To maintain the oneness of the Spirit in the church life, we need to live a life in love, consider one another, and cooperate with the Lord to care in love for the saints who may be in sin, so that they may be recovered and restored.
As priests to God and as part of the corporate priesthood, we need to consecrate ourselves to the Lord, and part of this consecration is that we take Him as our sin offering and we bear the iniquity of the people.
This is a very particular portion in Leviticus 8 and 10, where we see that the priests offer the sin offering and eat it in the sanctuary, for by this they bear the sins of the people and they make expiation for sins.
On one hand we ourselves need to take Christ as our sin offering, and on the other, as we enjoy Christ and eat Him as the sin offering in the church life, He enables us to bear the iniquity of God’s people by our ministering Christ as the sin-dealing life to them.
Before the Lord’s Table, we need to get ourselves approved by God and deal with anything that His light shines on. At the same time, we may be aware of a brother or some saints who live in sin yet are not aware or cannot get rid of it.
If we see a brother in sin, we who are more spiritual should bear him in love, lifting him up to the Lord and praying for him, and the Lord may burden us to go and speak to him. When we approach such a brother, however, we should not condemn or criticize, and we may not even to point out the sin or the problem.
A doctor doesn’t keep talking about the disease of a patient, but he is wise and gives him the right medicine, and once this medicine gets into him, he is helped.
The Lord as our great High Priest and as our Head wants us, His priests, to care for one another, and to minister the sin-dealing life to one another.
We don’t help others by telling them what their problem is. We help them by praying for them, by asking the Lord to give us grace to care for them, and by bearing them in love.
We may not have the capacity to bear others in love, but when we contact the Lord, He will enable us and give us a heart. And as we go to visit and speak with the sinning brother, we should learn to minister Christ to him, and this sin-dealing life will enable him to be recovered.
This will maintain the oneness in the church life and will recover the sinning one back to the fellowship, back to his function as a priest, part of the corporate priesthood.
This is what we want to see today in this article, how recovering a sinning brother, as part of our consecration and function as priests, is to maintain the oneness in the church life by bearing one another in love.
We need to Bear the Iniquity of God’s People and Recover the Sinful Saints
Lev. 8:14 and 10:17 give us a clear picture of how the priests, as part of their consecration for the priesthood, had to offer the sin offering, and they had to eat it in the place of the sanctuary, thus bearing the iniquity of the assembly. This is very significant.
We as believers in Christ are priests to God, and we need to take Christ as our sin offering.
Furthermore, we may see a fellow saint being in sin. We shouldn’t talk to him about his sin, his fault, his weakness, or his defect, but we should simply bear his iniquity in the sense of ministering Christ as the sin-dealing life to him.
Ministering the proper medicine to the sick person can help him much more than talking about his sickness or comforting him would do.
When we minister Christ to the sinning one, even taking time to care for him so that he may be recovered, he will be healed – not by our word but by the very spirit, the life of Christ, ministered to him through us.
If someone is overtaken in some offense, we who are spiritual need to restore such a one with a spirit of meekness, looking to ourselves less we also be tempted (see Gal. 6:1). We need to bear one another’s burdens, and in this way we will fulfil the law or Christ, with all lowliness.
We need to bear one another in love (Eph. 4:2). It is a most challenging and difficult thing to help a sinning person.
It is not easy to know how to bear a sinner, how to live and minister a sin-dealing life – as we are told to do in the New Testament. But we can contact the Lord and be open to Him, so that He may enable us and strengthen us to pray for this one.
Maybe there are a hundred saints meeting together, and we know of one or two who live in a sinful situation. Since we enjoy the Lord and function as priests, we need to maintain the oneness of the Spirit by praying for these ones, and the Lord may bring in another brother who has the same burden.
Together, we may pray and consider before the Lord how to help the brother, and it may take six months or even a whole year of visitation and ministering Christ until this one is recovered.
The Lord wants to recover all His saints, and part of our priestly duty is to bear the iniquity of God’s people by eating Christ as the sin offering and ministering Him as a sin-dealing life to the sinning ones.
If we work together with the Lord and with the saints to recover the sinning saints, this is a great help to the church life; this kind of ministry is the element for us to maintain the oneness of the Spirit in the church life.
