This week we are enjoying the wonderful Psalm 133 concerning the Lord’s commanded blessing on the brothers dwelling in oneness. Our church life is not an individual life but a corporate life, a collective life, and our experience of the church life has at least four aspects: it is a corporate experience, an ascending experience, a loving experience, and a singing experience.
In the church life we are always going up – we ascend, we are advancing, we have the highways to Zion in our heart! Here we have a desire and a love for Zion just like God has, and we pray and yearn for Zion. The church life is a love affair of God’s habitation. Also, in the church life, we SING – here we are always singing, enjoying the Lord! Praise the Lord for the church life!
The practical church life, the church living
The church is not only something spiritual but the church life is also something practical – here you can SEE how GOOD it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! How good? – we don’t know how good, it is inestimable and incalculable. How pleasant it is!
“The believers’ dwelling together in oneness is likened to the inestimable goodness of the precious ointment on the head of Aaron and to the incalculable pleasantness of the dew of Hermon on the mountains of Zion” (Psa. 133:1, note 2). The saints living together in the church life is practical, sweet, pleasant, and good! The Lord today is recovering this – the saints living together in oneness!
Many of the studies in the modern world today show that “modern man” loves being single and living alone, to develop himself, be more effective, have better time management, eat and sleep better, etc. But there is a blessing when we have corporate living – in the Lord’s recovery the Lord is recovering the living together of the saints in brothers’ houses, sisters’ houses, families, etc.
The church life is real and practical – from house to house, where the saints live together. We may think we are spiritual and we even “develop our spirituality” as we live by ourselves, but our living together in oneness is a demonstration and a manifestation of the blessing from God!
The church is a person and a place
According to Psalm 133 we see that the church is a person – Aaron, the high priest, a type of Christ – and a place – Zion. On the one hand the church is Christ – the church is the Body of Christ where Christ is the Head and we are His Body. On the church as the corporate Christ there the compound ointment is being poured.
The church is also a place – it is Zion, God’s habitation, the place of His rest. Upon the mountains of Zion we have the dew – refreshing, watering, and saturating! Both of these are not moving quickly – the dew descends in a gradual way, and the ointment spreads upon the beard and then goes to the skirts of the garments. The genuine oneness spreads as the ointment and descends gradually as the dew upon the saints living together.
As a Person, Christ is the real High Priest ministering to God and to man – He served God, accomplished His purpose, and fulfilled God’s heart’s desire. But here in Psalm 133 Christ is with His Body – the corporate Christ, the Head with the Body. The church today is the corporate Christ, a universal corporate person, composed of Christ as the Head and all the believers as His Body.
When the saints live together in oneness, when the practical church life is recovered in a certain locality, God commands the blessing – life forever! It is not something WE can manufacture or conjure up – the blessing comes when the saints live together in unity!
The blessing is on the oneness
The church life is a community of grace; you don’t even notice it, but grace is here! It is not a matter of the manifestation of power, gifts, eloquence, but it is life forevermore! In the church life we enjoy life forevermore. Here we are one in the person of Christ and we are one in the place as the ground of oneness. Our oneness is based no nothing else but on Christ and on the principle that it is not a matter of HOW we practice but that we are all holding the same ground: Oneness!
In the church life we are here for the Person of Christ and for the Oneness! The Lord Jesus prayed for this oneness in John 17, He accomplished it on the cross, in Eph. 2 we see that He became our peace, and now Christ is oneness in the Spirit! We just need to keep the oneness, and the Lord commands the blessing upon the living in oneness!
Lord, unveil us to see what the church life and the church living really is. We don’t want to be conformed to this age by living alone to perfect our self – gain the corporate living. Bless the living of the saints together. Bless the families, the couples, and the corporate living. May our living together be in oneness under Your blessing. How we love the inestimable goodness and the incalculable pleasantness!
References and Further Reading
- Sharing inspired from, The Genuine Ground of Oneness (ch. 6), and the sharing of brother Andrew Yu, partially quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization-Study of Psalms (2), week 22;
- Recommended reading: Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in oneness!
- Hymns on this topic:
# Behold how good and how pleasant it is, / For brethren to dwell together in unity!
# We have the church! All saints are needed to possess / The fullness of this vast reality;
# Splendid church life! His green garden! / He has brought us, praise the Lord, / To experience the Christ Who’s growing here! - Picture source: Psalm 133.
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