When we really touch the meaning of what the Body of Christ is, we will be changed in our entire being. The Body of Christ is a reality that affects our whole being once we see it! I really enjoyed the second message in the conference we just had last weekend in Holland, entitled, The Body of Christ – the issue of the Crystallized significance of Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. Wow, what a title!
If we want to know the Body of Christ, we need to pay much attention to Christ, since the Body is of Christ. The Body of Christ is the issue of all the processes Christ went through – so we need to know Christ and His work in detail!
Knowing Christ in His incarnation – God mingled with man to be a God-man!
In the Godhead, Christ is and will forever be the Only Begotten Son – yet in God’s economy, for the fulfillment of what God has on His heart, Christ became a human being – God was mingled with man. The Body of Christ is the issue of God Himself becoming one with His people in the way of mingling. When God became a man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, He mingled Himself with man – without a “third nature/third thing” being produced.
Christ was truly a God-man, a perfect man! Today God’s intention is the same: the Body of Christ is the mingling of God with man! God wants to just work Himself into us until we and Him, He and us, are so one that can never be separated, yet we can be both distinctly seen! Lord, mingled Yourself more with us!
Knowing Christ in His human living – living a human life that fully expressed God!
Christ in His human living fulfilled God’s intention when He created man(see Gen. 1:26). He was not rich, handsome, or powerful; rather, He grew up in poverty and in a large family – He was a root out of a dry ground. Yet He lived in an indescribable way – He just expressed God in everything He said and did!
He did not do anything for Himself, He did not speak in His name, He did not do His work, He did not speak His words – rather, He did the will of the Father, He spoke what He heard from the Father, He sought the Father’s glory, and He came in the Father’s name.
He is indeed what God desires, the One fully mingled with God and fully expressing God. Even though He had a perfect humanity, He denied Himself fully and did not live by Himself but by the Father (John 6:57). We need to aspire to know Him as the God-man in His living – because the living of the Body of Christ is actually Jesus living again in all the members of His Body!
Here, there is no self-pity (why do all these things happen to me?), here there is no stoic person (I will do it and endure it all!), but rather, just like the apostle Paul, we become those in whom Jesus lives again! It wasn’t Paul that lived, but Christ lived in Paul (Gal. 2:20).
The same with Stephen – He became a duplication of the Lord Jesus, even while he was dying / being murdered! Our whole life is a process in which we see that if Christ Is Everything, then We Are Nothing, and so we simply let Christ live in us! As Jesus lives again in us, the Body of Christ becomes real and practical, and we become Jesusly human – the reproduction of the Lord Jesus in His God-man living!
Knowing Christ in His crucifixion – accomplishing an all-inclusive death!
Through His death on the cross, Christ not only redeemed us and brought us back to God: He dealt with every negative thing in the universe! He destroyed the devil, dealt with the world, terminated the ordinances, defeated all the principalities and powers, crushed Satan, dealt with sin – and He released the divine life in Him! Christ died an all-inclusive and all-terminating death on the cross, and we also died with Him!
Now God’s only way of solving problems and dealing with everyone is through the cross. God does not bargain or negotiate – God’s way is to terminate everything and everyone: only Christ can live / can remain! Practically, when the cross is applied to our being, we are denying the self and we let Christ live in us – the enemy fears a person who has no self, one who has his self denied and dealt with!
The issue of the work of the cross is the Body of Christ – there is so much in our being that is not Christ, so the cross deals with these things + terminates everything, until only Christ remains!
As the cross is applied to us, we consider the things of others (and not just our own things), and we consider the other members as being more excellent than us – we don’t have a higher opinion about ourselves than about the others. In the Body of Christ, there is NO SELF! Where there is the self, there is no Body of Christ! And the cross deals with the self, terminating it and bringing in the Body of Christ!
Knowing Christ in His resurrection – He was designated to be the firstborn Son of God, we were regenerated as the many sons of God, and Christ became the life-giving Spirit!
In His resurrection everything becomes real to us and can be applied to us! Because He was resurrected, the Body of Christ can come forth! In His resurrection, Christ became the life-giving Spirit – to regenerate us to be the many members of the Body of Christ!
We receive the Spirit and we are regenerated, and then the Spirit resurrects every part of our being – by first putting to death all the negative things and then resurrecting and uplifting the God-created part! Our whole being is brought into resurrection by Christ as the Life-Giving Spirit.
All of Christ’s processes are real to us and applied to us by Him being the Spirit – God is mingling Himself with us as the Spirit, He is living in us as the Spirit, and the death of Christ is in the Spirit!
Lord, we truly want to know You in a deeper way – even in a crystallized way! We want to know You in Your incarnation – mingle Yourself more with us! We want to know You in Your human living – gain our cooperation that You may live in us today! We want to know You in Your death – apply the cross to our being until there’s no more “SELF” in us! Lord, thank You it’s all in the life-giving Spirit: we want to know You in Your resurrection! Keep us enjoying You as the Spirit in our spirit, where all You are and do is! Lord, live in us again today!
"‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’" (John 6:51–52).
His listeners were stupefied because now they understood Jesus literally — and correctly. He again repeated his words, but with even greater emphasis, and introduced the statement about drinking his blood: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:53-56)
Vive en mi otra vez hoy Señor! Oh Señor te amo en verdad, eres mi deseo y contigo quiero estar. Te amo!
Praise the Lord! Amen!
Amen!