1 Cor. 12:27 Now you are the Body of Christ, and members individually.
We need to see the vision of the Body of Christ. The Body is a mystical corporate entity composed of all the redeemed, regenerated, and transformed human beings who are united, mingled, and incorporated with the Triune God. Christ Himself is the Head of the Body, and all the genuine believers in Christ are the many members of the Body.
Just as in our human body it is the head who controls and directs everything, so in the Body of Christ only Christ as the Head is the One who controls and directs all the members. When the Head wants to do something, the Body needs to cooperate and accomplish it.
The Body of Christ is the means for God to carry out His administration, and apart from the Body, God has no means and no way to carry out His administration. We have been regenerated and are members of the Body of Christ so that together with all the members of the Body we would be one under the Head to accomplish what the Head desires.
God didn’t just save us to leave us on earth and “make more proselytes”, convert more to Christianity, and do good works so that others may see we are Christians. We have been saved and we are constantly being saved in the divine life in God’s organic salvation so that we may be one with all the other believers under Christ as the Head to carry out His administration.
In the prayer meetings we need to exercise our spirit to be one with the Lord and with one another and move His hand, releasing the prayers that He needs in order to accomplish His economy. In our daily living we need to exercise our spirit to be one with the Lord as the Head and one with the other members of the Body to live a God-man life, expressing Christ in everything.
We are the Body of Christ, the corporate Christ, the Body-Christ composed of all the genuine believers in Christ who are in the process of sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification to be built up together in Christ as His Body.
The Body of Christ is the Means for God to Carry out His Administration Today
How does God carry out His administration today? You could say that, on the one hand, He works behind the scenes to arrange the world situation for the accomplishing of His economy. But, on the other hand, God’s administration is being carried out by means of the Body of Christ. Christ Himself is the Head, and the Body of the Head carries out what the Head intends to do (Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18).
As long as all the members of the Body of Christ are one with Christ and with one another under Christ, Christ has a way to carry out God’s administration through His Body. Satan knows this, and he works in a subtle and cunning way to divide the Body, cut it into pieces, and separate the members.
When there’s no oneness in the divine life under the Head, the carrying out of God’s administration is frustrated. Today the Lord is recovering both Christ as our everything and the oneness of the Body under Christ as the Head.
The prayer meetings are very crucial in this respect, since we can come to the incense altar and be one with Christ as His Body, praying His prayers to release His burdens and carry out His will.
In the prayer meetings of the church we can dictate the heavens, controlling what the heavens can do (in the sense of either temporarily frustrating what God desires to do by not cooperating with Him or by releasing God’s will to be done on the earth as it is in the heavens).
Without the Body of Christ, God has no means, no way, to carry out His administration. He wants to move and do many things, and the Body of Christ is for His move on earth; the Head operates God’s administration through the Body (see Eph. 3:10-11; 4:16; 1 Cor. 1:2; 12:12-13, 27).
Our human head is the command and control center of our body, and when we want to do something, our body obeys. In the Body of Christ there needs to be a healthy nervous system so that all the members would sense the Spirit’s speaking and move, know the leading of the anointing, and receive the directions from the Head to carry them out as the Body.
At the Table Meeting, we all partake of the body and the blood of Christ, and we discern the Body, the bridge between the Lord’s first coming and His second coming.
If we properly discern the Body of Christ, we will care not only for our satisfaction at the Lord’s Table but also for His satisfaction at the Lord’s Supper, and we will be one in Christ by eating Him at His table for Him to carry out His administration through His Body.
Lord Jesus, recover the oneness of the Body of Christ today so that You may have a full way to carry out Your administration through Your Body. Head us up in You and cause us to drop anything that would divide the Body. We want to hold You as the Head and sense what You are speaking to us as the Spirit. Lord, strengthen the nervous system in the Body of Christ. May there be much prayer on earth for the will of God to be done on earth as it is being done in the heavens!
The Body of Christ is the Corporate Christ, the Body-Christ
1 Cor. 12:12 For even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.
When Christians talk about the Body of Christ today they seem to “spiritualize” it, saying this Body is somewhere in the heavens, something not tangible and not easy to understand, and they are not sure how to apply it to our life.
But the Apostle Paul was clear, For even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ (1 Cor. 12:12). “The Christ” is the Body of Christ, the Body-Christ, the collective Christ. Christ as the Head is in the heavens, and the many genuine believers in Christ who have God’s life in them are the many members of the Body of Christ on the earth.
My body is me, and when you touch or hit my body you hit me. When my mouth speaks, I speak. When my leg kicks a ball, I kick a ball. When my hand writes something, I write. Whatever my body does is an expression of the head, and it is me – you can’t separate my body from me.
In the same way, the Body of Christ is Christ Himself in all His believers. The corporate Christ is composed of Christ Himself as the Head and the church as His Body, with all the believers as His members (Acts 9:4). We are members of the Body of Christ – we are members of Christ, that is, we are Christ.
We are organically united with Christ (Rom. 12:4-5), even one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). We are being constituted with Christ’s life, with His very element, and Christ Himself is our life (Col. 3:4, 11); therefore, we are His Body, an organic corporate organism to express Him.
If we as the Body of Christ are not Christ, then what are we? When Paul was persecuting the believers in Christ, the Lord said, Why do you persecute Me? The believers in Christ are members of Christ, members of the Body of Christ, and this is not a small thing.
As members of Christ we are united with Him organically, we are constituted with His life and element, and we are growing into Him in all things, who is the Head.
How much we need to keep ourselves in sanctification and purity, enjoying Christ to the uttermost to be His accurate and proper representation on the earth! Wow, we are members of the Body of Christ, the Body-Christ, Christ Himself living again on earth!
Lord Jesus, thank You for regenerating us with the divine life and making us members of the Body of Christ. Praise You, Lord, for joining us organically with You and for constituting us with Your life and element to make us Your Body, Your organism on earth. Lord, keep us enjoying You and taking You as our life and our everything. We desire to be pure in heart and sanctified in all our living so that You may be expressed through us. Make us the same as You are by working Yourself into us and living in us day by day. Hallelujah for the Body-Christ, the corporate Christ, the Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Minor Chen’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of 1 Corinthians (msg. 54), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Heavenly Vision, week 3 / msg 3, The Vision of the Church – the Body of Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Oh, the church of Christ is glorious, and we are part of it— / We’re so happy that the Lord has made us one! / There’s a Body in the universe and we belong to it— / Hallelujah, for the Lord has made us one! (Hymns #1226)
# Lord, to know Thee as the Body, / Is my desperate need today, / Oh, to see Thee in Thy members, / ’Tis for this I long and pray. / No more just to know Thy headship / In an individual way, / But to see Thee incarnated, / As the Body-Christ, I pray. (Hymns #1225)
# As members of the Body / Christ we would manifest, / Each learning how to function / His fulness to express; / We would not be spectators / But each as members move, / None bringing death or damage / But each our profit prove. (Hymns #867)
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