The Church, the Body of Christ, is the One New Man to Accomplish God’s Eternal Purpose

The church as the Body of Christ is the one new man to accomplish God’s eternal purpose.

But what does it mean for the church to be the new man, and how can we experience this aspect of the church in our church life and even daily experience with the Lord? Can we say that, in our experience, Christ has actually become our life and our person?

Has Christ been constituted into our being to such a degree that we no longer live out our culture, we no longer have a consciousness of nationality, race, ethnicity, social class, but Christ lives in us and He is all and in all?

Regarding the church as the new man there are two main aspects: the glorious fact of the creation of the new man and the application and experience of the new man. On the cross Christ created in Himself the one new man; in the sight of God, the one new man exists as a reality.

But in our experience today we need to put off the old man, be renewed in the spirit of the mind, and put on the new man, to apply, experience, and live out the new man.

Simply being gathered with many brothers and sisters from different backgrounds and nationalities doesn’t mean we are the new man, and learning to eat the food that other people eat so that we may be “one with them” doesn’t mean we live out the new man.

Can we say we have the reality of the one new man? Can we say that, all over the earth in all the local churches, the leading ones have the consciousness of the new man, and they rise up above the national and racial consciousness to realize they are part of the one new man?

We need to know and experience the church as the Body of Christ for the Lord to have a way to move through us, and we need to know and experience the church as the new man for the living of Christ on earth.

The church as the new man is the highest aspect of the church. There is a distinction between the church as the Body of Christ and as the new man – although the two are one, since we as a person are the same as we as the body.

The body is for moving – Christ moves through His Body to accomplish God’s will. The new man is for living, and it is the living of the church as the new man that fulfills God’s intention in creating man, as seen in Gen. 1:26.

God’s purpose in creating us will be fulfilled on earth in this age by the one new man in the churches. This week we want to enter deeper into the church as the new man – the second major status of the church.

We need the Lord’s light that we may know this highest aspect of the church and live out the reality of the new man in the church life today.

The Church, the Body of Christ, is the One New Man to Accomplish God’s Purpose

God’s intention in His creation of man – as seen in Gen. 1:26 – is to have a corporate man to express Him and represent Him, thus accomplishing His purpose. God didn’t create many men – He created mankind collectively in one person, Adam.

God created man in His image and according to His likeness so that man may corporately express God and represent Him. On the one hand, God wants man to express Him with His image; on the other, He wants man to represent Him with His dominion, to deal with His enemy.

God created man in His own image, and then gave man His dominion – image is for expression, dominion is for authority to deal with His enemy.

Positively, God wants that the man He created in His image and according to His likeness would express Him in His image, and negatively, God wants man to represent Him with His authority. Satan, the devil, is God’s enemy; he is a creature of God, so God will not lower Himself to deal with him.

Therefore, God created man in His image for man to express God, and God gave man His dominion to deal with His enemy Satan.

As we know, however, man failed God – he didn’t express God, neither did he represent God with His authority. God’s creation of man in Genesis 1 is a picture of the new man in God’s creation; this means that the old creation is a figure, a type, of the new creation (see Eph. 2:15; 4:24; 2 Cor. 5:17).

God had the new man in mind when He created the first man. The first man became the old man through the fall, so the second man, the Lord from heaven, came, lived in such a way that He fulfilled Gen. 1:26, died on the cross to crucify the old man and create the new man, and now there’s a new man on earth – which is the church, the Body of Christ.

In the old creation God gave man dominion only on earth; in the new creation, God gave dominion to the new man over the entire universe. Because the new man – with Christ as the Person and living – fulfills God’s purpose, the new man expresses God and represents Him with His authority.

The church as the new man is the man in God’s intention; the man God created was a type of the church, which is the new man, whom Christ created through His death on the cross.

The term, “new man” reminds us of the old man; the old man didn’t fulfill God’s dual purpose, but the new man in God’s new creation fulfills the twofold purpose of expressing God and dealing with God’s enemy.

Surely, the Lord wants to see more transformation, more expression of His image, and more exercise of His dominion; more image and more dominion is what the Lord wants to gain through the church.

