The building up of the church depends on the shutting up of the gates of Hades through the exercise of the keys of the kingdom; for us to build up the church, we need to exercise the key of denying the self (Matt. 16:24).
Christ, the Son of the living God, builds the church on Himself as the rock, and He does this with stones like Peter and us, transformed persons. However, as He builds up the church, the gates of Hades are attacking.
The gates of Hades are Satan’s authority of darkness, his power of darkness; these gates attack the church to frustrate the Lord from building up the church.
The Lord Jesus Himself has already defeated the gates of Hades, for He has passed through death and entered into resurrection, and in resurrection He produced the church; the church is an entity fully in resurrection, and for us to build up the church we need to be in resurrection.
Even though the Lord has overcome the gates of Hades and has the keys of death and Hades, we as His church need to exercise the keys of the kingdom to lock up the gates of Hades so that Satan’s death would not spread in the church.
However, most believers do not know what these gates of Hades are and how they are being expressed. The gates of Hades are not merely something very negative and evil, for the Lord Jesus identified Peter’s word to Him as being one of these gates.
The Lord said He was going to die in Jerusalem and then He will be resurrected, but Peter – in his good heart for the Lord – started to rebuke the Lord that He would not do such a thing.
The church was to be produced and then built up through Christ’s death and resurrection, but Peter, who just had a marvelous revelation of Christ being the Son of the living God, tried to frustrate the Lord from doing this.
Peter was not an evil person, nor was he “demon-possessed” or something like that; rather, he expressed his opinion and his feeling to the Lord, and Satan used this to open one of the gates of Hades.
Whenever we express our opinion and feeling and we are not one with the Lord in His feeling and opinion, we open the gates of Hades in the church. Whenever we live in the self, speak in the self, and just are in the self, we open one of the gates of Hades in the church, and death spreads in the church. Oh Lord Jesus!
May we realise that the self, the mind, and the soul-life are the main gates through which Satan comes forth to attack and damage the church, and may we exercise the keys of the kingdom to lock up and shut the gates of Hades.
Seeing how the Self has Damaged the Church and Exercising the Key of Denying the Self
The building up of the church today depends on the shutting up of the gates of Hades through the exercise of the three keys revealed by the Lord Jesus in Matt. 16:24-26.
There has to be the locking up of the gates of Hades through the exercise of the three keys. Just as we need to remember to lock the door to our own house when we leave the house and when we get into the house, we need to constantly be reminded to exercise the key of denying the self to shut up the gates of Hades.
Don’t think that you already locked the gate of Hades when you denied your self yesterday or this morning; these gates are open again in no time, for the self is there again, the soul-life is there, and the mind that sets itself on the things of man is back.
We need to see that throughout history the church has not been damaged mainly by Judaism or Gnosticism but rather, it has been damaged mainly by the self. The self of the believers, once expressed and manifested, has hindered the building up of the church throughout the centuries.
Martin Luther once said that, although he was afraid of the Pope in Rome, he was more afraid of the stronger pope, the self, within his own heart.
There’s nothing that damages and frustrates the building up of the church more than the self, for the self is the embodiment of Satan and it is expressed through our mind and our opinions.
The self, the soul, and the mind are “three-in-one”, the embodiment of Satan. For example, when we meet with the saints and we fellowship together, there may be some natural friendships that form in the church life.
Such a thing is human and many times considered normal by others, but in the church life being naturally related to others is something of the natural affection, relationship, and feeling, and it is something of the self.
We must be fearful of natural affection and shun it. All our relationships in the church life need to be through the cross and by the Spirit, and our desire in contacting one another should be to minister Christ to them for the building up of the church.
Whenever we discover that we are feeding a brother’s self and that he is feeding ours, we need to exercise the key of denying the self to lock the gate of the self.
We may think that this is natural, normal, and it is not sinful or evil, but once we live in the self and allow the self to be expressed, Satan will come out through the door of the self, and the church cannot be built up but it is rather damaged.
The Lord Jesus took the lead to fall into the ground as a grain of wheat to die, and through His death and resurrection the church was produced (John 12:24); now we need to follow Him in His death by denying the self, losing the soul life, and putting aside our natural mind.
May the Lord have mercy on us that we may see how the self damages the church, so that we may exercise the key of denying the self to lock the gates of Hades and release the building up of the church!
