Hallelujah, we can exercise our spirit and be one with the Lord to receive and speak the word of God for His increase in us and in others!
It is very important for us, believers in Christ, to realize that the regenerated part of our being is the multiplication and reproduction of Christ, the increase of Christ, for the corporate expression of God.
According to the Bible, God is not satisfied with merely being the Almighty One, the Perfect One, the One who is all-inclusive, all-extensive, and who is ever-existing and self-existing.
In His economy, God wants to increase and grow – not in Himself but in man; He created man in His own image and likeness, and He wants to increase and grow in man until He gains a corporate expression in man, the church as the Body of Christ.
This is an intrinsic view of the church; the church is not only the gathering of the called-out ones but also the organism of the Triune God, the increase of God in man.
John the Baptist realized this and said that the Lord is the Bridegroom coming for the bride, and He must increase, while John had to decrease.
The Lord Jesus needs to increase, and we need to decrease; He has come in our spirit through regeneration, and He needs to increase in our being until He fills us and becomes everything to us.
On one hand, Christ is the Redeemer who came as the One who gives Himself to gain the church as His bride. On the other hand, the Lord Jesus is the Bridegroom who wants to marry the church as His bride, and the church is the increase of Christ to be His bride.
The Lord Jesus today is the life-giving Spirit who sanctifies the church, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the Word.
May we realize that the Lord Jesus is not only the One who redeems us, the One who saves us from our sins, and the One who is rich and all-inclusive for us to enjoy, but He is also the Bridegroom who increases Himself in us to make us the church, His bride, to be His counterpart, His expression, His duplication and reproduction.
This is what we see at the end of the Bible: the Spirit (the consummation of the Triune God to be the Bridegroom) and the bride (the glorified believers in Christ, the church in its highest consummation to be the bride of the Lamb)! Hallelujah!
At the end of the Bible, there is a great call – the marriage of the Lamb has come, for His wife has made herself ready!
We as believers in Christ are regenerated to be born of God and to be brought into the process through which Christ is constituting us with Himself to make us His increase as His bride, His counterpart. Hallelujah!
We are today in the process of being transformed and conformed to the image of Christ and one day we will be glorified to match Him fully, being fully saturated with the divine life that regenerates us, transforms us, and glorifies us!
The Church as the Increase of Christ is the Multiplication and Reproduction of Christ, His Bride
There are many aspects of the church, but in its organic existence, the church is the Body of Christ, the organism of the Triune God, an organic entity that grows and increases for the corporate expression of Christ.
We become part of the church not by agreeing with a set of doctrines and abiding by the rules set in the holy word; we become the church by being regenerated with the divine life.
The divine life is the intrinsic essence of the church as the Body of Christ, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6).
Our being born of our parents is our being born of the flesh, and this constitutes us to be flesh; our being born of the Spirit is our being regenerated with the divine life, and this constitutes us to be members of the Body of Christ, the church as the organism of the Triune God.
We believers in Christ are part of the church, and the church is the increase of Christ (John 3:29-30); the increase of Christ is the multiplication and reproduction of Christ.
That which is born of God in us is part of the church as the increase of Christ; the regenerated part of our being is the reproduction and multiplication of Christ.
And this part needs to increase and spread until it fills our whole being. That which is born of God – our mingled spirit – overcomes the world and is part of the duplication of Christ in us.
However, our natural life is not part of the increase of Christ. When we live in our natural life, no matter how good our natural life is, how moral and ethical it is, it is not the duplication and reproduction of Christ.
We may love the Lord and enjoy Him, but when we speak in a joking way in our natural man, we do not live as part of Christ’s increase.
Rather, when we live in our natural man, we live just like the rest of those in the world, in the vanity of the mind.
However, when we live in the new man, when we live according to the spirit, we will be part of the duplication and reproduction of Christ in His Body.
Only the regenerated part of our being is Christ’s increase; our serpentine nature is not part of the increase of Christ.
May we learn to live in the mingled spirit, turning to the Lord and living by Him, so that we may be in reality part of the duplication of Christ, the reproduction of Christ.
The bride as the increase of Christ is actually Christ Himself because the Body of Christ (“the Christ” in 1 Cor. 12:12) is the corporate Christ.
The church as the Body of Christ is the corporate Christ, and this corporate Christ is composed of Christ as the Head and the church as His Body with all the believers as members.
This is to have an intrinsic view of the church and realize what is the intrinsic essence of the church for its organic existence.
When we emphasize this, when we focus on the intrinsic essence of the church, we will keep the oneness, we will receive life and minister life to others, and our living and work will contribute to the building up of the organic Body of Christ for Him to have a corporate expression on earth.
Hallelujah, our regenerated spirit is part of Christ’s increase, His bride! Amen, Lord, we want to live in the mingled spirit so that we may be the increase of Christ in reality! Save us from living in our natural life or according to the natural man. May our living and our work be part of the increase of Christ, the multiplication and reproduction of Christ. May we realize that the intrinsic essence of the church is the divine life, and may we live by the divine life in our spirit so that we may be in reality part of the duplication and multiplication of Christ. Amen, Lord, we are here to be part of Your corporate expression. We choose to live in our mingled spirit today.
