As we have seen, the central thought of God is Christ with the church. The entire Scriptures with sixty-six books is centered on Christ as the expression of God through the church as His corporate Body.
In the Old Testament the history of the people of Israel was simply a history of the tabernacle and the temple. In the wilderness, there were about six hundred thousand men between the ages of twenty and fifty who could go to war to fight for God. If each one of them had a wife, this number would have been doubled, and if each couple had children, their number would have more than tripled. Therefore, there may have been more than two million people in the wilderness traveling and doing nothing but handling the tabernacle day by day, day in and day out, for forty years. When they journeyed, they carried the tabernacle with them, and when they stopped, they set up the tabernacle. In the New Testament the principle is the same. Do you know what we Christians are doing all day long? All we should do is handle the tabernacle, which is a type of the increase of Christ, that is, Christ with the church. This is our business. This is our life and our daily living.
Later, after the children of Israel entered into Canaan, they commenced the second part of their history, the history of the temple. When they enjoyed the produce of the land, they were able to bring forth the temple, which was something more solid and more stable than the tabernacle. The temple was the meaning, the explanation, and the center of their life. Likewise, today when we enjoy Christ as the all-inclusive good land, we also are able to bring forth something as the increase of Christ, the enlargement of Christ, that is, the church.
In the New Testament, we are told that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14). This means that Christ Himself, by being incarnated, became the tabernacle, the dwelling place, of God. Then, in John 2:18-21 the Lord Himself told us that His body was the temple of God which the Jewish people were going to destroy. He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (v. 19). The body which the Lord raised up in three days was a much bigger body, an increased body. The Lord’s body in the flesh was put to death on the cross, but a mysterious Body was raised up through the resurrection of Christ. This mysterious Body is Christ with all the believers. Christ, including all the believers, is a mysterious temple for God. So, in the New Testament, we have Christ as the center and the church as His increase, expansion, and enlargement. In other words, Christ is the Head and the church is the Body. This is the central thought of the entire New Testament.
The New Testament reveals to us a great, mysterious, and universal man, with Jesus Christ as the Head and all the believers as the Body. The Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, reveal to us Christ as the Head; then the Acts reveals the Body. In Acts, we see Christ acting, living, moving, and working in His Body. Some people refer to Acts as the acts of the apostles, but strictly speaking, Acts is the acts of Christ as the Spirit through the apostles, and not only through the apostles but also through all the disciples, through all the believers, through the whole Body. Hence, Acts is the acts of the Head as the Spirit through the Body. Thus, we see the universal, great man-the Head with the Body.
When Saul, who strongly opposed the church, was on his way to Damascus, the Lord met him and said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (9:4). Saul was greatly amazed and said, “Who are You, Lord?” The Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you persecute” (v. 5). Saul thought that he was persecuting Peter, Stephen, and the other Jesus-followers, who were people on the earth, but he never thought that he was touching anyone in heaven. To his great surprise a voice from heaven told him that He was the One whom Paul was persecuting and that His name was Jesus. What the Lord was saying to Paul was, “When you persecute Peter, you persecute Me. When you persecute the church, you persecute Me, because I am in the church and the church is a part of Me.” This “Me” is the universal, great man, with Christ as the Head and the church as the Body.
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