The reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living of being conformed to the death of Christ; our Christian life is a life of pursuing to die with Christ through the experience of the cross so that Christ may live in us.
What is the reality of the Body of Christ? There are many aspects and many ways to define this, for it is something mysterious; how can we define or pinpoint the living that the Lord Jesus had when He was on earth?
He told us that He was sent by the Father to live because of the Father (John 6:57); this means that He as a man did not live Himself or by Himself but He took the Father as His source, living not just for the Father but living the Father.
Because Christ was God mingled with man, He lived in the mingling of God and man; because we are men mingled with God, we also need to live in the mingling of humanity and divinity and divinity and humanity.
The Body of Christ is nothing else but Christ – He is the Head and He is also the Body; therefore, the Body of Christ should reflect, express, and fully be one with the Head, doing what the Head is doing, speaking what the Head is speaking, and living the same way as the Head is living.
The reality of the Body of Christ is a living by the many God-men – the believers in Christ – who are united, joined, and constituted together with God by the mingling of God and man.
Through regeneration we have been cut off from the old man with its old source and old way of living, and we have been grafted into Christ to be a new man with a new way of living. Therefore, we need to be perfected, as the many God-men, to live not by our life but by the life of God in our spirit.
Just as the branch who has been grafted into a tree now lives not by its old life with its old way of living having its old source but by the life of the new tree, so we need to receive, be filled, and be constituted with Christ as the new life, and we need to live Christ.
When there’s a corporate living by a group of God-men who live not by their life but by the life of the processed God, there will be the reality of the Body of Christ on earth.
But how can we do this? How can we live by another life?
We are so used to live by our own human life, expressing ourselves, doing what we think it’s right, speaking what we consider is good…how can we learn to live by another life, the divine life in our spirit?
This is where the cross comes in; we need to be conformed to the death of Christ so that His life would be manifested in us.
The Reality of the Body of Christ is a Corporate Living of being Conformed to the Death of Christ
In Rom. 6:4-5 we see that we have been baptised into His death so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life. For if we have grown together with Christ in the likeness of His death, indeed we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection.
There’s a process of identification, organic union, and growth here; we grow with Christ in the likeness of His death, and we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection.
This denotes an organic union in which growth takes place; we partake of the life and characteristics of Christ, and in this organic union whatever He passed through becomes our history.
Christ’s death and resurrection is ours, for we are organically joined to Him; in such an organic union, all our negative elements are discharged, and our God-created faculties are resurrected, uplifted, enriched, and saturated for us to be transformed into His image.
Praise the Lord, we have been organically joined to Him, and in this organic union there’s the efficacy of His death operating in us!
For us to have the reality of the Body of Christ we need to have a corporate living of the conformity to the death of Christ.
Actually, the life of a Christ-pursuing God-man is a life of pursuing to die with Christ through the experience of the cross (Matt. 10:38; 16:24).
What is the cross? Ordinary Christians have a natural understanding of the cross as being a matter of suffering; for example, we may have a car accident, so we say that this is the cross from the Lord dealing with us so that we don’t love our car too much and we would learn the lesson of the cross.
Such a concept is religious and it is wrong, for it is not according to the revelation in the Bible concerning the genuine meaning of the cross.
The cross is not a matter of suffering but a matter of putting to death, termination.
On one hand, the cross is a termination, and on the other, the cross is a living out; just as a grain of wheat falling into the ground dies and also germinates, so we on one hand experience the cross putting us to death, and on the other hand we live in spirit!
Our Christian life is a life of pursuing to die with Christ through the experience of the cross so that Christ may live in us.
In Phil. 3:10 Paul aspired to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
The death of Christ is like a mold, as the mold people put the dough in so that they may bake something, and the dough takes the shape and form of the mold.
The cross of Christ doesn’t only give us some sufferings or spiritual lessons; it is God putting us in this mold so that we may be conformed to the death of Christ.
The Christian life is a life of the cross; we need to remain in the likeness of the cross, the likeness of the death of Christ.