Exercising our Spirit and being One with the Lord to Receive and Speak the Word of God who is Spirit and Life
Our human body is one yet has many members, and the members of our body – though being many – are one body; so also is the Christ, the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ (1 Cor. 12:12).
The Body of Christ is one, yet it has many members, and the many members of the Body are one Body in Christ.
According to John 15, all those who believe in Christ are grafted into Christ to be the many branches abiding in the vine; if we abide in Him, He abides in us, and we bear much fruit.
When we abide in the Lord, He bears fruit in us, and our fruit glorifies Him; both us as branches and the fruit that we bear by abiding in Christ are part of the vine, the increase of Christ.
How do we abide in the Lord? A very simple way, a very practical way, is for us to allow His word to abide in us; when He abides in us by means of His Word, we abide in Him and He abides in us, with the result that we bear much fruit.
The Lord said that the words which He speaks to us are spirit and are life (John 6:63); He came to speak the words of God, and He gives the Spirit without measure (John 3:34).
The Greek word for “words” in these portions is not “logos” as in John 1:1, which refers to the constant word of God, but “rhema” which refers to the instant, spoken, present word of God.
When we speak of allowing the word of God to abide in us we mean that we need to take in the word of God by the exercise of our spirit so that the word becomes living, instant, present, and operative in us.
When we receive the word by exercising our spirit, we receive the Spirit who is life. How can we be filled with the Spirit?
It can be quite mysterious and abstract for us to say that we want to be filled with the Spirit, but when we exercise our spirit to receive the word of God, we have a practical way to be filled with the Spirit.
The Lord Jesus said that the words He speaks are spirit and life; He went through a process to become a life-giving Spirit, and He is embodied in His words to give us life.
A very practical way for us to be filled with the Spirit is to exercise our spirit to receive the words of God so that we may get spirit and life.
In the Old Testament, God spoke in many ways and through many people, but His speaking in the New Testament is in only one person, which is Christ, the Son of God (Heb. 1:1-2).
Yes, God did speak through Peter, Paul, John, and the early apostles, but their speaking as the New Testament ministers of the Word is part of God’s speaking in the Son.
When Paul spoke and wrote the Epistles, he was one spirit with the Lord, and his speaking was the Lord’s speaking.
In our speaking we need to be one with the Lord as the speaking One; we need to pray that He would be one spirit with us and we would be one spirit with Him, and we need to speak one with Him.
If we exercise our spirit to receive the word of God and speak the word of God, we will have God increase in us and also spread to others to increase in them.
If we don’t have the assurance that we are one spirit with the Lord, we should not speak. This is how we carry on the ministry of the Word, by speaking God into people.
We need to exercise our spirit to receive the word of God into us as spirit and life, and we need to exercise to be one spirit with the Lord to minister Christ as life into others.
Our listening to the genuine ministry of the word causes us to receive more of the essence of God, and our speaking one spirit with the Lord will impart Christ to others.
The word of God spoken to us becomes spirit and life in us, and when we exercise our spirit to speak the word of God to others, this word becomes spirit and life in them.
In this way, we are filled with the Spirit to become part of the universal increase of the unlimited Christ.
May we seek to be filled with the Spirit to be the increase of Christ, even part of the universal increase of the unlimited Christ!
This increase began with our regeneration and it consummates with our being filled with the immeasurable Spirit.
Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit in coming to Your Word so that Your word becomes spirit and life to supply us and fill us with the Spirit! Amen, Lord, speak to us in our reading of the word of God! Speak to us and fill us with Yourself as the Spirit! We exercise our spirit, dear Lord, to receive Your word by means of all prayer and petition, and to speak Your word to others so that they may receive spirit and life! Amen, Lord, fill us with the Spirit! Fill us to the brim and make us part of the universal increase of the unlimited Christ! Be one spirit with us, Lord, as we speak the word of God to others. We want to practice being one spirit with You in receiving and speaking the word of God so that we may be filled with the Spirit and be part of Christ’s increase!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by the brothers for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1982, vol. 2, “The Fulfillment of the Tabernacle and the Offerings in the Writings of John,” chs. 6-7, 9, 11-13, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Intrinsic and Organic Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ (2021 International Chinese-Speaking Conference), week 2, The Intrinsic Growth of the Church for Its Organic Increase.
- Hymns on this topic:
– As Eve to Adam fulness was, / So is the Church to Christ her Head; / As Eve from Adam’s being came, / The Church by Christ’s own life is bred. / Christ’s riches are Himself within, / His fulness is the Church without, / As His expression, full of Him; / The Church with Christ is built throughout. (Hymns #820)
– When we the Word in spirit touch, / As life the Spirit it becomes; / The Spirit, when expressed from us, / As words of life to others comes. / Our spirit we must exercise / To take the Word most inwardly, / And then to give the Spirit forth; / The two as one with us should be. (Hymns #815)
– As the branches of the grapevine / Are its outward spread, / With it one, abiding, bearing / Clusters in its stead; / So the Church’s many members / Christ’s enlargement are, / One with Him in life and living, / Spreading Him afar. / Fulness, increase, duplication, / His expression full, / Growth and spread, continuation, / Surplus plentiful. (Hymns #819)
About aGodMan
