总题：一个新人成就神创造人的定旨
THE ONE NEW MAN FULFILLING GOD'S PURPOSE IN CREATING MAN TABLE OF CONTENTS
Message Four
Taking Christ as Our Person for the One New Man
Scripture Reading: Eph. 2:15; 4:22-24; 3:17a; Col. 1:27; 3:4, 10-11; Gal. 2:20
I. For the new man we all need to take Christ as our person—Eph. 2:15; 3:17a:
A. In the one new man there is only one person—Christ—v. 17a; 4:24.
B. We need to see that the church is the one new man and that in this new man we have no place, for Christ is all—Col. 3:10-11.
C. Christ is in all of us as one person; therefore, we all have only one person—Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:27; Eph. 3:17a.
D. In the new man all of us are simply one man; the requirement that everyone be only one man is extremely high—Col. 3:10-11.
E. The new man is not about members (Rom. 12:4-5) but about the person; therefore, we all need to ask, "Who is my person—I or the Lord Jesus?"
F. What God cares for is whether we live by Christ and take Christ as our person—John 6:57b; Phil. 1:21a; Col. 3:4; Eph. 3:17a:
1. We should not only eat Christ's riches in order to take them in and assimilate them into our being; we should also allow Christ to be our person—vv. 8, 17a.
2. We should take Christ not only to be our life but also to be our person.
II. For the practical existence of the one new man, the total person of the old man must be put away, and we must live by our new person—Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 4:22-24; 3:17a:
A. Realizing that our former person has been crucified, we should no longer live in that person, by that person, and with that person—Rom. 6:6.
B. We must deny our former person—"the old man" and the "outer man"—and live by our new person—"the inner man"—Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9; 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16.
C. Our standard for being a Christian should not be right or wrong, good or bad, but a person; the crucial matter is not what we are doing but who is doing it.
D. We should care not for the adjustment of our outward behavior but for the inward shifting from the old person to the new person—Gal. 2:20.
III. When we live our life by taking Christ as our person, especially in making decisions, our living will be the living of the new man—John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38; 17:4; Rom. 15:32; James 4:13-15:
A. Whereas the Body is for moving, the new man is for living, and eighty to ninety percent of our living is in making decisions—Phil. 1:21-26.
B. In the new man we take Christ as our person to make plans and to decide how we should live—Rom. 15:32.
C. We need to live a life in the new man by taking Christ as our person, with Him as the One making all the decisions in us.
D. If we take Christ as our person, we will not decide anything in our life by ourselves—Philem. 14:
1. Once we see that we are a part of the one new man, we will not be able to decide things merely by ourselves.
2. Since we are part of the new man, our decisions and our living should not be ours; they should be the decisions and living of the corporate new man; this is the ultimate requirement.
3. The living of the new man is a corporate living; therefore, our decisions are corporate decisions and not personal decisions—1 Cor. 4:17.
4. We need to see that we are a corporate Body and a corporate new man and that both our living and our moving are corporate—12:12; Rom. 12:4-5.
IV. Paul is a pattern of taking Christ as our person for the one new man—1 Tim. 1:16:
A. "It pleased God…to reveal His Son in me"—Gal. 1:15a, 16a:
1. Nothing is more pleasing to God than the unveiling of the living person of the Son of God.
2. We need to be brought into a state where we are full of the revelation of the Son of God and thereby become a new creation with Christ living in us.
B. "I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me"—2:20a:
1. Paul did not say that the life of Christ lived in him but that Christ the person lived in him.
2. God's economy is that the "I" be crucified in Christ's death and that Christ live in us in His resurrection.
C. "My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you"—4:19:
1. To have Christ formed in us is to have Christ fully grown in us.
2. Christ has been born into us, He is now living in us, and He will be formed in us at our maturity.
D. "That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith"—Eph. 3:17a:
1. God the Father is exercising His authority through God the Spirit to strengthen us into the inner man that God the Son may make His home deep down in our heart.
2. If we allow Christ to have all the room within us and if we give Him the full liberty to do whatever He wants in us, our heart will become His home.
E. "God is my witness how I long after you all in the inward parts of Christ Jesus"—Phil. 1:8:
1. Paul did not live a life in his natural inner being; he lived a life in the inward parts of Christ, experienced Christ in His inward parts, and was one with Christ in His inward parts.
2. Paul did not keep his own inward parts but took Christ's inward parts as his; Paul's inner being was reconstituted with the inward parts of Christ.
F. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus"—2:5:
1. To let Christ's mind be in us is to take Christ as our person by denying our natural mind and taking His mind.
2. If we intend to take Christ as our person, we must be willing to deny our mind and have our mind replaced by the mind of Christ.
G. "For also what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it is for your sake in the person of Christ"—2 Cor. 2:10b:
1. Paul lived Christ in the closest and most intimate contact with Him, acting according to the index of His eyes.
2. Paul was a person who was one with Christ, full of Christ, and saturated with Christ; he was a person broken and even terminated in his natural life, softened and flexible in his will, affectionate yet restricted in his emotion, considerate and sober in his mind, and pure and genuine in his spirit toward the saints for their benefit.
H. "That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit"—Rom. 8:4:
1. In practicality, to take Christ as our person is to have our being wholly according to the mingled spirit.
2. In our daily life we should not have our being according to teaching, feelings, concepts, or circumstances but according to the mingled spirit, taking Christ as our person for the universal one new man.
V. If we are unveiled and enlightened, we will see that today in the Lord's recovery we need to rise up together to take Christ as our person for the one new man—Eph. 3:17a; 4:24, 11-13:
A. The gifted persons—the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers—should take this as their goal—v. 11; 3:17a.
B. We need to perfect the saints in every locality so that they may enter into a situation where they take Christ as their person for the one new man—4:11-13.
C. If all the saints in the Lord's recovery take Christ as their person, then spontaneously we all will be the one new man—3:17a; 4:24.
D. "Ultimately, the Bible speaks of the church as the one new man…In the new man there is nothing but the person. This level is so high that it cannot be higher, so strict that it cannot be stricter, and so intimate that it cannot be more intimate. All are one new man; this one new man has only one person, and this person is the Lord Jesus" (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1977, vol. 3, "One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man," p. 332).