Lord Jesus, teach us how to cooperate with You to recover the sinning saints. We consecrate ourselves to You to be priests to God. We take You as our sin offering, and we want to eat You in the church life as the sin-repelling, sin-dealing, sin-terminating life. Amen, Lord, make us one with You to bear the iniquity of Your people by ministering Your life to others who live in sin. Save us from not caring for the saints who are around us. Increase in us, Lord, burden us, and knit us with the saints so that together we may learn to care for the saints who are in sin, minister the sin-dealing life to them, and recover them back to the church life and their proper function!
Maintain the Oneness of the Spirit by Living a Life of Love and Bearing one Another
A very practical way for us to maintain the oneness of the Spirit is by living a life of love in the church life and by bearing one another in love. Criticism doesn’t help; exposing the sinning brother does not build up; negative talk rather damages and destroys than builds up.
Criticism only builds up division and destroys the oneness. We all need to take Christ as our sin offering, the sin-dealing life, so that we may have the measure and capacity with a certain amount of Christ to minister to the saints, especially to those who are in sin.
We cannot recover the saints and we cannot save people, but we can cooperate with the Lord to minister Christ as the sin-dealing life to the saints, and this life will operate in them to recover them.
If we get ourselves approved before the Lord, we need to help others also be approved before Him by ministering Christ to them. Sometimes a brother may be in a gross sin, and the last thing we have in our natural capacity is to bear.
On one hand God is righteous and He disciplines His people when they live in sin; on the other hand, as fellow believers in Christ and as co-priests in the priesthood, we need to maintain the oneness of the Spirit by ministering Christ as the sin-dealing life to the sinning saints.
Paul encourages us to restore those who fail or sin with a spirit of meekness; we shouldn’t have a spirit of condemnation or judgment, but of meekness.
We need to bear one another’s burden in love and live a life of love in the church life.
We are naturally very short of love and of the capacity to bear; we do not have the endurance necessary to minister Christ to others for a long period of time.
We need to pray much and open to the Lord, allowing and waiting for the Spirit to work in the saints, so that some genuine and long-lasting healing can be brought forth.
How much we need the Lord’s training through His speaking and our experience for us to enter into this!
May the Lord rise us up, consecrate us, and train us to care for God’s people in this way, to get rid of some sins, and for sinners to be recovered and restored. May we be diligent to keep the oneness and endeavor to live a life of love in the church life.
No matter what happens, we need to love the saints, for love builds up but knowledge kills (1 Cor. 8:1; 2 Cor. 3:6). Whether we can help the saints or not is secondary; the first thing we need to do is love them, love all the saints indiscriminately.
As long as someone is a saint, he is a member in the church, and we should love him with the same love that we love the other saints. We maintain the oneness of the Spirit by living a life of love and by bearing one another in love as priests to God.
Loving the saints and bearing them in love will kill the germs, destroy the problems, restore the saints, and build up a permanent and lasting oneness of the Spirit.
Lord Jesus, we want to maintain the oneness of the Spirit by living a life of love in the church life and by bearing one another in love. Keep us in spirit, Lord, enjoying You and taking You as our sin offering, so that Your sin-dealing life would remove and deal with any sin and negative thing in our being. We want to cooperate with You, Lord, to bear the iniquity of Your people by praying for the sinning ones, visiting them, and ministering Christ to them for them to be recovered and restored. Lord Jesus, duplicate Your heart of love and care in us so that we may live a life of love and of bearing one another in the church life.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1988, vol. 3, “A Timely Word,” ch. 1, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 1, The Consecration of the Priests.
- Hymns on this topic:
# I beseech you brothers as a pris’ner in the Lord, / To walk worthily of your calling, / The calling with which you were called, / With all lowliness and meekness, / With long-suffering, / Bearing one another in love, / Being diligent to keep the oneness of the Spirit / In the uniting bond of peace. (Scripture Song)
# How sweet, how heav’nly is the sight, / When those who love the Lord / In one another’s peace delight, / And so fulfill His Word: / When each can feel his brother’s sigh, / And with him bear a part; / When sorrow flows from eye to eye, / And joy from heart to heart. (Hymns #857)
# To maintain the sweet communion, / Brotherly love; / Fellowship and healing union, / Brotherly love. / Love believing for the brothers, / Hoping all things for the others, / Suffering all with one another, / Brotherly love. (Hymns #1277)
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