The reality of the Body of Christ is the Spirit of reality and the reality in Jesus. These days in our morning revival we come to the topic of, Living in the Reality of the Body of Christ by Keeping the Principles of the Body, and this week in particular we focus on the matter of, The Reality of the Body of Christ.
We did go through a similar topic recently – but did we really get into this speaking, and did the reality of the Body of Christ become something real in our daily experience?
Our genuine understanding and entering into this matter is scarce, so now we want to see more concerning it, especially that for us to live in the reality of the Body of Christ we need to keep the principles of the Body.
These principles are not merely regulations or rules in the practice of the church life; rather, there are some organic principles, just as in our human body there are some organic rules and principles which need to be kept.
This word, Reality, may seem something we can grasp or understand, but what is reality? Different people have different concepts and thoughts about it, and there’s much natural understanding of what the reality of the Body of Christ is.
We need to pray for ourselves and for all the saints that the Lord would bring us into the reality of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is something mysterious and profound.
In 1922 the Lord raised up brother Watchman Nee in China, and he began to give us help from the Bible, especially concerning the practicality of the church life; for us to be a proper Christian we need to have the proper church life on the proper ground of oneness.
Such a light was received by many brothers and sister, and many left the ground of division and returned to the ground of oneness to have the church meetings.
After brother Nee’s visit to Europe in the 1930’s, he became burdened to read and study the Bible again concerning the practice of the church life, and what he saw is that the church is the Body of Christ – not just a congregation but an organism.
Even though there may be thousand of local churches on the earth, in God’s eyes there is one Body of Christ. When brother Nee released the matters concerning the practice of the local churches, the saints were receptive and were willing to follow; but when he began to release the truth concerning the unique Body of Christ, only a few entered into this revelation.
But he didn’t stop nor was he he frustrated; in the 1940’s and all the way to his imprisonment he was burdened to release the revelation concerning the Body of Christ.
In 1949, during the political change in China, brother Watchman Nee sent brother Witness Lee overseas, and brother Lee continued to minister concerning Christ and the church along the line of the Body of Christ, further developing it in both Taiwan and the USA.
At the beginning of the 1980’s, brother Lee received a new light from the Lord to see that God has an eternal economy, which is for God to dispense Himself into His chosen people to be their life and everything, so that through such a dispensing He will bring forth a product, an organism, the Body of Christ.
The Body of Christ is related to God’s economy, His dispensing, for Him to work Himself into man.
In 1994 brother Lee saw that there’s a high peak in God’s eternal economy, which is that God – who wants to dispense Himself into man – became a man Himself, and through His dispensing, He makes man God, so that man would become God not in His Godhead but in His life and nature, for man to be the same as God.
God becoming man in order to make man God in life and nature issuing in an organism, the Body of Christ.
The reality of the Body of Christ is the mutual abode of God and man – God becoming man and man becoming God to live a living which is the mutual incorporation of God and man; this is the highest point of God’s economy, the highest peak.
After brother Lee saw this, he also observed the condition of the local churches, and he asked the Lord how much of the reality of the Body of Christ is in the churches today.
Therefore, the Lord led brother Lee to speak concerning two main matters: the Body of Christ and the life of the Body of Christ, and secondly, the reality of the Body of Christ.
What about us today: if we look at the condition of our local church, can we say that we have an adequate reality of the Body of Christ?
May the Lord be merciful to us that we may have a spirit of wisdom and revelation for us to apprehend and see, and may we have a desirous heart to pursue this matter, so that the Lord may gain us the reality of the Body of Christ!
Lord Jesus, continue to speak to us and to bring us into the reality of the Body of Christ in all the local churches on earth today. Grant us Your mercy. Give us an emptied spirit and a pure heart to see the highest peak of God’s revelation, the reality of the Body of Christ. Remove the veils in our heart; remove any veils of culture, philosophy, religion, and natural understanding. For the sake of Your Body, Lord, we rebuke Your enemy, and we proclaim Your victory! Lead us to the mingled spirit and make us one spirit with You that You may gain the reality of the Body of Christ today!
