in the Body of Christ—Phil. 2:13.
2. In our spirit we have the presence of God, the speaking of God, the meeting with God, and the dispensing of God through His operation as the law of the Spirit of life to impart Himself into all our inward parts—Heb. 8:10.
3. To walk according to the spirit is to pray at every time in spirit—Eph. 6:18:
a. Our unceasing, continual, living, and breathing prayer should be "Lord, live through me"—1 Thes. 5:17; Eph. 6:18; Hymns, #403.
b. According to the revelation of Ephesians, we have to be persons who pray unceasingly in order to have the reality of the Body life; we must be watchful, fully awakened, fighting against our sleeping nature and our sleeping being, not just physically but also psychologically and spiritually—5:14; 6:17b-18; Col. 4:2.
c. We need to exercise our spirit to rise up over our body and our psychology, taking heed to the Lord's word to watch and pray, praying at every time in spirit and being watchful, on the alert, for the maintaining of our prayer life—Matt. 26:41; Eph. 6:18.
d. We must build up the habit of living Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ by building up the habit of prayer, the habit of breathing in the pneumatic Christ unceasingly by calling on Him and conversing with Him—Lam. 3:55-56; Psa. 102, title; Hymns, #255.
4. We can live Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ according to the law of the Spirit of life by being filled with the Spirit and by letting Christ's word dwell in us richly—Eph. 5:18-20; Col. 3:16-17.
5. We can live Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ according to the law of the Spirit of life by being empty and open vessels—Matt. 5:3; Luke 1:53; 2 Kings 4:1-6:
a. Paul's fourteen Epistles may be summarized by two words: open vessel— Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7.
b. We need to love the Lord to the uttermost, keeping ourselves entirely, thoroughly, and absolutely open to Him, allowing Him to be everything to us and do everything in us, through us, and for us for the sake of His Body— 1 Cor. 1:9; 2:9; cf. 16:22.
C. The operating of the law of the Spirit of life as the divine capacity within us spontaneously causes us to live God and become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—Ezek. 36:27; Rom. 8:2, 29; Eph. 1:22-23; 3:19-21.
D. The operating of the law of the Spirit of life as the divine capacity within us spontaneously constitutes us to be the members of the Body of Christ with all kinds of functions so that all the Body causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love—4:11-12, 16.