The Church as the Body of Christ is the Corporate Christ, the Body-Christ

The church as the Body of Christ is the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ, and all believers in Christ are members of the Body of Christ, that is, all believers are members of Christ.

First of all, the expression “the Body of Christ” is not an allegory or a type, but it is what it says – the “body of Christ” is the Body of Christ, the organism of Christ, the organism of the Triune God where Christ is the Head and all believers in Christ are the many members of the Body.

In the revelation in the Bible the revelation of God is progressive from Genesis to Revelation. In Genesis we see a God who created all things – He created the heavens and the earth, and He possessed divinity – only He is God, and He is the almighty One.

Then, in time, 4000 years later He was incarnated as the man Jesus Christ; God became the incarnated God – now God can be found in a man. The eternal almighty God was incarnated to be a man, lived a human life of 33.5 years, went to the cross, was crucified, accomplished the work of redemption, and became a redeeming God. God died for us on the cross – God died in man as the redeeming God.

Then, after He died and resurrected, the God who was incarnated to be a Man became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to indwell all the believers; now He is the indwelling God.

First it was the almighty God, then the incarnated God, the redeeming God, and now the indwelling God. Now God is no longer only in the heavens but He is in you and me. Still further, the divine revelation concerning God progresses to show us that God becomes the incorporated God.

He indwells man for the purpose of incorporating man into God. God put on human nature, He became a life-giving Spirit, and now He indwells us, so that He may be incorporated with us, cause us to become one with Him, and make Himself us to make us the same as He is.

The New Jerusalem, the ultimate consummation of God and man, is the mingling and incorporation of God with man – this city is God yet man, man yet God, with no difference between.

The New Jerusalem is a divine-human constitution as the incorporation of God and man; divinity and humanity are fully blended and mingled together as one. This is the high peak of the divine revelation – here all the revelations in the Bible culminate and arrive at, at the fact that God is incorporated in man and with man.

The Lord prophesied this in John 17 that in that day we will know that He is in the Father, the Father is in Him, and He is in us; there’s the incorporation of God and man together as one.

This is what the corporate Christ is – it is the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ, where God and man are mingled and incorporated until there’s no difference between God and man.

Seeing that the Church as the Body of Christ is the Corporate Christ, the Body-Christ

In 1 Cor. 12:12 we are told that even as the human body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body – being many – are one body, so also is Christ; this Christ in Greek is “the Christ”, referring to the Body-Christ, the corporate Christ.

In the Bible Christ sometimes is referred to as the individual Christ, while at other times He is the corporate Christ, which is Christ and the Church, that is, Christ the Head and the Body of Christ as one.

Christ is the Head of the Body, and the church is the Body of the mysterious Christ; these two have been joined together to become the one mysterious Christ, a universal great man.

The church as the Body of Christ is the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ. All the saved ones in all times and all space added together are the Body of the mysterious Christ, and Christ is the Head – these two are one.

Individually speaking we – the saved ones – are particular members of the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ (1 Cor. 12:27); corporately speaking, we are the mystical Body of Christ.

The Bible considers Christ and the church as one mysterious Christ – these two have been joined together to become one mysterious Christ, the Body-Christ, the corporate Christ (Eph. 5:32).

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 the Triune God (Rom. 12:4-5; Col. 3:4, 15).

The Body of Christ is not different from the Head – they are not separate, just as our human body is one with the head, and when someone sees our body, they consider it one with the head.

We cannot separate the church from Christ, and we can’t say, I like Christ, but I don’t like the church…Christ and the church are inseparable, for the church as the Body of Christ is the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ.

Today we are in the age of the Body-Christ, the corporate Christ; we are all one Body, we are parts of the Body of Christ, and God has been incorporated into us and we have been incorporated into Him.

God has been enlarged to include all the believers in Christ; we are not becoming God in His Godhead as an object of worship, but we are becoming the same as He is in life and nature, and we are included in Him.

We the church are the corporate God – we have God, His life, and His nature; God is our Father, we are His children, and we are God’s family. This is a great revelation in the Bible.