Lord Jesus, we want to live in the reality of the Body of Christ by being conformed to the death of Christ. May our Christian life be a life of pursuing to die with Christ through the experience of the cross. Amen, Lord, gain in us what You are after: gain a thoroughfare, a way for You to live in us. May we know You, the power of Your resurrection and the fellowship of Your sufferings, being conformed to Your death, so that we would live in the reality of the Body of Christ.
Being those Living a Life of being Conformed to the Death of Christ to live in the Reality of the Body
The cross must become our experience; the cross is not merely to cause us to suffer or for us to wear around our neck but rather, the cross that enters into our heart is the cross that has become our subjective experience for us to live Christ (Gal. 6:14; 5:24).
The Lord Jesus told us that, if we want to follow Him, we must deny the self and take up our cross and follow Him (Matt. 16:24); to deny the self is to take up the cross.
The Lord Jesus was the first One who took up His cross daily, for He lived a crucified life from the manger to the cross. He was holy and without sin, yet He still denied Himself by putting Himself to death so that God might live in Him and God might be expressed through Him.
As God-men who pursue Christ, we also should bear the cross and live under the cross daily; this means that we should put our natural life on the cross by daily dying to our self and putting to death all the practices of our natural man and our flesh.
A God-man is one who has God’s life and nature in him, and he lives under the cross daily; a God-man experiences the cross daily, being conformed to the death of Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ.
Living a life of being conformed to the death of Christ is living in the shadow of the cross, and this touches the deepest part of our being and every detail in our daily life.
Bearing the cross doesn’t mean that, from time to time, God gives us some hardships, some problems, and some tough situations; rather, bearing the cross means that we daily need to be conformed to the death of Christ to live in the reality of the Body of Christ.
The cross is not just something we experience when something major happens to us; rather, it is in our daily living, when we speak to our spouse and our children, when we have an exchange of words, and even in such trivial things as what we eat and what we wear.
In the small matters of our daily life we need to learn the mold of the cross, remaining in the likeness of the death of Christ, and allowing the death of Christ to restrict us, deal with us, and strip us.
For example, we may not argue or be angry with our spouse, but in speaking to her we may simple express ourselves, our natural man, not being conformed to the death of Christ.
Are we under the death of the cross when we talk to our wife in a certain way? If we check with the Lord concerning our speaking we may realise that ninety-nine percent of our speaking is still from ourselves, not from the indwelling Christ but from our natural man.
We may not condemn others, criticize them, or judge them, but we still speak from ourselves and it is not the living Christ within being expressed.
We need to live under the shadow of the cross daily, living a life of being conformed to the death of Christ so that we may live in the reality of the Body of Christ.
This means not only that we don’t engage in gossip or speaking idle words, but that we all the time exercise our spirit to contact the Lord and check with Him concerning everything.
We may check with the Lord concerning what we buy, how many things we buy, what we wear, what we speak, our attitude toward others, and all the trivial daily things in our life. It is good to honestly tell the Lord,
Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to live one spirit with You in our daily life. May our daily living be under the shadow of the cross, always checking with You concerning all things so that we may not live or express ourselves but live Christ for the reality of the Body of Christ. Lord Jesus, have mercy on us; save us from living in our natural man and from expressing our old man. May our speaking be Your speaking and may our doing be Your doing. May we live a daily life being conformed to the death of Christ so that Christ may live in us a life in the reality of the Body of Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “A General Outline of God’s Economy and the Proper Living of a God-man,” pp. 519-520, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Living in the Reality of the Body of Christ by Keeping the Principles of the Body (2019 ICSC), week 1, The Reality of the Body of Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Crucified with Christ my Savior, / To the world and self and sin; / To the death-born life of Jesus / I am sweetly ent’ring in: / In His fellowship of suff’ring, / To His death conformed to be, / I am going with my Savior / All the way to Calvary. (Hymns #481)
# We need to work out our own salvation / By obeying the inner operating God. / We need to be conformed to the mold of Christ’s death / By the power of His resurrection that we may attain / To the out resurrection from the dead. (Song on, The Christian life is a life)
# The cross’s final goal, that God’s will be fulfilled; / His will’s arch enemy is but the self of man. / If self be done away and all the soul-life killed, / God’s will shall then prevail and prospered be His plan. (Hymns #622)
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