The Reality of the Body of Christ is the Spirit of Reality Wrought into us and Mingled with our Spirit
The highest peak of God’s economy is the reality of the Body of Christ (Rom. 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:13, 27; Eph. 1:22-23; 4:16; Col. 1:18; 2:19).
The central content of the Bible is God’s economy; the entire Bible is mainly to reveal that God has an eternal economy, which is to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed ones to gain the Body of Christ in reality.
The purpose and goal of God’s dispensing is to produce an organism, which is the reality of the Body of Christ.
What is the reality of the Body of Christ? There are many ways to define this, and the very first definition is that the reality of the Body of Christ is the Spirit of reality wrought into us and constituted into our being (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1 John 5:6; Eph. 3:16-21; 4:4-6, 12, 16).
In John 14-16 the Lord spoke at length to His disciples before He went to the cross, and here He revealed that He will leave His disciples to go to the Father, but He will send them a Comforter, the Spirit of reality, which is actually a transfiguration of Himself.
The reality of all that the Triune God is and has is the Spirit of reality; all that God is, has, and has accomplished, is in the Spirit of reality. The Spirit of reality makes everything of the processed and consummated Triune God a reality in the Body of Christ (John 16:13-15).
All that God is – love, light, holiness, righteousness, grace, power, etc – is realised by us by means of the Spirit of reality, for the Spirit of reality makes all of God’s attributes real to us (Rom. 15:16; 14:17; Eph. 3:16).
The Body of Christ can realise all that the Triune God experienced – including incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection – by means of the Spirit of reality.
It was the Triune God in Christ who was incarnated, crucified, and resurrected, but when the Spirit of reality came, He made all these experiences of the Triune God real to us as our real experiences.
This is the reason we can live a normal human life on earth today. By the capacity of the death of Christ we can deal with the negative matters that befall us, we do not lose our temper, we do not rebuke or blame others, and we can overcome our temper.
When we exercise our spirit to experience the Spirit of reality, we can love others, forgive them, and care for them in a genuine way. The Spirit of reality is the essence and the reality of all that the processed and consummated Triune God is.
The Spirit is the secret to all that the Triune God is to the Body of Christ, and without the Spirit, the Body cannot enjoy or realise what God is and has accomplished. Now this Spirit, praise the Lord, dwells in our regenerated spirit and is joined to us as one spirit (Rom. 8:9-11; 1 Cor. 6:17).
When we were regenerated, we were joined to the Lord as one spirit, and when we exercise to turn our whole being to the mingled spirit and set our mind on the spirit (Rom. 8:6), we enjoy and realise all that God has, is, and has accomplished and gone through.
We should live and walk according to this “joined spirit”, this mingled spirit; we mus speak, do things, treat others, and deal with matters according to the mingled spirit.
At home we need to live the family life and talk to our family members according to the spirit, and at work we need to exercise our spirit and live one spirit with the Lord so that we may enjoy, partake of, and experience the Spirit of reality who makes real to us all that the Triune God has and is.
Only God is real in this universe; only God is reality (1 John 5:20), and the Spirit is the reality (5:6). God the Father is embodied in Christ, and what Christ is and has experienced is revealed and made real to us by the Spirit of reality.
Praise the Lord, the Spirit is not just of power, wisdom, and life, but also of reality!
We need to be strengthened with power through the Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home in our heart, so that we may know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ and be filled unto all the fulness of God!
Through the Spirit of reality wrought into us and constituted into our being, we believers can become the fulness of God, just as Christ is the fulness of God.
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into us as the Spirit of reality to make real to us all that God has, is, has accomplished, and has attained and obtained. Hallelujah, we have a mingled spirit, and the Spirit of reality is joined to our spirit to make God real to us in the Body of Christ. We want to live in this mingled spirit today. Lord, we choose to exercise our spirit and live according to the spirit, whether at home or at work, in the meetings or on the street. Amen, Lord, keep us one spirit with You today!
The Reality of the Body of Christ is the reality in Jesus duplicated in the Believers as a Corporate Living
What is the reality of the Body of Christ? It is the “reality…in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21), the actual condition of the life of Jesus, as recorded in the four Gospels, duplicated in His many members as the corporate living of the perfected God-men.