Just as the 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 (see John 15:1, 4-5; Eph. 5:30; 1 Cor. 12:27; Rom. 12:5).

If we were to look at the branches, we would see the vine, and when considering the stock, we also see the vine; the branches are the vine, and the stock is the vine.

We are branches in Christ, the vine; we are the vine, and Christ is the vine – we are the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ. Wow, what a revelation!

Lord Jesus, enlighten our eyes to see that the church as the Body of Christ is the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ. May we realize that we as believers in Christ are organically united with Him and constituted with His life and element to become His Body, His organism, to express Him. Praise the Lord, we are part of Christ – we are members of Christ, part of the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ composed of Christ as the head and the church as His Body, with all the believers as its members. Lord, may we realize this, and may we live being governed by such a vision!

By Drinking of the Spirit we are Constituted to be the Body, the Corporate Christ

The element and factor that make us – the believers in Christ – all one in Christ and parts of Christ is Christ Himself; Christ is all in all, and He makes us all one, even the Body of Christ (Col. 3:10-11).

For us to be parts of Christ, members of His Body, we must have Christ wrought into our being (see Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:19; Eph. 3:16-17). The church can be the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ, only as the members are constituted of Christ, possessing His life and nature (see Col. 3:4, 10-11).

We are the Body of Christ – therefore, we need to be Christ in every way. We cannot be what we are – we can’t be British, Germans, Romanians, Chinese, Korean, Americans, etc – we must be Christ, for we are the Body-Christ, the corporate Christ.

If we see this, we will reconsider what kind of Christian life and church life we live, for we are all part of the universal organism, the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ.

The supply here is immense, immeasurable, and incalculable, for Christ is everything to us in His Body. As 1 Cor. 12:13 shows us, we have been all baptised into one Body and have been positioned to drink of the one Spirit; by drinking of the Spirit, we are constituted to be the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ.

For the formation of the Body there was the breathing in John 20 and the baptizing in Spirit in Acts 2, and now for us to be the corporate Christ we are all positioned to drink one spirit.

Our position is in the Body; we are part of the Body, we are positioned to drink with all the saints from one spirit to be the one Body of Christ, the corporate Christ.

The building up of the Body of Christ is altogether a matter of constitution; the Body is not something organized by man but an organic entity constituted of the divine element of the processed Triune God and the resurrected and uplifted humanity.

When we are constituted with the divine element, we become in reality the Body of Christ. We need to drink the one Spirit so that we may be inwardly reconstituted with Christ and thus have the divine element wrought into us to make us the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ.

The more we drink the one Spirit, the more the divine element becomes our constituent to make us the one Body of Christ, the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ.

By drinking the Spirit, we experience the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity into our being, and we are constituted to be the Body. Praise the Lord: we all have been positioned in the Body to drink of the one Spirit, and now we simply need to drink!

Lord, enlighten us and open Your word further to us to realize that, by drinking of the Spirit we are constituted to be the Body, the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ. Thank You for positioning us all to drink of the one Spirit – now we just want to drink and drink and drink, until we are inwardly constituted with the divine element to become organic parts of the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ. Amen, Lord, we stand in the Body, we are positioned to drink, and we open our whole being to drink of the one Spirit to be the one Body of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 212 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Church (2017 fall ITERO), week 7, The Status of the Church – the Body of Christ.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Not the individual Christians, / but a corporate entity— / God must have it for His full expression now; / Not just individual churches but the Body corporately— / Hallelujah, we are in the Body now! / Hallelujah for the Body! (Hymns #1226)
  # Lord, to know Thee as the Body, / Is my desperate need today, / Oh, to see Thee in Thy members, / ’Tis for this I long and pray. / No more just to know Thy headship / In an individual way, / But to see Thee incarnated, / As the Body-Christ, I pray. (Hymns #1225)
  # And now the corporate life we live— / Christ in His Body known; / Where every portion adds more Christ, / Until the whole is shown. / O Hallelujah, one new man! / Our portions blend as one; / In one accord, express the Lord, / And He will quickly come. (Hymns #1182)