We must not only submit ourselves to the authority of the Head; we must also maintain a proper relationship with all the members. Every member in the Body is under the control and authority of the Head. As such, no member should be isolated; rather, each member should be related to the other members. Ephesians 4:16 says, “Out from whom all the Body, being joined together.” Let us consider how every part of the Body can be fitly joined together. From our own body we can see that all the members are perfectly joined together. For example, our face is truly God’s masterpiece; a cow’s head, a horse’s head, and even a flower are not as beautiful as the human face. It would be horrible to switch the position of the eyebrows with the position of the eyes and to switch the location of the ears with the mouth. This shows that the order and arrangement made by God cannot be altered by man. Any attempt to alter God’s order is the flesh, the work of man, and is ugly.
Those who serve the Lord but strive with one another in a local church can be compared to a nose trying to be above the eyebrows or the eyes trying to be on top of the head. This is not beautiful. Under God’s sovereign authority and arrangement, some saints are above us, but envy and strife may cause us to try to be on top. This is ugly, and it proves that we have not seen the order in the Body and the beauty of this order. Nevertheless, we should never suppose that this order relates to being high or low, great or small, among the members of the Body. In the body there is no distinction between the eyes and the nose or the ears and the mouth; neither is there higher or lower nor greater or smaller. They all keep the position and order assigned by God under His arrangement.
The most serious problem in the church is not knowing God’s order and not knowing that coordination depends upon order. When the saints do not function, there is no coordination; when the saints function beyond their limit, there are problems in the coordination. Coordination depends on order. Without order, the coordination will collapse; without order, the Body will fall apart. The coordination in the Body depends entirely on order. This order is not man’s work nor man’s arrangement; order comes from being fitly joined and knit together (Eph. 4:16; 2:21; Col. 2:19). The saints who are too close and intimate need to maintain some distance from each other. Other brothers and sisters are too distant from others, too polite to others, and never able to connect with others. There is no possibility of coordination with these saints. They are afraid that too much contact with others will give rise to problems, not realizing that maintaining a distance from others does not make them “transcendent” Christians. As a result, they have problems in coordination and have caused the Body to be divided.
Some saints cannot coordinate with others even though they have been saved for many years; they are like outsiders and act as if they are guests in the church. Other saints serve in the church and gradually bear more burdens because they love and pursue the Lord. Although these saints are under the Lord’s arrangement and commission, they still need to learn to coordinate with others and be fitly joined together when all the saints come together to serve.
Our ability to be fitly joined with other members is a crucial matter; it is dependent on our submission to authority in others and their submission to authority in us. First of all, we must submit to the authority of the Head. Then we need to know whose authority we should submit to and who is in authority over us. Although we know that we should submit to the authority of the elders and the older saints, sometimes nothing can force us to submit to them. Our ability to submit to authority depends on the lessons we have learned from the Lord’s hand by being torn down by the Lord. If we have not learned many lessons of being broken by the Lord, authority and order are out of the question, and coordination is basically nonexistent. Any “guests” in the church are not in the coordination of the Body. Although our salvation has placed us in the Body, according to our real situation we live outside of the Body.
A believer who can coordinate with others in the church is one who has been dealt with by the Lord’s hand and has learned many lessons before the Lord. If we desire to coordinate with others in the church and be fitly joined together with the saints in the Body, we need to be built up in the Lord’s hand. Ephesians 2:21-22 says, “In whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit.” These verses indicate that we are a building. All the building being fitted together is the coordination. Pieces of stone need to be hammered and dealt with before they can be joined properly; otherwise, they are merely a pile of stones.
In the local church, are the saints like a pile of stones without the building, or have they been dealt with by God to become stones that can be joined to one another? Without the dealing and the building, coordination is out of the question. If we cannot be fitly joined together, order and authority are out of the question. When a person has been built by God, having been dealt with and broken by God, he will be able to stand in a proper position in the order of the Body to be joined together with the other members. Therefore, genuine coordination is the result of building and breaking; it is the issue of being dealt with by the Lord’s hand.
It is not possible to coordinate with the brothers and sisters in our natural being. Our coordination in the Body is not of ourselves but of God’s hand and of His building. Our natural man is raw and wild; anyone who is raw and wild cannot coordinate with others. Those who can coordinate with others are those who have been tried, subdued, broken, and dealt with by God. They have at least been worked on by God’s hand. Anyone who has not been worked on by God’s hand cannot coordinate with others. It is not that we can fitly join ourselves together with others; rather, when we have been dealt with, broken, and built up by God’s hand, we can be placed together in coordination. This is God’s sovereign authority.
Everyone, even the elders and deacons, needs to be dealt with, torn down, and built up by God’s hand. Only then can we coordinate before God. It seems that in God’s arrangement, He rarely puts two persons with similar dispositions together. On the contrary, He often puts two incompatible people together, letting them rub against and perfect each other. A teacher who is unable to get along with other teachers can transfer to another school, but if we are unable to get along with the other believers, we cannot transfer to another locality. The church is a place where people are dealt with the most; because everything is from God’s hand, we must accept everything whether we can bear it or not.
If we are a human, we must be a Christian, and if we are a Christian, we have no choice but to be in the church. Thus, being a Christian is not without its own difficulties. Consequently, we may desire to be comfortable and seek our own “freedom.” If a local church does not fit our taste, we may think we should simply move to another place. However, even if we move to another locality, we will not feel peaceful in the long run. In the beginning we may feel that everything is fresh and suitable simply because we are in a new place. However, after two or three months we will be unable to endure it, because we have not passed through God’s hand and have not been broken.