The new man is a corporate person; the requirement that we all be the one new man is as high as the heavens. We all need to learn together to be the new man, so that the Lord would form in the churches the one new man expressing God and dealing with His enemy.

Thank You Lord for creating us in Your image and according to Your likeness so that we may express You and represent You with Your authority. Thank You for making us Your new creation to be part of the one new man that accomplishes Your purpose. Amen, Lord, gain the reality of the one new man in all the local churches on earth, so that the new man would fulfill the twofold purpose of expressing God and dealing with God’s enemy! Lord, gain more image and more dominion in all the churches!

The One New Man was Created through Christ’s Death on the Cross

The fact of the one new man being created through Christ’s death on the cross is clearly laid out in the Bible in Eph. 2:15-16; however, there’s a battle over the truth concerning the creation of the one new man.

The demons and the evil spirits are terrified by the fact that, on the cross, Christ terminated the old man and created the new man. The enemy is terrified that, in the sight of God, the new man exists right now on earth, so the enemy tries to keep the Christians from seeing this truth.

One way to hinder us from seeing is to cause us to think that, by having the concept of the one new man, we see it and we are it.

But having the doctrine of something is far different from seeing that or being that – Job himself can testify to that, for he heard of God by the hearing of the ear, but his eyes finally saw the Lord, so he abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes.

We need the Lord’s light concerning the one new man; light kills something in us and also revolutionizes us. Seeing the new man has a powerful impact. We need to bind the enemy’s stratagem from hiding this truth to the believers.

The one new man was created by Christ on the cross; as He died, He didn’t only put us and the old man to death, He didn’t only die as the Lamb of God to take the sin of the world, and He didn’t only destroy Satan through His death.

On the cross Christ created the one new man with two kinds of materials – the redeemed created man (the redeemed humanity, which He Himself perfected), and the divine element; on the cross, Christ put these two materials together to produce a new man.

He abolished in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might create the two – the Jews and the Gentiles – in Himself into one new man. If we see this, we will praise the Lord, for before we were born physically, we were created into the one new man. Hallelujah!

No wonder that, according to Col. 2, the evil spirits, the principalities and powers in the air, realizing what was happening on the cross, swarmed around Him, and He simply stripped them off. Nothing can stop the termination of the old man and the creation of the new man – this is a fact!

Our becoming the new man was not merely a matter of our repenting, being sorry for the past, and thereby becoming new; this is the moral teaching in the world – but not the teaching of the Bible.

The Bible says that first our natural man was crucified by Christ on the cross, and then through the crossing out of the old man, Christ imparted God’s element into us; thus, we became an entity that is different from the old man, because we have God’s element in us.

Negatively, Christ crossed our old man out; positively, He generated us to make us the new man (see Rom. 6:6; 2 Cor. 5:17).

Lord Jesus, cause us to really see the truth concerning the creation of the one new man, so that we may be revolutionised in our life and experience of Christ for the church. Hallelujah, the new man was created by Christ on the cross with the redeemed created man and the divine element, and now we – the Jews and the Gentiles – are one new man in Christ! Thank You Lord for crucifying our natural man on the cross and imparting the divine element to cause us to become a new entity – the one new man!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msgs. 216-217 (by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Church (2017 fall ITERO), week 8, The Status of the Church – the New Man.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # On the cross ordinances slain, / That He might form just one of twain. / Reconciling us to God, / Thus on the serpent’s head He trod. / He breaks down the middle wall / As upon His name we call; / On the cross ordinances slain, / That He might form just one of twain. (Hymns #1230)
  # Only Christ, our Person, must remain; / From our aims, our goals we must refrain, / Till the church be only Christ Himself / Built up as the one new man, / Thus fulfilling God’s great plan of— / Mingling fully with the human race / To obtain a proper dwelling place, / ’Stablishing His kingdom’s rule and grace; / Over all the earth. (Hymns #1180)
  # God would have a group of people / Built together in His plan, / Blended, knit, coordinated / As His vessel—one new man. (Hymns #1325)