Ephesians 4:12 says that the gifted persons are “for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ.” According to the grammatical construction, the work of the ministry is the building up of the Body of Christ. The perfecting is unto the work of the ministry, which is the building up of the Body of Christ. The word “unto” in Greek in Ephesians 4:12 means in view of, for the purpose of, resulting in, issuing in. The perfecting of the saints is in view of the work of the ministry, which is the unique ministry in the New Testament. Thousands of believers may be doing a work of a thousand parts, but every part should be for the unique work of the unique ministry to build up the Body of Christ. Paul referred to the building up of the Body of Christ, not to the building up of the church. Paul’s stress was not on the building up of the church as a congregation but on the building up of the Body as an organism. The saints are perfected unto the work of the ministry for the building up of the Body of Christ as an organism. The New Testament ministry builds up an organism not an organization.
The British Brethren who were raised up in the early part of the nineteenth century were greatly used by the Lord. In his book The Orthodoxy of the Church, Brother Nee considered that at one time, the Brethren were the fulfillment of the church in Philadelphia, but they became degraded to become what is prefigured by the church in Laodicea. In 1931 the Brethren sent eight representatives to visit us in China. Brother Nee told them that they would be welcome, but he asked them to please not bring with them anything of what they represented. When they came to visit us, however, they caused much trouble among us. After their visit to us, they invited Brother Nee to visit them, so Brother Nee went in 1933. He traveled to France, England, Canada, and the United States to attend the meetings of the Brethren. He returned and told us of the confusion among them. He came back to tell us that we could not go along with the Brethren absolutely. He found out that they could have several churches, or assemblies, in one city. They did not see that in one city, regardless of how big that city is, there should be only one church, one local expression of the Body of Christ (Acts 8:1; 1 Cor. 1:2; Rev. 1:11).
Darby advised all the leading ones of the so-called churches in a certain city to come together once a month. G. H. Lang in his book The Churches of God condemned what Darby did, saying that Darby was trying to make the churches a federation. Lang said that each local church should be autonomous. The concepts of their assemblies either being unified together into a federation or being separately and independently autonomous destroyed the entire testimony that the Lord raised up among the Brethren. Today the Brethren are divided into many divisions. They have been divided over things such as whether to have a piano or an organ in their meetings. The group that favored using a piano decided to start another assembly on another street in the same city. This was an actual case. The divisions among them are mainly due to the teaching of autonomy.
The terms federation and autonomy may be used in the field of politics or government. On the one hand, the states of the United States are autonomous with their state governments, but on the other hand, they are a federation of states under the federal government. The terms federation and autonomy are organizational terms in the political circle. They should not be brought into the realm of the church because the church is not an organization but an organism, the Body of Christ, with one life. The members of my physical body are not independently autonomous, having nothing to do with the other members. There is only one circulation of blood in our physical body, and the members are all organically related to one another. In like manner, all the members of the Body of Christ, the organism of the Triune God, enjoy the same life and are organically related to one another. This one organism comprises all the saints, past and present, and it comprises all the local churches. All the local churches are one Body. How can we say that the local churches are separate and autonomous, when they are one Body?
When we visit another local church, we should not consider ourselves as guests. Wherever we go, we should consider ourselves as members of the Body. For practical matters of hospitality, we may refer to hosts and guests, but in the meetings of the church there are no guests, only members of the Body of Christ. We are the members of the unique, universal Body of Christ. If we go to a place where there is an expression of this Body, we are members of that expression. Suppose a brother from the church in New York is visiting the church in Taipei. Should he have the attitude that because he is a member of the church in New York, he is not a member of the church in Taipei? Would it be right to say that the church in New York and the church in Taipei have nothing to do with one another because they are separate autonomies? This is impossible and it is not practical. The churches are one Body. In his book The Churches of God, G. H. Lang quotes someone who says that each local church is a Body of Christ. If this were true, the Lord Jesus would have thousands of bodies. This concept is terrible! There is one Body of Christ in the universe, and we are members of this Body. All of the saints in the local churches should be one with one another. The Lord prayed for us in John 17 that we would be one.
All the local churches should be one, but this does not mean that they should be unified or federated. We do not agree with any federation. We are not one organizationally. We are one organically because we have the same one life of Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God. The Body of Christ is organic, full of life. We are one in this divine life regardless of where we go. If we go to Japan and meet with the saints there, we are one with them because we are members of the unique, universal Body of Christ.
All the members of the Body of Christ who do the work of the ministry participate in the unique ministry of God’s New Testament economy (2 Cor. 4:1; 3:8-9). This unique ministry is the ministry of the Spirit, who gives life (2 Cor. 3:8). The unique ministry of the Old Testament was the ministry of death because that was the ministry of the law which condemns and kills us (2 Cor. 3:7a, 9a). But the unique ministry of the New Testament is altogether a life-giving, organic ministry. This ministry is the ministry of righteousness, which brings in justification unto life (2 Cor. 3:9; Rom. 5:18b). The ministry of the law was the ministry of condemnation unto death, while the ministry of the faith, the New Testament, is the ministry of justification unto life, so it is altogether organic. The work of the ministry to build up the Body of Christ is directly by the perfected saints in the growth in life (Eph. 4:15-16). The saints grow up by being nourished, and this growing up is the building up.