Only Life Can Mend: Only the Ministry of Life in Love can Mend us to Build up the Church

The central requirement for the building up of the church today is the mending ministry of life – a ministry through which the broken spiritual net is restored, perfected, and made stronger and in which we experience Christ as our life and become the dwelling place of God (The Mending Ministry of John, banner 1).

Only life can mend. Only the mending ministry of life in love can mend us for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

If we look around us we will see that both us and others have many problems, holes, lacks, and issues, and there are many broken hearts and broken lives. Satan as our enemy without is constantly working to damage people, and whenever we are in the flesh or in our natural man we also damage others.

What can restore us, mend us, and build us up? Rebuking doesn’t work; correcting doesn’t do the job – only life can mend! In 1 John 5:16 we see that whenever we see someone sinning a sin not unto death, we need to ask and we will give him life!

The reason we sin is the lack of life. The reason we argue and we make mistakes is because we are short of the divine life. There are many “holes” in us and many broken things that need to be mended. We can be mended only by life in love – only the ministry of life can mend us!

We need to come to the Lord and be mended by Him and then He will have a way to mend others through us. The church life is not a perfect place with perfect saints and an utopian situation. There are many broken lives and many “holes” in the being of the saints in the church life.

But when we minister life to one another, when we don’t criticize or expose but pray and give life, the divine life in love can mend. The central requirement for the building up of the church today is the mending ministry of life.

When we allow the Lord to mend us by life in love, we will experience Christ as life and we will become the dwelling place of God (see John 2:19-22; 11:25; 14:2-3).

Only the Ministry of Life in Love can Mend – Only Life can Mend

Let us not be idealists in the church life – let’s be realistic and visionary at the same time.

To be an idealist means that we have a certain high standard and ideal of what the church is supposed to be, and we believe the church is an utopia, heaven on earth…But when such an idealist comes into the church life and meets all the saints, he will discover that, on the one hand, in spirit the church is the perfect place, but the saints are not perfect.

But a visionary is one who is governed by a divine revelation concerning the reality of the church, and he lives in the practicality of that vision in the church with all of its problems.

Paul was a visionary – he wrote to “the church of God which is in Corinth” (1 Cor. 1:2). Even though there were sects in the church, the church was the church of God. Even though some were drunk at the Lord’s table meeting, some were suing others, and there was a chaos concerning the gifts, Paul was clear: the church was the church of God!

In the churches today there are broken situations and broken lives. Let’s be realistic: we all have “holes” in our being. What can restore us? It is not by doctrines, teachings, politics, moral exhortations, or miracles. Only the life-giving mending ministry can mend us.

Only life can mend. Only the Triune God Himself in Christ as the Spirit can mend us. Only the divine life can mend a person like John, impetuous, ambitious, and powerful in the natural man, to make him a mender of the church.

John himself writes in 1 John 5:16 that when we see someone sinning a sin not unto death we shouldn’t talk about it or even tell this one to repent – we simply need to pray and we will give him life! We sin because we are short of Christ as our life, and nothing can save us from sin and its power but life.

In the family life, the husband likes to rebuke the wife and the wife wants to subdue the husband. Neither rebuking not the attempts to subdue the other work – only ministering life works. In a practical way in the family life we need to minister life to one another. We need more Christ.

In the degraded situation of Christianity today, only life can mend people and heal them, bringing them back to Christ and the experience of life.

What short simple words John uses [in 1 John 5:16]! “Give life to him”—a first grader can read this. Yet how marvelous is the expression, found nowhere else in the Bible! Some may protest that the Bible tells us to admonish and rebuke. It does, but this is not the word of the mending ministry here. Why is Christianity so degraded? One reason is that there are many to admonish but few to give life. What can mend today’s broken situation? Only the life-giving mending ministry. (The Mending Ministry of John, pp. 93-94)

The Central Requirement for the Building up of the Church – The Mending Ministry of Life

What builds up the church? What can cause the believers as the members of the Body of Christ to grow and function in their measure for the building up of the Body of Christ?

As we see in 1 Corinthians, gifts are good – but they can also damage and divide the saints. Only the ministry of life, the mending ministry of life in love, can build up the church. The central requirement for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ today is the mending ministry of life.

When we allow the mending ministry of life to mend us, we will experience Christ as our life and we will become the dwelling place of God (see John 2:19-22; 11:25; 14:2-3).

We may speak in many tongues, but without love, we are nothing (1 Cor. 13). We may have many teachings and even good teachings, but without life, we don’t build up the Body but can rather create divisions. We need to know the nature of God’s essence – God’s love – and then we will realize: the Body builds itself up in love.

We need many like the Apostle John, many who are mature in the divine life and who live in the inner substance of God to mend others in love. Such ones have no hidden motive but are pure, with no self-interest, gain, or obligation.

One day the Lord will make us aware of the holes in our being – and of the holes in the church. We may have even contributed to make “holes” in the church….yet the Lord doesn’t judge us, He wants to give us an opportunity to be mended.

For the sake of the church, let the Lord mend you! For the sake of the people you work with and for the sake of your family, let the Lord mend you! God is very good at what He does, and He knows what’s best for us. He takes good care of us, and as the Physician He comes to us as the sick ones to heal us, mend us, and build us up.

What we need in the church life today is the mending ministry of life, which can build us up in the church as the house of God. As we are mended by the Lord, we are also entrusted by Him with the mending ministry, to mend others by ministering life to them in love.

Lord Jesus, we open to Your all-inclusive tender care and mending. Lord, we need more life. You know our situation, our being, and everything about us. We open to Your mending in Your way and in Your time. For the sake of the church, Lord, mend us! For the sake of the saints and our family, mend our being with Your life. Lord, mend us and make us those who mend others by ministering life to them in love. We want to know Your inner substance and remain here, in Your love, that we may minister life to others in love.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ speaking in the message for this week, and portions from, The Mending Ministry of John (chs. 11-12), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Mending Ministry of John, week 1 / msg 1, The Mending Ministry of Life.
• Further reading: recommending ch. 14 in, “The Vision of God’s Building” (Vol. 4, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1964).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # In my spirit He remains, / With His power He sustains; / As the Spirit one with me, / He is my reality. / Moving in me day by day, / Mingling with me all the way, / All my steps He regulates, / Every part He saturates.
  # Flow through me, Lord, set all my heart-strings thrilling, / With Thine own love, so matchless, perfect, free. / Flow through me, Lord, till naught in earth or heaven, / Can satisfy my being, Lord, but Thee.
  # I am weakness, full of weakness; / At Thy sacred feet I bow; / By Thy blest, eternal Spirit, / Fill with strength, and fill me now!