Having the Consciousness of the One New Man; in the New Man Christ is All and in All

In the one new man Christ is all the members and in all the members, and there is no room for any natural man in the one new man. Therefore, in our church life we need to have a consciousness of the one new man and realise that Christ is all and in all, and we simply need to live Christ for the church as the one new man.

The one new man already exists in the spiritual realm, for it has been created on the cross by Christ in His body (Eph. 2:15). Christ tore down the enmity, broke the middle wall of partition, and in His body on the cross He created the one new man, of which we all are members.

Then, in His resurrection, He regenerated us with His divine life so that we may become members of the Body and components of the one new man.

It is this one new man that will fulfill God’s plan to express God and represent Him, and it is this one new man that will usher in the kingdom of God and bring in Christ, the King. What the Lord has been doing and what He’s currently doing at the moment in His recovery is to bring forth the one new man with Himself as the life and the person for God’s expression.

In the church as the one new man Christ is all and in all – He is all the members of the new man, and He is in all the members.

The way the new man comes into being is very wonderful – it is by us, the members of the new man, being saturated, filled, and permeated with Christ and replaced by Him through an organic process, which the Bible calls transformation (2 Cor. 3:18).

As we are being transformed by the renewing of the mind, the saturation of the divine life in our spirit, and the filling of the inner life, we become in reality the one new man. As we are being transformed, we become the same as Christ, Christ becomes us, and He is our life and living, expression, and everything – in the new man Christ is everyone and everything.

May we allow the Lord to permeate us and replace us until all natural distinctions have been removed, and we all are constituted of Christ. May the all-inclusive Christ be wrought into is organically until He replaces our natural being with Himself, so that He may be the unique constituent of the one new man.

May we be those who cooperate with Him by daily enjoying Him and experiencing Him, taking Him as our life and person, and allowing Christ to live in us and be expressed through us in our daily living and in the church life.

In the One New Man Christ is All the Members and in All the Members – He’s All in All

In Col. 3:11 we see that in the one new man Christ is all the members and in all the members. As we enjoy and experience the all-inclusive Christ, allowing Him to saturate and permeate us, the issue will be the church as the one new man.

As we daily enjoy Christ, He is being wrought into our being and becomes constituted into us – Christ becomes our organic constituent. The result of being constituted with Christ is that we become the one new man, and in the new man Christ is all the members and in all the members – He is all and in all.

In the new man there’s room only for Christ. There’s no room in the one new man for anything or anyone natural, for here Christ is all and in all. In the church as the one new man there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:10-11).

This means that Christ is the unique constituent of the new man, and in the new man there’s room only for Christ. We shouldn’t be occupied with our natural or cultural differences among us or among the people, but focus on Christ, experience Christ, and enjoy Christ, for in the new man Christ is all and in all.

The Christ who dwells in us is the constituent of the one new man (Col. 1:27; 3:11). Because Christ is all the members of the new man, there’s no room in the new man for any race, nationality, culture, or social status.

The reality today is that we as human beings prefer to be with those who are like us, even though there’s no enmity between us and the others; if we continue to live in this way, it may take a long time for us to realize what we are by nature, race, ethnicity, and culture.

But if we open to the Lord, enjoy Him, experience Him, and take Him as our life and person, we will see a vision of the corporate God-man – the church as the one new man, where Christ is the unique person living in each member, Christ is the unique constituent wrought into every member, and Christ is the unique life lived in them and flowing in them.

If we see a vision of the church as the one new man and realize we are members of the new man, we will no longer live by our natural life or in our natural way but we will take Christ as our life and person and live Him, not ourselves.

When Christ lives in us all – when Christ lives in all the members of the new man, then in reality only He will be in the new man. When all the saints – whatever their race, nationality, background, or social status is – live Christ, then in a real and practical way Christ will be all the members of the one new man.

For us to experience the reality of Christ being all the members of the new man, we need to take Christ as our life and person and live Him, not ourselves.

Lord Jesus, we want to experience the reality of Christ being all the members of the new man. We take You as our life and person, and we want to live You, not ourselves. May You be our living, expression, life, and person for the church as the one new man. May we realize that in the new man there’s no room for race, nationality, culture, or social status. Praise the Lord, in the new man Christ is all the members and in all the members – Christ is the unique constituent and life of the one new man!

Having the Consciousness of the One New Man and seeing an Illustration of this in Colossians

We need to practice the church life in the consciousness of the one new man. To be conscious of something is being awake and aware; it is the awareness and perception of something by a person.

Do we have an awareness of the one new man? Before the Lord’s shining face, do we think or are we aware of the new man as we practice our church life?

As the Lord’s recovered people, many times we may lapse into a condition of being unaware of what the Lord is doing.

In the Old Testament, as the Israelites returned to Jerusalem and started to lay the foundations of the temple, there was opposition, the government was used by the opposers to stop the work, and eventually the work stopped.

So the Lord came through prophet Haggai and said, This people says, It is not time for the house of Jehovah to be built…but is it time for you to dwell in your panelled up houses while My house lies waste? (Hag. 1:2-3) The people of Israel had no awareness of the house of God, so the Lord came through Haggai and Zechariah to awaken them.

In the New Testament Paul writes to the Philippians, I hope to send Timothy to you shortly, for I have no one like-souled who genuine cares for the things concerning you, for all seek their own things, not the things of Christ Jesus.

This is heart-breaking; timothy was open to have the kind of experience that Paul had, so that Paul could send him with confidence to others, but all others were seeking their own things.

After a period of time, when the zeal of our youthful love for the Lord is worn out, when things get busy humanly, our priorities may shift, and we may have very little awareness or consciousness of the one new man.

First, we need to be church-conscious people, as the believers were in Acts; the persecution was on the church (not on the believers), and the things were heard in the ears of the church (not the saints’ ears).

Then, we need to have a further or deeper consciousness – a consciousness of the Body. Such a consciousness comes from the cross dealing with our self, our flesh, and our natural life, so that the life of the Body in our spirit would saturate our being, and we would have an inner awareness of the Body.

And still a higher consciousness is of the one new man, and in Col. 4:7-17 we have a practical illustration of the revelation of the one new man and of the consciousness of the one new man. In the new man Christ is all and in all – He is every member and in every member, and in these verses we see different kinds of people.

In Col. 4:7-17 we see those who are of circumcision, some slaves, some masters, and some free men. All these were living the one new man.

Lord Jesus, grant us to have the consciousness of the one new man as we live the church life. Save us from living the church life in a routine way, without having the consciousness of the Body of Christ and the one new man. Lord, impress us, shine on us, and infuse us with a view of the one new man where Christ is all and in all. May we see Christ in all the members of the church as the one new man, and may we have fellowship with the saints by having this in view!

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. 217-218 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Genuine Church Life (2017 Thanksgiving Conference), week 6, Practicing the Church Life in the Consciousness of the One New Man.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Churches, churches, in the local churches / We all find the flow: / Deeper, higher, Christ as all our living, / For the church we grow. / The churches are today / Just Christ in every way. / For this, from self we cease, / For Thy Body, Thine increase. (Hymns #1240)
  # By this Person being formed in me, / I’ll a member of His Body be, / No more acting individually, / But with the saints. / More and more our Person He must be; / That our natural personality / Be eliminated thoroughly / Till Christ is all. (Hymns #1180)
  # Oh, may Thy living light, Lord, / Scatter all my night, Lord, / And everything make bright, Lord, / For this I pray to Thee. (Hymns #426)