The Church is a Corporate One New Man, a Corporate God-man Fulfilling God’s Purpose

The church is a corporate one new man, a corporate God-man, a universal man who fulfills God’s purpose of expressing God and representing Him.

On the one hand, the church is the Body of Christ, and we need to take Christ as our life and everything for the Body, realising that we are members of the Body, intimately related with the fellow members that the Lord put us with, and having a consciousness of the Body.

On the other hand, the church is the one new man, and we need to take Christ as our person for the one new man, allowing Him to make His home in our heart and rule in us, so that He may be the person who speaks in us, does things in us, and even thinks in us.

The goal of the Lord’s recovery is to bring forth the one new man, so that through the one new man God would be expressed and represented on earth. On the cross Christ already created the one new man, tearing down the middle wall of partition and making peace between Jews and Gentiles, and now we need to practice and live out the new man.

First, we need to see the vision of the one new man, and this heavenly vision has to govern us, direct us, and control us, guiding us to live a life directed towards God’s destination and live according to God’s economy.

As the one new man, the church is a corporate person and needs Christ not only as its life but also as its person. For us to have the practical existence of the one new man and to live the one new man in reality, we need to take Christ as our person.

He needs to be not only our life to supply us and enable us to live the Christian life and church life, but Christ has to become our person. Such a requirement is the highest requirement, for this means that Christ is the person in us, and we live Christ, no longer living ourselves or expressing ourselves.

The church is the one new man to accomplish God’s eternal purpose. God created Adam, the first man, in His image and with His likeness, so that man would express Him. God didn’t create many men, but one corporate man.

But the first man failed God, for Adam was deceived and partook of the wrong tree, and sin entered into him. Now all men are born in sin, and even though they have the image and likeness of God, they do not express God or represent Him.

The first man and all his descendants became the old man, the man that is sinful and corrupt. Christ came as the second man and last Adam, and on the cross He terminated the old man and created in Himself the one new man, which is a corporate new man that fulfills God’s plan.

The church as the one new man fulfills God’s purpose in creating man, and this corporate new man is what God is after today. We need to realise that God wants to gain the one new man, and that the church is the one new man.

We need to take Christ as our person for the one new man, for only Christ can be all in all in the one new man – there’s no other person in the one new man but Christ, who is all and in all.

The Church is a Corporate One New Man, a Corporate God-man Fulfilling God’s Purpose

God created man in His own image and with His likeness, and He gave man His dominion that man would both express God and represent Him on earth (see Gen. 1:26). Man fell, but eventually, the church is the corporate man in God’s intention (Col. 3:10).

God’s intention in creating man can be seen from the very beginning: He wanted to gain man to be a corporate man to express Him and represent Him. Because of the fall of man, the old man was corrupted; now God wants a corporate new man to accomplish His will and fulfill His purpose.

The church is a corporate one new man to express God and represent Him (Eph. 2:15; 4:24), and we, the many believers in Christ, are one with Christ and in Christ to be the new man – we all are parts, components, of the corporate one new man (see Col. 3:10-11).

We as believers in Christ are NOT members of a religious organisation which gathers us together, and which we can leave when we want to. The church is the household of God, and there’s an intimate relationship between all the members; however, the church is even more.

The church is the Body of Christ, an organism, and we all are members of the Body; whether we like it or not, we can’t get away from the Body, for we are members one of another. We are members, we are joined together, and we have different functions; even more, we are the components of the one new man.

The church is a corporate one new man, and all believers are components of this new man; the one new man has many parts but it has only one thought, one mind, and one heart, and every action of the one new man is to express the person of the new man, which is Christ.

When we speak of the church as the Body of Christ, we emphasize on taking Christ as life and learning to function in the Body, be joined to one another, love one another, and care for one another; all these are true and necessary.

However, when we speak of the church as the one new man, the requirement is so high that it is supreme; in the corporate one new man there is no place for you and me – here we have only Christ. In the new man there’s only one person: Christ.

In the new man there’s no differences among members, but Christ is all and in all.

If we see the vision of the one new man, we will not compare ourselves with others, we will not be jealous, and we will not criticize others, for we all have Christ as our person, and we have one thought, one mind, one mouth, one heart, and the same inward parts – the inward parts of Christ.

