The Church Life is Christ Experienced and Expressed by All the Saints Corporately

After seeing a clear vision of the church and God’s threefold purpose for the church, we now come to the practice of the church and the crucial experiences we need in order to practice the church life today.

The church is to have the full sonship to express God; the church is the corporate new man to represent God and deal with God’s enemy, and through the church God has a way to head up all things in Christ.

If we were to apply this today in our Christian life and church life, we need to have some crucial experiences, the first of which is that our soul needs to be subdued and saturated with Christ as the Spirit, and Christ has to be released from the imprisonment of our soul.

The church life based on the word of God is a wonderful matter, and one of the definitions of the church life that it is Christ realized, enjoyed, experienced, and expressed by all the saints in a corporate way.

In order for Christ to be experienced and expressed by all the saints, our soul needs to be subdued by Christ and saturated with Christ, and Christ needs to be released from the imprisonment of the soul for the church life.

There is a great need for many of us to enter into the Holy of Holies through the second veil so that our inner being would be broken open and through us many others would enter into the Holy of Holies.

The spirit is the organ to contact God, receive God, and worship God; the soul is the organ of expression. Since the soul is the organ for expression, we need to have our soul saturated with Christ and subdued by Christ so that Christ would be experienced by us and expressed through us in a corporate way.

For the sake of the church life, the corporate experience and expression of Christ, we need to have our soul subdued and saturated with Christ.

We need to be renewed in the spirit of our mind to realize that having our soul subdued is not a negative thing; it is a negative and terrible thing to remain whole, untouched, and unbroken in our soul, but it is a wonderful thing when the Lord subdues our soul and He can be expressed through us.

The Church Life is Christ Realized, Experienced, and Expressed by All the Saints Corporately

We have seen that God’s purpose for the church is to corporately express God by having the full sonship, display God’s multifarious wisdom to deal with the enemy, and cooperate with God to head up all things in Christ through the church.

God’s threefold purpose for the church is wonderful, high, and glorious. Today in the church life we should have a clear vision of God’s purpose for the church, and we should realize that the church life is nothing else but Christ realized, experienced, and expressed by all the saints in a corporate way.

Christ is the Head of the Body; we grow into the Head, we receive the life supply from the Head, and we are mingled with Christ to be the Body of Christ, the corporate expression of the Head.

The only way the church expresses Christ is by being the Body of Christ, where Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11). In the church life there should be no opinion, murmuring, or reasoning since Christ is all the members and in all the members.

We need to enjoy Christ to the extent that He will swallow up all the differences and all the opinions.

We need to enjoy the Lord and experience Him both personally and corporately until there’s no more race, education, culture, skin color, background, or taste, but Christ is all and in all. Outwardly people still see us being different, but inwardly we are Christ – we are one with Him and we even become Him.

We need to pray that the Father would strengthen us through His Spirit into our inner man so that Christ may make His home in our heart through faith, so that together we would apprehend the all-extensive dimensions of Christ and become His corporate expression (see Eph. 3:16-21).

The church life is nothing other than the all-inclusive Christ with His unsearchable riches experienced by us, enjoyed by us, and expressed through us. Our practice of the church life needs to bring forth this kind of expression of Christ based upon our enjoyment and experience of Christ.

To have such a church life, we need to be constituted with Christ to the point that all that we are and have is simply Christ Himself (see Col. 1:12; 2:9-10, 16-17; 3:4, 10-11; 4:15-16). This is our aspiration, that Christ would be enjoyed and experienced by us so that He may be expressed through us corporately in the church life.

Our goal is not to be a splendid spiritual Christian or a great man in God’s hand but to be one of whose who experience Christ, enjoys Christ, and express Christ corporately. For this, we need to enjoy Christ to the point that we are filled with Him and He swallows us up to make us the same as He is.

We cannot be independent of Christ or of the other members of the Body in the church life, since we are members of the Body of Christ, members one of another (Rom. 12:4-5).

Lord Jesus, constitute us today with Yourself for the church. We want to enjoy You and experience You so that we may express You corporately in the church life. Lord, it is Your plan and heart’s desire to have the church who corporately express You: gain this among us today. We want to enjoy and experience You as the all-inclusive Christ with all Your unsearchable riches so that You may be expressed through us corporately.

To have a Church Life Expressing Christ, our Soul must be Subdued and Saturated with Christ

In order to have a church life that corporately expresses Christ, our soul (the organ for expression) must be subdued and saturated with Christ as the Spirit.

Our human spirit is the organ for contacting God, receiving God, and assimilating God; with our spirit, there is no problem, as long as we exercise our spirit and deal with any sins or obstacles.

The soul is the organ of expression, and if Christ is to be expressed through His believers – who make up the church – He must have a way through their soul.

The soul’s function is to express, and glory is God expressed. God wants to be expressed through us, but our soul is a great hindrance to Him. Certain things must happen to our soul so that we corporately may express Christ – and not express certain strong-souled persons in the church or be controlled by them.

In God’s eyes and to our inner being it is sweet to be subdued, broken, and saturated with Christ as the Spirit, but it is terrible to remain raw, whole, and unbroken before God.

Our inner man must be strengthened by the Spirit with power, and our soul must be subdued by the Lord, renewed by the Spirit, taken over by God, and occupied and possessed by the indwelling Christ. Then Christ will have a way to live in us, be released through us, and be expressed in us.

We need to not allow the soul to take the lead but exercise our spirit and be strengthened into our inner man that the mingled spirit would take the lead in everything we do, say, and express.

God doesn’t want to “defeat our soul”; He wants to subdue our soul so that there would be no more resistance of any kind to Him. We may be defeated yet still desire to be the first and take the lead in our soul. For our soul to be subdued means that there’s no more resistance of any kind to Christ as the life-giving Spirit.

On the one hand, therefore, we grow in life by allowing the Holy Spirit to have more ground in our being; on the other hand, we grow in life as every part of our soul is being subdued and saturated with Christ (see 1 Thes. 5:23).

Lord Jesus, for the sake of the church life we give ourselves to You to be subdued and saturated with You in our soul. Lord, we don’t want to have a soul that hinders Your corporate expression. We present ourselves to You to be touched by You and worked on by You so that You may gain Your corporate expression through the church. Gain us in our soul for Your expression. Give us the experiences we need for the church to become Your corporate expression!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1968, vol. 1, “The Practical Expression of the Church,” (ch. 2), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Vision, Practice, and Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ,  week 4 / msg 4, Crucial Experiences in the Practice of the Church Life (1) – Our Soul Being Subdued and Saturated with Christ as the Spirit and Christ Being Released from the Imprisonment of the Soul (you can buy this morning revival book here).
• Read more on this topic with some spiritual quotes via, Christian Pictures Blog.
• Note: all verses are via, Recovery Version Bible.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # The real experience of Christ in daily life, / Will fill the meeting life with Christ Himself. / Not empty forms and such, but Christ will be so much; / And we will see Him here as the meeting life. (Hymns #1216)
  # Capture me; / Be the conqueror of this / Wild, charging mare. / Win me Lord, / And subdue all pow’r of self / To yield to Thee. (Song on being subdued by the Lord)
  # Jesus Lord, my best love Thou art, / Rid all rocks that hide in my heart; / Gladly I Thy bondslave of love would be, / One heart, one will ever with Thee / Though my heart is oft not subdued, / Still Thy way alone it would choose; / All I yearn for is what Thy heart desires, / In Thy love alone peace I find. (Song on Loving the Lord)