In addition to the many different teachings, there are also the different opinions from those who claim that they love the Lord and love the church. They do not realize how much damage their opinions have done to the church. This does not mean that we Christians should not have any opinion. In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul said that he had no commandment of the Lord, but he gave his opinion (v. 25). It is permissible to express our opinion, but we have to consider what the result of our opinion will be. The result of Paul’s opinion in 1 Corinthians 7 was the edification of the saints and the building up of the church. Paul was one with the Lord in giving his opinion (v. 40). Does our opinion build up or destroy? Is it a constructive opinion or a destructive opinion? If it is destructive, we should be careful. We will stand before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). It is a serious thing to damage the church or any saint in the churches. When we talk about other saints, is this constructive or destructive? Romans 14 reveals that the destruction of God’s work comes from opinion (vv. 15, 20). We may behave in a destructive way because we hold a destructive opinion.
Whenever we hear something, we have to check whether what we hear is building us up or destroying us. Is it making us alive or deadening us? Whether or not you accept someone’s word should depend on this principle. We will preserve ourselves from being destroyed if we check whether someone’s teaching or talk kills us, deadens us, or makes us alive.
Despite our situation of being babyish, we can be those who are fully growing up into our Head, Christ (Eph. 4:15). All of us believers are persons in Christ, but to what extent are we in Christ? To enter deeper into Christ, we need to grow into Him. Ephesians 4:15 says that we have to grow up into Him in all things, that is, in every aspect of our daily life. What is it to grow into Christ? To grow into Christ is to let Christ grow in us. When He grows, we get into Him more.
In Ephesians 3, Paul bowed his knees to the Father that the Father would grant us to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man (vv. 14-16). The result of being strengthened into our inner man is Christ making His home in our hearts (v. 17). Our heart is composed of all the parts of our soul—mind, emotion, and will—plus our conscience, the main part of our spirit. Christ is in us, but He is not settled in us. He is in our spirit, but around our spirit there are the main rooms of the heart—the mind, emotion, and will. Christ is in you, but He may not be in your mind, emotion, or will. This is why we have to grow into Him, and to grow into Him is to let Him spread. We have to let Christ spread from our spirit to our mind, emotion, and will so that He can take over, possess, and occupy our heart.
When a person moves into a new house, he needs to get settled down there. If this person only occupies the living room and every other room in the house is locked, he is not yet settled down in his house. Is this the condition of Christ in us? Does Christ have the freedom in our mind to think everything with us and for us? Does Christ have the way to occupy our emotion? Does Christ have the liberty to take over our will? If He did, He would be able to do whatever He likes in us and with us. Do we choose things by ourselves apart from the Lord? Christ may be limited, restricted, and even imprisoned within us. If there is no spreading or increase of Christ within us, how can we grow in Christ? To grow in Christ is to gain more of Christ. The more of Christ that we have within us, the more we grow into Him.
Christ needs to make His home in our hearts in all the practical aspects of our daily life so that we can grow up into Him in all things. Shopping is a real temptation to all of us. Some of us may like to read the newspaper to see what is on sale. We may like to spend our money apart from Christ on unnecessary things. When we are considering to go shopping, is Christ in our mind, emotion, and will? If Christ were in our mind, emotion, and will, we might not even go shopping for the things that we were considering to buy. In our shopping, have we grown into Christ?
When a husband exchanges words with his wife, he does not care for Christ. If he were to let Christ into his emotion, he would not be angry with his wife and argue with her. We need to allow Christ to take over our feeling in our emotion, our thinking in our mind, and our deciding in our will. When Christ takes over the three major rooms around our spirit—the mind, the emotion, and the will—He is spreading in us and we are growing into Him. We need to grow into Christ in the way that we talk to our wives. We need to be willing to let Christ take over and occupy our inward parts, our mind, emotion, and will. This is the way to grow into Christ.
Someone in the church life may have offended us, and we may want to talk about this person to someone else. But at this juncture the very Christ who is living in our spirit desires earnestly to get into our mind, to control our thinking. When we open our heart to the Lord, He may say, “Do not think this way. Even if he wronged you, he is your dear brother. You should pray for him.” When someone offends us, we may struggle with the Lord. We may agree with the Lord not to talk about him, but we still may want to forget about him. The Lord will remind us, however, that this is not the character of a Christian. A Christian is one who loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him (Matt. 5:44). If we are to love our enemies and pray for them, what about this dear brother who offended us? Sometimes the Lord will say that this brother only did something wrong in our eyes; then He will show us that we were more wrong than he was. If we do not cooperate with the Lord in this matter to allow Him to make His home in our hearts, we are not growing into Christ.
We can grow up into Christ by holding to truth. Holding to truth is in contrast to being carried about by the winds of teaching in sleight and craftiness. We may be easily shaken, moved, tossed, and carried away because we would not hold to truth. Truth denotes the true things, referring to Christ and His Body. Only Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God, and the church, the organism of the Triune God, are the true things on this earth. Everything else is vanity. We should hold on to and care only for Christ and the church. If we only hold on to Christ and the church, nothing will be able to shake us. We will be steady in Christ, on Christ, and with Christ. We will be steady in the church and with the church. We will not be tossed or carried about by any storm or wind.
We hold to truth in love, the love of God, with which we love the Lord in incorruption (Eph. 6:24). Our natural love is vain. Only one kind of love is true—the divine love. With this divine love, we love the Lord in incorruption. We can love the Lord in incorruption by holding on to Christ and the church. Only Christ and the church are incorruptible. To love God in anything other than Christ and the church is to love Him in corruption. We should love God with His divine love in Christ and the church. The love that will remain is the love in incorruption, the love in Christ and the church.
To grow up is to have Christ increase in us with the nourishment, the life supply (Eph. 4:16). We cannot help the saints merely by teaching them. Rebuking or condemning does not help them either. To give Christ the way to increase in the saints, we must feed them with Christ by ministering Christ, imparting Christ, dispensing Christ, to them. When we receive the supply within, Christ increases in us. The increase of Christ in us transforms us. It changes our mind, emotion, and will. As Christ increases in us, we are transformed by growing up into Him.
To grow up into Him in all things means that we grow up into Him in every way and in every aspect of our daily walk. If we would let Christ take over our mind, emotion, will, and conscience to get Himself settled down in all of our inward parts, we will grow into the Head, Christ, in everything and in every aspect. To grow into the Head is to grow into Christ by subjecting ourselves to Him as the Head. When we are not letting Christ increase in us, we are not taking Him as our Head by subjecting ourselves to Him. To grow into Christ is to subject ourselves under the headship of the Head of the Body, Christ. Then we are absolutely under the direction of the indwelling Christ, and Christ has the full freedom to get Himself settled down in our whole being. He has the way to make His home deep down in our being. By this way we can grow into Christ in everything.
Our growing is the real building up of the Body of Christ as an organism. As parts of this organism, we need to give Christ the way to grow in us. The entire organism of the Triune God is built up by all of us living in a way so that Christ can increase Himself in every part of our being. The building up of the Body of Christ is not by organizing. How is the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God built up? The Head gives the gifts, the gifts perfect the saints, and the saints grow in life. Their growth in life is the direct building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God.