The first crucial item of the advance of the Lord’s recovery today is the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament. We have seen that we all need to be priests of the gospel of God. In this chapter we want to see the second crucial item of the present advance of the Lord’s recovery—the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
We may think that it is easy to understand the organic building up of the Body of Christ, but actually this matter is difficult to define. We may have the terminology of the organic building, but we may not have the proper understanding of what this organic building actually is. Since I began to share on the organic building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God beginning in August of 1988 (see The Body of Christ published by Living Stream Ministry), I have listened to the testimonies and fellowship of the saints regarding this matter. Many of the saints have the following concept of what the organic building up of the Body of Christ is. Formerly in our meetings, a certain brother was appointed to share a message, and another brother led us in the reading of the Scriptures. This practice was something formal and something arranged. Many of the saints think that to be organic is to be automatic and spontaneous. This means that we come together without any arrangement, without any schedule, and without any program. When we come together, a sister may suddenly call a hymn, and another sister may read to us a portion of the Word that she enjoyed in morning watch that day. Many of the saints feel that this spontaneous and automatic meeting is organic. If this is organic, however, all the shouting and excitement at sporting events, which are very spontaneous and automatic, are also organic. To be merely automatic and spontaneous is not to be organic. We need to drop this concept.
In order to illustrate the organic building up of the Body of Christ, let us consider the difference between a house and a tree. The house comes into existence by being built up, and the tree comes into being by growing, which is also a building up. Thirteen years ago the trees in my yard were small, but today they are big trees. Organic things are built up by growing. When a tree grows, the tree is being built up, and when a child grows, the child is being built up. For a man or a tree to be built up is organic. To build up a house, however, is not related to life, so that kind of building up is not organic.
A house is built by the adding of more materials. If we want a one-story house to become two stories, we do not put some fertilizer on it and water it. The house does not grow from one story to two stories. The house becomes higher by addition, but a tree becomes higher by growing. By watering and fertilizing a tree, the tree will grow. The organic elements of the water and the fertilizer nourish the tree to cause it to grow in life. A tree also needs to be trimmed in order to grow properly. The proper trimming of the tree results in more growth in life. This growth is the organic building up.
The Body of Christ, like the tree, is organic. It is an organism. Anything that is organic is built up by growing. Just as a tree grows in life, we also need to grow in the divine life to be built up. The organic building up is actually the growing up. The building up of the church is by the believers’ growing in life.
How much organic building up we have experienced depends upon how much growth in life we have had. The Lord does not want an organization. What the Lord wants is something organic, full of life. Our physical body is altogether a matter of life. The circulation of blood in our body gives life to our body. The Bible tells us that our physical life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11, 14). If the blood supply does not reach a certain part of our body, that part will die. Just as our physical body needs the circulation of the blood, the Body of Christ also needs the circulation of the divine life. Our body is organic, so its building up is organic according to the circulation of life by the growth in life. When Christians talk about the building up of the church, not many think of this building in an organic way. They do not think about the building up of the church in the organic sense, but in the organizational sense. The Lord desires to build up the church organically because the church is the organic Body of Christ.
The Body of Christ, as the church of God, is an organism of the Triune God, not an organization of human beings (John 15:1-5). This is strongly proven by the vine tree in John 15. The Lord Jesus said that He is the vine tree and that His Father is the husbandman (v. 1). A tree is not an organization but an organism. The vine tree is the organism of the Triune God. The vine tree is not something organized but something of life that grows up as an organism. Nothing inorganic can be added to an organism like a tree.
A branch can be grafted into a tree if it is of the same family as the tree into which it is grafted. Grafting is altogether an organic matter. According to Genesis 1 all the different kinds of life are after their kind. The human life, however, is after God’s kind. Man was made in the image and likeness of God, so man is in the category of God. Because we were made in God’s image and likeness, we can be grafted into God (Rom. 11:24; 6:4-5). This grafting brings us into an organic union with God (1 Cor. 6:17). The organism of the Triune God is in this organic union. The church as the Body of Christ is an organism, and the building up of the church as an organism is its organic growth.
The Body of Christ is an organism composed of people who have the very God as the Spirit indwelling their spirit (2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16). This indwelling of God as the Spirit in our spirit is the mingling of God with us. The very source of life in the entire universe, which is God, is right now in our spirit. Due to this, we are the organism of the Triune God.
According to our human concept, the church is an organization of a group of people, but our mind needs to be renewed to see that the church as the Body of Christ is the organism of the Triune God. Our physical body is a living organism of our person for us to live, exist, and express ourselves. Likewise, the church as the Body of Christ is an organism of the divine person, the Triune God, to express the Triune God.
This organism is entirely an entity of life, in the issuing (dispensing) of the processed Triune God. This truth is fully developed and explained in Ephesians 1. Many readers of Ephesians 1 say that they cannot understand it because it is too deep and complicated. However, we have discovered after many years of studying Ephesians 1 that the structure of this chapter is actually very simple. The first section of Ephesians 1 tells us that the Father is dispensing Himself into us through His selection and predestination (vv. 3-6). The second section shows us that the Son is dispensing Himself into us through His redemption to make us God’s inheritance (vv. 7-12). The third section shows us that the Spirit is dispensing Himself into us as a seal and as a pledge (vv. 13-14). The final section reveals that the dispensing of the divine Trinity to produce the church as the organism of the Triune God is accomplished by the transmission of the great power of God (vv. 19-23). The Son as the embodiment of the dispensing Triune God entered into resurrection and ascension to become the Head of all things. Verse 22 tells us that in His ascension, Christ is Head over all things to the church. “To the church” implies a kind of transmission. Whatever Christ, the Head, attained and obtained is transmitted, dispensed, to the church, His Body. The church is the issue of the dispensing Triune God, and this church is the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all to express the Triune God.
Ephesians 1 reveals that the church is the issue of the Triune God, starting from the Father, passing through the Son, and consummating in the Spirit. The issue, the result, or the coming out, of the Triune God is the church which is the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all. This issue is the Body of the very embodiment of the Triune God. The Triune God has an embodiment, who is Christ, and the issue of the Triune God is the Body of His embodiment. This Christ is universally immense because He fills all in all, and His Body is His fullness. A person’s body is his fullness, and this fullness is his expression. Likewise, the church as the fullness of Christ is the expression of Christ. It is altogether something organic that issues out of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The church is the Body of the embodiment of the Triune God, and this Body is the fullness of the unlimited Christ.
The church is an organism not an organization. Anything of life is organic. The work in today’s Christianity is not organic. It is a work for organization. We need to work organically for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. An organization is merely a matter of work in the labor of man’s doing. We may labor in the gospel according to our doing to “win souls” and to build up a congregation. There may be many members of this congregation, but they may not know anything about life. The New Testament shows us that the pattern of the priests of the gospel of God is the Apostle Paul. He did his gospel work in the way of life. He told the Corinthians, “For though you have ten thousand guides in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15). Paul was a father to the Corinthians because he had begotten them in Christ Jesus through the gospel. This kind of gospel work is organic. The gospel is not merely a matter of “winning souls,” but it is a matter of begetting people. The first step of the organic building is to beget people, to impart the divine life into sinners to make them the sons of the living God and the organic members of the Body of Christ. I may preach the gospel to win souls, and what I preach may be correct doctrinally, but it may be correct with much deficiency. We need to preach the gospel in the way of life. Life is God in Christ as the Spirit. This life enters into us to become our life (Col. 3:4).