May the Lord be merciful to us and grant us to see the vision of the one new man, so that we may realize that all the believers are in Christ and are Christ. The requirement for the one new man is the highest; it is much higher and stricter than the requirement of the church as the Body of Christ.

In the one new man all our actions are governed by the Head, and we live Christ and let Him be our all and in all.

The one new man is a corporate God-man – the aggregate of all the God-men. Every believers individually is a God-man living Christ, and the one new man is the aggregate of all the God-men.

Lord Jesus, thank You for regenerating us with Your life to make us components of the corporate one new man who fulfills Your purpose. May we no longer stay in the old man but put on the new man by taking Christ as our person so that we may be in reality the one new man in God’s intention. Strengthen us into our inner man to fulfill the highest requirements needed for the church to be the one new man. May we live Christ, take Christ as our person, let Christ make His home in our heart, and let Christ be all and in all in the one new man!

The One New Man was Created by Christ on the Cross with the Redeemed Humanity and the Divine Element

The one new man doesn’t need to be created, for it was already created by Christ in His body on the cross two thousand years ago (see Eph. 2:15-16).

The corporate one new man that God desires to obtain for His expression and representation was created through Christ’s death on the cross. The death of Christ was an all-inclusive death, having at least four main aspects.

First, the death of Christ is a death of termination or condemnation; through His death Christ condemned Sin, Satan, the world, and the flesh.

Second, the death of Christ is a death of redemption, to redeem us who were created by God but had become fallen; Christ redeemed us to bring us back to the original condition of God’s creation.

Third, the death of Christ is a death of release, for the life within Christ was released through His death, just as the life within a grain of wheat is released when he dies in the ground (John 12:24).

Fourth, the death of Christ was a creating death, for on the cross Christ created the two – the Jews and the Gentiles – into one new man in His body, thus making peace (Eph. 2:15). Through His death Christ abolished the laws of the commandments in ordinances, slain the enmity, and created the two in Himself, to reconcile both in one Body to God.

Through the cross, Christ created the one new man; His death was a terminating death, redeeming death, life-releasing death, and a creating death.

The corporate one new man was created by Christ on the cross with two kinds of materials: man (the redeemed created man) and God (the divine element). On the cross, Christ put together the redeemed created man and the divine element to produce a new man (Eph. 2:15).

On the one hand we need the death of Christ to deal with and remove all the negative factors, and on the other hand, we need to be put together into one new man.

As fallen men, we were scattered by the enemy in different tongues, places, cultures, and habits of living; but Christ came, and His death abolished the law of the commandments in ordinances, slain the enmity, and created the two into one new man, so making peace.

Hallelujah, all the negative things were terminated, and on the positive side, the divine life was released to make us one – the church is the corporate one new man!

The divine life released through the death of Christ is the all-effective “spiritual glue” that “glued us together”. His death didn’t just terminate all negative things but also released the divine life, so that the divine essence would glue us all together and make us one.

Thank You Lord Jesus for dying on the cross not only to terminate sin and death, to redeem us, or to release Your divine life, but also to create the one new man! Thank You for tearing down the middle wall of partition and abolishing in Your flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, so that we both – the Jews and the Gentiles – may be created into a corporate one new man! Hallelujah! We praise You for Your redeeming death, Your all-terminating death, Your life-releasing death, and Your new-man-creating death on the cross!

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, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1970, vol. 3, “Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church Life,” ch. 4, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Goal of the Lord’s Recovery – to Bring Forth the One New Man (2018 ICSC), week 1, Our Urgent Need to See the Vision of the Church as the One New Man.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Not the person spiritual / In an individual way, / But the corporate life expressed / Will Thy heart’s desire display. / Members separate and detached / Ne’er express Thee perfectly, / But Thy Body tempered, built, / Ever shall Thy fulness be. (Hymns #839)
  # 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)
  # O hallelujah, one new man, / The building of God’s plan! / God’s plan throughout eternity— / Not man, but men built corporately. / This man cannot be beat, / All things beneath his feet, / Christ and the church one man complete. (Hymns #1231)