Lord Jesus, we want to follow You by taking You as our pattern and denying our self, losing our soul life, and taking up our own cross. Lord, for the sake of the building up of the church, we want to exercise the keys of the kingdom to lock up the gates of Hades and release the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Amen, Lord, may we learn from You to die to the self, lose the soul-life, reject the natural mind, and take up the cross, so that we may lock the gates of Hades and death would have no way in the church!
Behind the Self, the Soul-life, and the Mind is Satan, who Manipulates the Self to Damage the Church
Did God create man as a self? Absolutely not! So when did the self come into existence, and what is the self that the Lord said that we should deny?
When God created man, He made him perfect, but when man fell, his body became the flesh, and his soul became the self. The flesh is the created body which was corrupted by sin, the nature of Satan (see Rom. 6:12, 14; 7:8, 11, 17, 20), and the self is the created soul plus the satanic mind, the mind of Satan.
When Satan came to Eve, he started a conversation with her, and he asked her some questions; in this way, he injected his thought into the human soul. When the mind, the thought of Satan was injected into the human soul, the human soul became the self, the embodiment of Satan (see Gen. 3:1-6; Matt. 16:22-23).
Actually, even before man physically partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into his body, the thought, the mind of Satan was injected into his soul.
Before man physically partook of the forbidden tree, the poison of sin came in and corrupted his mind, his emotion, and his will. The human body was corrupted to become the flesh, and the human soul was injected with Satan’s mind to become the self.
For this reason, we need to deal with the self first, for the self is the root of so many evils.
After Eve’s mind was poisoned by Satan’s thought (when he asked her, Did God really say that you shouldn’t eat of this tree?), her emotion was aroused when he continued, God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God knowing good and evil.
This probably made Eve feel that God kept some good thing from her, so she was seduced to exercise her will and partake of the tree; she made a decision to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
By this time every part of her soul – the mind, the emotion, and the will – had been poisoned. We all have a mind that is in the process of being renewed, now that we are saved; however, our mind is still partially a natural mind, an unrenewed mind, and a poisoned mind, so we need to exercise the key of denying the self to deal with the gates of Hades.
The self is the embodiment of the soul-life, which is expressed through the mind; thus, the self, the soul-life, and the mind are three-in-one.
The self has its origin in Satan’s mind; he injected his mind into us, and his through coursed through our soul until it came out as our mind. Behind the self, the soul life, and the mind, is Satan, the one who manipulates the self to damage the church.
Satan pulls the levers, he operates these three things; he’s the evil mastermind behind the three-in-one in us, and he manipulates the self to damage the church.
Throughout the centuries, the church was damaged more by the self than by any kinds of persecution from without or philosophies, gnosticism, etc.
Martin Luther said that he is more afraid of the pope within (the self) than the pope with his cardinals in Rome. The Pope in Vatican did damage and destroy the church, but throughout history “the inward pope”, the self, has done more damaged, wielded more destruction, and ravaged the church, keeping the church from being built up even now, two thousand years later.
We should not think that our mind is OK, that we are so transformed that we don’t need to deal with the self, or that our soul life is dealt with. Rather, we should realise that behind the self, the soul-life, and the mind is Satan, who manipulates the self to damage the church. And we should tell the Lord,
Lord Jesus, grant us to see that behind the self, the soul-life, and the fallen mind is Satan, the one who manipulates the self to damage the church. Dear Lord Jesus, we love You and we are here for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Amen, Lord, may we realise that the self is the enemy of the Body, for the self is the embodiment of Satan. May we stand one with You to deny the self. Amen, may we exercise the key of denying the self so that this gate of Hades would be locked up and the church would be built up!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1978, vol. 1, “The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building of the Church,” ch. 3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Church Life and the Christian Life (2019 spring ITERO), week 5, The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building Up of the Church.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Lord, teach us to discern the spirit / That we may never set our mind / Upon the flesh but on the spirit, / That sin and self no more may bind. (Hymns #746)
# The cross is not a suffering. / The cross is our release. / Deny the self, enjoy the Lord, / And live by life and peace. (Song on, The Cross is Not a Suffering)
# Satan has our heart corrupted, / To our spirit death did give, / That the Lord we should not contact / But by self attempt to live. / Thus the Lord in His salvation / Heart and spirit has renewed / To recover our receiving / And our loving aptitude. (Hymns #743)
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