This week we are coming to another item on the central line of the Divine Revelation in the Bible – the Body of Christ; more specifically, we are getting into, The Consciousness of the Body of Christ.
As believers in Christ, we are not individualistic people living our own life by ourselves; rather, the divine life we have received at our regeneration is a corporate life – we are members of the Body of Christ!
What God desires to have from the beginning is the church, the Body of Christ, a corporate vessel to contain and express Him. God doesn’t desire just spiritual persons or even transformed individuals – He wants the church, the Body of Christ, the corporate expression of Christ!
We need to ask the Lord to have mercy on us and shine on us in this respect – when He shows us that we are members of the Body of Christ, our whole Christian life will be revolutionized!
We will have an awareness of the Body of Christ and of the Body life. Paul had such a feeling of the Body of Christ both in a “smaller scope” and in a “greater scope” – see the verses below:
1 Cor. 12:26-27, And whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the Body of Christ, and members individually.
2 Cor. 11:28-29, Apart from the things which have not been mentioned, there is this: the crowd of cares pressing upon me daily, the anxious concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I myself do not burn?
Paul had both a smaller scope in his consciousness of the Body(if one member suffers / is glorified, all the members suffer / rejoice with it – a sense of the Body) and a greater scope of his sense of the Body (his own cares and anxieties were for the Body and of the Body).
How could he have such a feeling? How can we also be like this, having a sense of the Body? First of all we need to realize that the life we have in us is not the life of a member of the Body but the life of the Body of Christ! It is not a “particular life” that is “local and specific” to what we are in the Body – we have the life of the Body!
The Bible and our experience prove this – the life flowing through each regenerated believer as members of the Body of Christ is NOT a member life but a Body life!
Just as in the human body, the flow of life in the eyes is the same flow of life enjoyed by the ears, the hands, and the other members of the Body. In the Body of Christ, when one member is joined to the Body or having proper fellowship with the Body, his life is the life of the Body, and the life of the Body is his life!
This is actually Christ’s life flowing in us and through us to mingle us with Christ – and this is the Body of Christ! To say this more precisely, it is this life that mingles with us that makes us the Body of Christ! [sharing inspired from, The Church as the Body of Christ, and, The Experience of Life (by bro. Witness Lee)]
Lord, increase in us the consciousness of the Body of Christ! Thank You for mingling Yourself with us as our life and our everything! It is Your life in us that produces and builds up the Body of Christ! Lord, save us from remaining in ourselves and caring only for ourselves! We want to have the sense of the Body of Christ – we want to pay attention to the sense of the divine life within us! Lord, grant us to know the Body, care for the Body, and live for the Body!
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