When Christ came He said, I am the way and the reality and the life (John 14:6), and in Eph. 4:20-24 Paul tells us that we did not so learn Christ, if we have heard Him and have been taught in Him as the reality is in Jesus.
Christ is reality; the living He lived is a living of reality. If we read the four Gospels we will see that what the Lord spoke and did on earth is different from what the worldly people spoke and did; worldly people live for themselves, struggling and laboring for themselves, but our Lord lived for God and unto God.
When he spoke, He spoke the words of the Father, when He worked, He did the Father’s works, and He sought the glory of the Father and did the will of the Father. Christ was a person whose entire living was for God, taking God as the goal and the center.
The living of the Lord Jesus is a living of reality, and this reality is a mold, a model, a pattern for us to learn; this is not for us to outwardly imitate but simply to learn this Christ.
We need to be taught in Him – not in knowledge or education or doctrines with teachings; rather, we need to be taught in the living of Jesus, the process of the living of Jesus.
It is through our union with Him that we are taught in Him to learn Him, so that the reality that is in Jesus would be duplicated in us, His many members.
This is not something that is easy to understand, and we shouldn’t think that if we don’t understand it, we can simply put it aside; this is the revelation in God’s word, and this is what the Lord wants to gain today.
In Jesus there’s indeed a living called, the reality; He spoke, lived out, and worked out this reality, for whatever He did was not for Himself or in Himself but by taking God as His center to live out the Father.
Jesus lived a life in which He did everything in God, with God, and for God; God was in His living, and He was one with God — this is the reality in Jesus (Eph. 4:21).
What about us: do we live Christ or do we live ourselves? Who on earth lives by not taking himself as the center but God?
Only Christ is reality, and He lived a life that was totally one with God; He didn’t have His own thoughts, goals, or plans, but all He spoke and did was God Himself. God is the unique reality in this universe, and apart from Him everything is vanity of vanities.
The only life that is a delight to God is the life that is a repetition of the life Christ lived on earth; we are being perfected by the Lord to be God-men, living the divine life by denying our natural life according to the model of Christ as the first God-man (Matt. 11:29a; 17:5b; 1 Pet. 2:21). Wow!
God delights only in ONE person – Christ, His beloved Son; of Him He testified, This is My Beloved Son in whom I find My delight, Hear Him.
After we believed into the Lord, we are being perfected by the Lord to deny our natural life and live by the divine life. We are learning to put aside our natural, old man with its old life, and live by the divine life, just as Jesus didn’t live by His perfect humanity but because of the Father.
A living in the reality of the Body of Christ is the same as the living of Jesus – it is Jesus living again in the members of His Body (Eph. 4:21; 5:30; 1 Cor. 12:27).
The Body of Christ is something absolutely the same as Christ – it the same in life and nature as Christ; therefore, as Christ the Head lived, so the Body should also live.
Not only should we be the same as Christ in life and nature, but our living also should be the same as that of Jesus; how He lived we should also live. Amen!
Lord Jesus, perfect us to be the God-men living by the divine life by denying our natural life according to the model of Christ, the first God-man. Amen, Lord, may our living as members of the Body today match the living of Christ, the Head. May our living be Jesus living again in the members of His Body on earth. Cause us to see that the only life that is a delight to God is the life that is a repetition of the life Christ lived on earth! May our living be in God, with God, and for God, and may God be in our living as we live one spirit with the Lord!
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, 1990, vol. 2, “A Thorough View of the Body of Christ,” chs. 1-2, 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.
- Further reading: see, The reality of the Body of Christ (from, The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ)
- Hymns on this topic:
# Now the Spirit of reality is here / As the wonderful Spirit within. / Now the things of Christ are all so real and clear / By the life-giving Spirit within. (Hymns #1113)
# The Spirit of God today / The Spirit of Jesus is, / The God-man who died and rose, / Ascending to glory His. / ’Tis from such a Jesus came / The Spirit of Jesus to us, / To make His reality / Experience unto us. / The Spirit of Jesus has / All elements human, divine, / The living of man in Him / And glory of God combine. (Hymns #242)
# As the living Father has sent Me / And I live because of the Father, / So he who eats Me, / He also shall live, / Shall live because of Me, / Shall live because of Me. (Scripture song on, John 6:57)
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