What is the sense of the Body? What does it mean to have the consciousness of the Body of Christ? What does “having an awareness of the Body” imply? This morning I was encouraged to find out that it all starts with taking care of the sense of the divine life within us.
Just as Rom. 8:6 says, The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace – we have an inner sense of either death or life and peace! It is simple, in a way, to know whether someone is in the spirit or not – if he has the sense of life and peace within, his mind is set on his mingled spirit!
Our inner sense is very accurate – we KNOW within where we are, we know whether we are trying to fake something or we really have the life… A person’s spiritual condition before the Lord is what it is – he cannot pretend to have a different condition.
This is why we need to take care of the divine life within us – listen to the sense of life within, follow the Lord’s inward speaking and leading. There is a sense of life within us, a sense which originates from the Spirit of God and from God’s life in our spirit.
The Bible calls this sense “the sense of life and peace” and this sense is also the consciousness of the Body of Christ. If this sense is keen within us, we will also have an accurate and proper sense of the Body of Christ.
So many times we may feel something is wrong either about our going on with the Lord or in the Body of Christ but we still care for ourselves, our particular work, guarding our attachments to the world and even tolerating sins or compromises within us.
Because of our self-consideration, our inner sense is suppressed, and even if we had a sense, we would ignore it…. we have to admit, many times we suppress and ignore the sense of the Body when it comes to us – because “we are busy” or we have to take care of our own things and situations.
This is altogether an abnormal condition – and we need to ask the Lord to have mercy on us to give us a vision of the Body and a consciousness for the Body! Once we see the Body of Christ, once we see that we are part of the Corporate Christ together with all the other saints and believers in Christ, we will no longer be self-centered and individualistic!
The consciousness of the Body is the sense of Christ’s life within us – the sense of the divine life in us. We need to daily and moment by moment cultivate, train, exercise, and use this sense of the divine life within – and we will have a proper growth in life and an accurate sense of the Body(which will also enable us to detect problems in the Body).
If we use and exercise this sense often and if we love God and care for the church, this sense will increasingly become the sense of the Body. We will sense and feel with the other members of the Body – if someone suffers, we suffer with him; if someone is blessed and rejoices, we rejoice with him.
We will sense the burdens in the saints and we care for them, we sense the difficulties in the lives of the saints and we pray for them, and we sense the rejoicing in the Body and we also rejoice (2 Cor. 11:29).
And this is not only locally where we are – if saints from other churches or even believers we never met are going through things, we will feel with them and care for them. Regardless of whether it is our local church, as long as the saints have hardships or have been blessed, we will identify with them and feel the same hardship or blessing.
If we can reach this stage, the sense within us toward the Body will be rich – not only local towards the saints we know and meet with, but extra-local, even universal towards the Body of Christ.
[sharing inspired from, The Church as the Body of Christ (ch. 17, by bro. Witness Lee) as quoted in the HWMR on The Central Line of the Bible]
Lord, save us from ourselves much more today! Save us from being self-centered and self-seeking! O, Lord, save us from ignoring the sense of life within – the sense of the Body! We want to be those who cooperate with You to cultivate and exercise the sense of the divine life within us! May we constantly train and use our inward sense to be keen on what the Body of Christ feels! Thank You Lord for Your divine life in us – with a rich sense of life, which is the sense of the Body! We want to have a rich sense of the Body of Christ!
