The most difficult and crucial thing concerning the Lord's service is to take care of these negative points which we have pointed out in these lessons. Anyone in the Lord's recovery who is not clear concerning all these negative points cannot render a proper service to the Lord. We may even be taking the lead, but if we are not clear about all of these negative factors, we cannot help the saints to do the church service in the profitable way of life. We may do a lot of things, and we may help the local saints to do a lot of things, but nothing may be profitable in life.
The service must be out of life and also unto life. In all the church service, every saint must be made clear about this. In the church service, we are not endeavoring to merely do things successfully. We are flowing life out to others. The service must be a ministry of life to others, a service unto life. It must be life flowing out of us as a life ministry to others. In order for this to happen, we surely have to take care of all these negative things, which are the obstacles, hindrances, and barriers to the flowing out of life in our service.
In this lesson we want to see that in the church service we must reject our natural strength and ability, which are acquired by us either through birth or through learning. Any of our natural strength and ability is unprofitable to the church service in life.
Anything natural does not have the divine element in it, especially the natural strength and natural ability. To use our natural strength and ability is altogether against the basic principle of the church as the Body of Christ, because the church as the Body of Christ is altogether a composition of humanity mingled with divinity. The church as the new man must be full of the divine element. The Lord condemns Christianity because it has become a religion carried out by man's natural strength and man's natural ability. There is no development of the divine element there. But the genuine church is a composition of the divine element mingled with humanity. We must learn this as a basic lesson, and we also must impress every saint who partakes of the church service with this point.
In our service we must do everything in the principle of incarnation. The principle of incarnation is that the divine nature is wrought into humanity. When the Lord Jesus was on this earth, He did everything in His humanity full of the divine element. He did not do anything by the natural strength or the natural ability. He said that He could not do anything apart from the Father (John 5:19). The Father was within Him and one with Him in all His deeds, in all His words, and in all His works (14:10; 10:30). Whatever He did, whatever He said, and whatever He worked was altogether with the Father as the divine element. We need to consider whether the strength and ability we use for the Lord's service are natural or divine. We have to learn the lesson of rejecting our natural strength and ability, and we have to help all the saints to learn this lesson.